Hibernaculum

By Brittany Hague

When Penelope rose to search for the snakes, the sun had not yet risen, and the yard was cast in blue and cold, and the adults still slept soundly and warm indoors.

The day before, she had wandered out of the adults’ watchful eyes. She spied a lone garter snake that was coiled on a rock, warming itself in the winter sun. A shovel raised, then lowered. Uncle Peter, tossed carelessly behind his shoulder, as if it were one of his furtive cigarette butts, the reptile’s decapitated head. It had landed near enough for her to see the sky reflected in its eyes, small round beads. She was not sure she’d ever see anything as horrible or fascinating for as long as she lived. But though she was entranced, she slipped away before she was caught, witness to his murder-by-shovel.

Penelope was meant to stay in the playroom in the basement. It was safer, though from what threat, the adults wouldn’t tell her. Why they fled the city, the adults wouldn’t tell her. Why Aunt Theresa screamed in the washroom, the adults wouldn’t tell her. Why they all ran inside when the sky changed colors and the humming noise began, the adults wouldn’t tell her.

Time had grown amorphous, devoid of special occasions to mark it. She only began to guess that she might never return home when the garter snakes went into hibernation, as it meant that months had passed.

The day she arrived at the country house, with its pink stucco and slate roof, its garden statues and neglected plants, a snake crossed her path. She was comforted as she shrieked by soft assured voices promising her that the creatures were harmless. But she knew now they had lied. Why else would gentle Uncle Peter kill the snake unless it was a threat? She was beginning to suspect everything was a threat and nothing was harmless. Meals were eaten from cans and Aunt Mary counted them nervously in the pantry. The gates were locked and not even the dairy man was permitted on the grounds. The fireplace was snuffed out and space heaters set up when needed among whispers about the smoke. They’ll see the smoke.

In such a world, the frost that covered the edges of her little window, the blades of grass outside it, and Uncle Jerrod’s car felt like an invasion.

Back in the spring, she had soiled the cuffs of her pants in the mud but now, frozen into uneven clumps, it was hard and unwelcoming under her feet as she crept to the side of the house. There the foliage was wild, unkept and dying. There, too, the snakes would be making their winter bed. Uncle Peter had shown her the spot. Something about the picture he painted, of them all lying together, their bodies intertwining, caused her eyes to seek out the treetops. The sheer height of the pines was comforting, they were her protectors, the adults had implied. How could anything find them among such giants.

On her knees, she pushed aside dead leaves and small stones and scraped her knuckles on the bark of the shrub. At first look, the den, a dark slant opening between grey shale rocks seemed lifeless, but her eyes adjusted, and the darkness writhed with life. Black and yellow ribbons, perhaps hundreds, tangled, indistinguishable from one another.

The snakes were dreaming of safety, and Penelope was unsure anymore if she was their annihilator or their friend. She imagined burning them all, but she had not brought the matches, even though she knew the spot beside the stove where Aunt Eliza kept them. And, besides, all the adults were asleep in the room above, huddled together for added warmth. And she couldn’t forget the smoke. They’ll see the smoke. In short, she had thought nothing through and instead was bowing at the hibernaculum for the sole purpose of viewing the enemy up close. Enthralled with the scales and patterns of the snakes, which seemed to her neither good nor evil, she found she was not up to the task of understanding the dangers of the world.

Every night when she first arrived, Penelope would be put to bed in the basement, tucked tightly into a musty quilt and read a musty bedtime story from a musty book of fairy tales. But the aunts were cheating, skipping pages and ending all the happy stories with “…and they lived happily ever after.” Penelope knew they were cheating, because she peeked at the illustrations during the day, and she found girls being eaten by wolves. It made it difficult to believe her aunts when they constantly told her, unprompted, that everything was going to be okay. That they were safe here. Safe from what? she asked at the beginning. Just safe they answered until she stopped inquiring altogether.

A snap echoed behind her from the direction the adults watched with apprehension. She froze but allowed a smoky fleeting tendril of breath to escape her lips.

 “Hello?”

She turned, too curious to remain still.

“You… you are a person,” the boy said, “I couldn’t tell at first, thought maybe you were a sculpture.”

The names of cousins who were not spoken of in the house, suddenly sprung to her mind, unbidden. Jeremy, Elliot, Casper. They would be about the same age as this boy.  But where they were the kind of boys, well fed and confident, used to being given things, who bullied little girls like her, this boy, wild eyed and wan, who practically swam in his black uniform, was the kind driven to take things that weren’t his. He was hungry, she could tell at once, despite his smile.

“Didn’t know anyone lived this far out. You can’t be alone, can you, just a little kid?”

“I’m not a little kid.” It was all she could think to say, aware of her thin nightgown and the braids Aunt Jessica had plaited in her hair last night.

“Someone must be in there with you. Your mom or dad?” She did not answer, stung by the reminder of her parents. “Well, ah, could you tell me, you think, which side they’re on?”

She wouldn’t tell, even if she had known.

“They dressed in black like me?”

She shook her head no.

“I’m really not one of them,” he looked down at his filthy uniform, “they force us to fight. But I won’t hurt you.”

His face had at first appeared handsome to her, but as she took stock of him, his hollow cheeks which were streaked with slithering lines of mud and sweat and blood, she noticed something, and it made her ashamed for thinking of anything besides sympathy for him.

His right arm was up in a gesture of good will, but his left hung limply from a torn sleeve and ended, not with a hand but a stump wrapped in gauze stained yellow and brown.

He took a few steps toward her then fell against the nearest tree trunk, wincing. “Come here,” he pleaded.

She crept closer, turning once to ensure the house was still. The fresh scent of the sap and the snow were not strong enough to cover his stink. When she was near enough to touch him, she stopped, taken aback by his black beady eyes that betrayed the horrors they must have witnessed. When she was able to look away from them, she focused again on his injury.

“I want to see it,” she told him.

“You don’t.”

“No one lets me see or know anything,” she complained as she leaned in. The odor was strong and foul.

“Alright little girl,” the boy said, “but don’t look away.” He let out animalistic moans as he unwrapped the ribbons of blood-soaked cloth. The skin puckered like a ghoulish mouth, and she did not look away.

“What happened?”

“I got so hungry I ate it.” Penelope looked away, at the snow, dirty beneath his heel.

Penelope was suddenly aware of her betrayal to everyone that had tried to save her.

“Is that true?” she whispered.

“Course not. Used to say things like that when I was little, like you. Starving and we’d say, ‘I’m so hungry I’d eat a horse or a wolf or my own hand’.”

“A wolf then?” she asked.

“Something worse.”

Uncle Jerrod was fond of riddles. What must be shared before you can keep it? The more of these you take, the more you leave behind. What is always in front of you but can’t be seen? and Penelope’s perplexation made him laugh. Look at her little face, he’d tell the others.

The boy’s conversation confused her in the same fuzzy way, and her cheeks warmed despite the frosty air. But the boy was not laughing, and he had no concern with her little face. He was staring at the house. “Looks warm in there,” he glanced down at Penelope. “I’d like to rest.” But she was still contemplating his previous statement.

“What’s worse?”

“Huh?”

“What’s worse than wolves?”

“You know. The people back there,” he nodded behind him, “the people in there,” he nodded behind her, “you and me. We’re the worse thing to ever happen.”

She imagined bringing the boy to the house. She imagined a shovel brought down on the boy’s other hand and wondered if what the boy said was true. She didn’t know enough of the world to be sure. The ground had shifted beneath her and the universe upended at the hands of men and women. But the warmth she felt, back in the city, playing sardines with other little kids, laughing and holding their breaths, so close she could feel a heart rattling against her back, that was true too.

“You can’t be right.” she said.

He gave her a look Aunt Eliza often used, a look that said What am I going to do with you? and held out his right hand. It was so large in proportion to the rest of him, both her hands encircled it as she helped him stand upright.

“You really don’t understand the world, do you?” he asked, as he rewrapped his limb. And when she asked if he might explain it to her, he bared his teeth in a smile. “Sure, sure,” he promised, winding his fingers through the tops of her braids and leading her deeper into the woods, to show her the dangers of the world.

THE END

Author Bio: Brittany Hague (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer and designer. Her short stories have been featured on the Kaidankai and Short Story Today podcasts and have appeared in Last Girls Club, Willows Wept Review, Stone’s Throw, and Bog Fancy among other publications. She is a graduate of film and video at The Rhode Island School of Design. Find her at https://www.brittanyhague.com/.

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