Let Gravity Seize the Dead

by Darrin Doyle

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

In 2007, Beck Randall moves with his wife and teenage daughters into a long-abandoned cabin deep in the woods, built a century before by his grandparents. Once there, daughters Tina and Lucy discover that their predecessors have left an imprint of suffering and violence the girls refer to as “ The Whistler,” an eerie presence infused in the nature that surrounds them. As the 1907 and 2007 storylines braid together, characters and events intrude upon each other, blurring the boundaries between eras and illustrating that people and lives are not forgotten; instead, they are woven into the fabric of the land itself. With gritty, lyrical storytelling, Let Gravity Seize the Dead is an intergenerational literary horror story featuring a blend of suspense, beauty, and terror.

 

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Release date: July 9, 2024

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Print pages: 97

Sample

First time the sisters heard it they thought bird. Pitch night though is when the whistler blew, and not much birdsong lived under moonlight. Even city girls could tell you that. Next, they considered coyote, a female in distress or a pup. But no canine carries notes so tuneful and sad. Sad maybe but not tuneful.

The cabin set back from County Road 93 more than two miles, the only access a lurching dirt one-lane, unpredictably divoted and cloaked by evergreens. Visitors when they came—which was not often and then primarily postal carriers—took up to twenty minutes to lose their sea legs from that road. No other cabins or homes existed along the stretch, which is why the Randalls thought of it as their own private path to the world.

Trees stood close-woven, even when hardwoods lost their leaves. Lean pines, black and jack, formed dark mazes, needle beds soft in their perpetual shade. Armies of that pine flanked the plot that Beck Randall’s great grandparents had cleared in 1900. No power tools back then. Just Loren and Betty daybreak until night, chopping, sawing, and hauling, laying hammer and planer to wood, mosquitoes an unbroken whine, plagues of gnat and black fly. Ticks like little chocolate drops each evening plucked with tweezers. Haze of sawdust fog-binding the world. Neighbors of no one, the nearest town Wolfolk four miles distant. Stories had it that raising cabin, shed, and pole barn took near a decade and shortened Loren Randall’s life to forty-six years.

Loren died in his bed after a long fever. Pneumonia is what the country doctor named it. Bernie and Lucille by that time were teenager and almost-teenager, respectively. They hovered bedside with their mother as Loren’s life passed out of his body and he released his final words: “Now I’m a branch.”

The phrase lived in Lucille’s mind for her remaining life, along with the image of her father ghosted on the sheets. Once a brick-strong man, he’d turned mulch. His wet eyes had located Lucille’s. As a child, she didn’t understand her father’s look or his final words, though in time she came to understand his shame and pity, what past he had lived and future he foresaw.

During construction the children were too little to help but old enough to keep out of the way. Daylight hours they retreated into the woods with satchels of butter sandwiches and apples, wandering until the saws and chops of trees called no louder than the bugs. Bernie with his slingshot, Lucille brandishing a walking stick twice her height for imaginary highwire-crossing. She had seen a sketch of a highwire walker in a book, his long horizontal pole bent like a frown. The wire-walker was stepping with a relaxed face as if a chasm didn’t yawn beneath him like a giant’s throat. She believed the wire-walker real no matter what her brother said.

Bernie, meanwhile, launched rocks at moving targets, mostly chipmunks too quick or birds that on rare occasion perished in feathery explosions.

Bernie told stories about the forest eater. “The trees are his teeth,” he said. “He’ll chew you up. No one will see you again.”

Lucille thought the story funny. Funny to see the woods as the great wide-open mouth. She would scream I’m on its tongue while wire-walking a fallen elm.

But when dusk crept in and shadow quilted the forest floor, she sprinted back to Ma and Pa and threw her arms around them and asked for cocoa even in the heart of summer.

Betty lived to ninety-one, her final thirty-six years alone in that cabin after Loren died and then Bernie died, and then Lucille fled downstate. When Betty passed, her body wasn’t found for eleven days. The mail truck stopped by only monthly. Her heart had expired near the pole barn while cleaving wood for the stove, even at her advanced age performing most chores herself. Because what choice did she have, she against the forest? Because here was her home. Because here she had planted life. Coyotes fed on Betty until 

she was bone.

Lucille receiving this news understood that poor Bernie (whose dead face haunted her) had been correct: the woods had eaten their ma after all.



The cabin stood empty for decades, waist-deep in scrub and weeds by the time Beck Randall purchased it from his own father, son of Lucille. Beck’s father had been willed the eighty acres but never so much as stepped onto the property. Viewed it only in grainy photographs.

Beck’s father was an elderly, semi-retired Detroit tax attorney with no interest in outdoor life. His mother, Jewish Brooklyn-born-and-raised, influenced his father’s interests and disposition in ways both profound and trivial, casting a shadow of disrespect upon Beck’s image of his father.

An only child, Beck happily spent his and his wife’s savings, including a portion of the college fund, to buy both cabin and land. His father charged market value.



Acreage surrounding the Randall property sold on occasion, but nobody constructed upon it. Purchasers discovered the environs unkind, too serried to clear, beyond reach of creature comfort. Plots were used for hunting or not at all.

Beck moved there with Mallory and their teenage daughters. The four hacked brush, working blisters into their hands just like Loren and Betty, sweating the soil, Beck and Mallory feeling good about connecting—with their girls, with the earth—about breathing air unchanged in the past century plus. Hired a contractor to do what they couldn’t. Six months of labor: new roof laid, a section of wall rebuilt, faux-wood flooring installed, modern appliances, sinks and fixtures, electrical rewiring, a furnace.

The interior was cozy: two bedrooms, kitchen, living area, bathroom.

The exterior, greenish hue of the pines and peeling like sunburned skin, got scraped and redone in apple red at the request of Tina. At thirteen, she had an artist’s eye.

“The last page of my obituary will be a poem,” Tina said. “I’m working on it right now.”

“Don’t be stupid. Nobody writes their own obituary.” Lucy was not in the mood. Whimsy, whimsy. Tina’s teacher, who was now their mother, rewarded Tina for whimsy, had in effect labeled it her youngest daughter’s life calling.

Meanwhile, Lucy’s calling according to Mother was to be a human calculator. The girl despised

math and wished she didn’t find it so easy.

Weekdays, the Randall daughters did schoolwork at the kitchen table unless the sun was shining like now. A rarity, a pleasant distraction, the dazzling milky glow. On the wooden swing they swayed, read, and typed on laptops that were tough to read in the glare.

“Tina Elizabeth Randall,” Tina recited from her computer, “passed away combatively on Thursday evening. She was seventeen years old and had no desire to expire. She attempted to stave off the Grim Reaper through invented rhymes and profanities—a filibuster, if you will. Sadly, her strategy worked only for a few hours and ultimately her dry throat did her in. Tina’s life, although tragically brief, will be remembered by all who came into contact with her. Her spirit was wise beyond her ears, her eyes, all her organs. Some said she was the reincarnation of every daffodil that ever flowered in the northern hemisphere. Others claimed she had hatched from a robin’s egg. On the hour her body gave itself to the earth, the trees sang, the birds bloomed, the sky was brown and the soil blue. Insects shed their fur and grew to the size of clouds while forest mammals assembled a chain of bones from their dead and circled the world three times over.”

“That’s not a poem,” Lucy said. “And how do you know the word filibuster?”

The screen door thwacked, meaning Mother had sandwiches. She squinted in the sun while setting plates on the side table by the swing. “Your father is going to be sad that he missed this day.”

Beck was at work. He had moved his family out here, away from everything and everyone, and ended up as a fry cook in Wolfolk. An electrical engineer by trade, he liked to say that nobody lived around here and they all were hiring. Tina laughed at the joke while Lucy read her fingernails.

“Maybe we should film this day for him,” Tina said. “I’ll start recording now.” She stared out at the weed-free lot, the sparkling wheelbarrow, the buttering flitterflies (as she called them). Her flat expression, Lucy supposed, was meant to emulate a camera’s emotionless objectivity.

Mother humored Tina, as usual: “Your dad will love it.”

The ghost of Bernie walked these woods. And great-great grandma Betty roamed the yard. This is what Tina liked to say since they arrived.

What about Loren? was Lucy’s question. And what about Lucille?

Tina shrugged. “I haven’t heard from them.”



In some areas of the forest, carcasses of fallen trees leaned on each other for support. Pads of moss spotted the earth. Soft to the touch, fuzzy. Mossy trunks, mossy hollow logs. Bernie explained that moss was a living creature like you and me, and he pointed at Lucille, and Lucille laughed because she was thinking about what it would be like to be a fungus that existed only to overtake and never love or bleed.

A sun-hot afternoon. Patches

 of briar bush the children waded through snagged at their trousers, trying to grab and keep them. The children reached an overlook. A pond waited at the foot of a steep slope. Bernie helped his sister descend; carefully they stepped, leaning into the hill, not wanting to tumble.

They reached the bottom. Squatted at the pond. Dipped fingers to feel the chill. Scoured shoreline in search of rocks with eyes or slimy backs peeking from the gloom. Bernie could catch them; Lucille was too slow. His hand hovered, steady. Waiting. Bernie was none too bright but had patience. The wind carried faraway trills. A squirrel scampered into brush. Then down slammed Bernie’s hand, cupping the frog before it could escape. Tenderly he squeezed. He let Lucille touch its pulsing throat. She tried to read its eyes but found only black orbs, blank and unmindful. Perhaps this was nature’s ploy, its survival strategy, to live without feeling. If you had no feelings, you couldn’t be destroyed. Even young Lucille understood this. She’d seen her father’s eyes.

“God gave dominion to man,” Bernie said. “I have to show these creatures the way it is. It’s my Christian duty.”

“You’re not a Christian,” Lucille said. “Or a man.”

“I ought to eat this critter.” He faced the frog to his lips, opened his mouth to let the animal see its future.

“He doesn’t have ears. Just little holes.”

“You don’t have ears.”

“What?” she said.

“You don’t have ears.”

“What?”

“I said YOU DON’T HAVE EARS.”

Lucille lost it, laughing. Bernie was so stupid. Off she ran, scampering on all fours up the slope, imagining herself an animal, gripping trees for leverage, sweating as she crested the top. Below, Bernie was the size of a marble. The pond weeds were stubby hairs like on Pa’s face. Sunshine flared on the glassy surface. Breeze wrinkled the water, reflected grass like wriggling tails. Everything alive out here. Everything forever.



Beck and Mallory knew their girls were missing out. On life, on social events, on camaraderie with peers.

Lucy was a sixteen-year-old dragged away from friends, relocated like a captive animal and released into the wild. She had argued and cried and found no support from Tina or her parents. It’s a democracy, her dad kept saying, and you’re outvoted.

“We’re starting over,” her mother said with a spark in her eye, her endless optimism like a robotic glitch in her brain.

“I never started the first time,” was Lucy’s thought. She kept the thought inside, however, decided to keep all her thoughts from now on—her only private space in this cramped cottage.

Evenings after the girls went to bed, Beck and Mallory played cards at the dinner table. The odor of fried cod clung to Beck, his nightly cologne. The television’s quiet cacophony punctuated the drone of crickets outside.

“To four months,” Mallory said, raising her wine.

A clink and a drink. “How are your students?” Beck said. The merlot was beginning to turn so he drank it in a gulp, made a face, felt his blood heat.

“Lucy isn’t happy.”

“Happiness is the great American myth.”

“She’s lonely, Beck.”

Beck played his card, a spade. “I win.”

In the girls’ room, night sang with September heat. Late night, the cricketsong stopped and the quiet became a throttling of sound. Threads of a spider web or blanket brushed Lucy’s cheek. She heard the tick of the wall clock. Sheets sweaty.

“You aren’t asleep,” Tina whispered from the darkness, “and I can’t wake up.” She giggled.

Lucy didn’t answer, was tired of answering. Every night, Tina talked.

Lucy heard the rustle of covers and was greeted bedside by a moonlit face.

“Let’s go find the whistler.”

“You’re dreaming. Go back to bed.”

“Dad says we’re all dreaming here. Every day is a dream, and every night we die.”

“Then shut up and let me die.”

“I made up that last part because I’m scared to die.”

“You won’t die until you’re seventeen. I heard your obituary.”

“I think Bernie died when he was little. Like almost a baby.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I can learn things from the way my head itches.”

“This is so fun.”

“Is the forest in my skin?”

“Smells like it.”

“Do you think we’ll hear the whistler tonight?”

“Not if we’re dead. Go to sleep.”



Not enough English language to describe the shades of green. Lily pad, thunderstorm cloud. Jack pine like a bristled dragon tongue. Green as a bruise, as cough syrup, as spinach boiled and raw. As opossum guts exposed to sun. Swamp water, baby waste, duck waste, northern lights braiding a midnight sky.



“Why would anybody choose to live out there?” Beck’s father had asked.

“I’m not anybody,” was Beck’s answer.

They sat in the living room,

Beck with his father and mother.

“You won’t find work,” his mother said. Her tone suggested fact not speculation.

“There are other things to find,” Beck said.

His father cracked open a pistachio, dropped the pale green nut into his mouth. Squat little man in a diamond-patterned sweater. Age had shrunk his body but not his intensity. Smacked his lips when he chewed, even a tiny nut. Beck wanted nothing from his father except this, and he wanted this to be nothing. His father, though, could never issue a blessing without critique.

The fireplace churned with flame, gas fire born from the turn of a switch. Everything in Beck’s childhood home was automatic, flipped off and on.

“Our son the hippie,” his dad said.

“We won’t see our granddaughters anymore.” Another fact from Mother’s frowning face, testing Beck’s guilt. She was a fusty woman with boney hands, lean as a flagpole, a fanatical homemaker twenty years her father’s junior. All Beck’s life they had enjoyed talking near one another.

“You’ll see the girls when you choose to,” Beck assured her. His response was measured, determined not to get riled.

“He’s talking about pictures and phone calls,” his father said, acting like Beck wasn’t in the room. “He can’t expect us to drive out there.” His father’s eyes flickered in the light. His set lips bespoke an internal struggle. “Do you even know what happened at that place? I’m not selling it to you. Final answer.”

Beck squeezed the arms of the recliner. He felt like he was falling. He looked meaningfully at his father, then his mother. Then back again. He wanted his father to sense what he was thinking.

“You sure?” Beck said. He held the trump card. Cards, plural. “You seem concerned about the past. About old forgotten shit.”

Beck would not turn away when his father’s expression hardened. Mother was checking her phone.



Bernie and Lucille play a game. A nighttime game. Bernie says it’s called Find the Whistle.

Pa is snoring. The children hear saws all day every day. At night their pa becomes a saw in his dreams. The cabin is a skeleton without muscle or flesh. The family sleeps in wooden bones under wool blankets, breathing the detritus of timber. Window tarps flap like flightless birds in the night wind. On the table, Pa’s whiskey bottle overshadows an empty glass.

Flannel shirts pulled over flannel pajamas. Careful of the hinge that squeaks. The children step outside.

Shock smell of humid sawdust and pine. Moths swarm Bernie’s light. Bernie grips Lucille’s hand, not letting go. She wants to hold on but wants to be free. Wants both

She’s not scared and has never been except when her pa grabbed Bernie by the throat. So long ago and far away that it feels like a dream.

No wind. No stars. Just those perfect forest soldiers at the ready, black rows deeper than sight, haunting beyond the lantern glow.

They tramp along no path. Even barefoot children snap branches, crunch needles. They are the loudest life. Lucille senses, all around, birds and chipmunks and squirrels and raccoons and opossum: in trees, in brush, cowering at the storm of their tread. Her blood rushes.

“Where are we going?”

“Right here.” Bernie frees her damp hand.

Here is nowhere. Ground thick with knee-high ferns. Spring peepers chirping in the marsh, gray tree frog throating like a rattle. No breeze, waned moon. Bloom of yellowsoft lamp shine, mist on the air.

“Close your eyes,” Bernie says.

“Why?”

“You’re in bed sleeping. Close your eyes.”

Bernie wouldn’t hurt her. Lucille knows. There’s light inside her brother, a dull spark like a black rock struck by sun. The lantern flame bends against the dark.

She obeys. On her eyelids shadows dance. She hears Bernie padding through brush.

“Walk sideways,” he whispers, now maybe fifteen feet off. Does fear quiver his words? “You have to go in sideways or the mouth thinks you’re food and swallows you. Here. Stop. Have you opened your eyes?”

“No.”

“A little?”

“No.”

“Crouch now. Hands and knees. You can’t see me, but I’m crawling too.”

“I don’t like this.”

“It’s okay. Scared is part of it.”

She crawls blind. The ground is scrolling. She’s crawling but isn’t moving. Someone is behind her, at her heels. She can’t escape. She’s swimming a black world without eyes. Hands throttle her calves and she gasps.

It’s Bernie. He says to stand up and keep her eyes closed.

“Come out,” he whispers. He isn’t talking to Lucille. “It’s okay. Come out. I want you to meet my sister.”



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