Story of the Month: The Invitation

A brief introduction: When I hit a wall working on book two, I write a short story. Sometimes it helps me expand on characters and ideas I already have. Or sometimes it just keeps the creative juices flowing. Sometimes, I like to challenge myself and write a story based on a random prompt I pull from Google. Most of the time, those stories still somehow end up in the universe of Pickleberry. This is one of those cases. Please enjoy! Feel free to leave comments below!

Prompt: “They were invited to a ball that happened 200 years ago.”

“It’s an invitation, I believe.”

Joanie held the letter out for Ben to get a better look. It was protected behind a thick plastic slab similar to what he’d seen in card shops, except this wasn’t a small 3x5 slab. It was a 10x12 large plastic slab that felt heavy and awkward in his hands. The surface was so shiny that even in Joanie's dim lighting, a glare obscured his view of the writing, so he had to hold it at an angle parallel to the display case. But there was no doubting the letter was 200 years old. 

It was yellow and brown around the tattered and frayed edges, but thick. Ben guessed the paper was hand-pressed as he could easily make out the texture of the fibers used to create it. Through the letter were two creases, as if it had been folded in thirds and placed into an envelope. He could make out all of the writing except for where the pages had been creased. It seemed to fade from there first. 

“I’ve got no chance of actually holding it, do I?” 

“Not even in your dreams.” Something about the question made Joanie nervous, and she took the slab from his hands delicately. 

“You know I had to ask. I just wanted to get a better look at what was written on it.” 

She placed the protected letter on the display case and searched for her glasses. 

Joanie was an older lady, but one who never settled into a complacent mentality that let life grow dull. She had cherry-red box-dyed hair, cut short into a bob at her ears with baby bangs barely reaching the middle of her forehead. She wore a vibrant orange cardigan covered in a variety of citrus fruits with matching earrings. The shirt underneath her cardigan was lime green and plain, but her straight skirt matched the pattern of her cardigan. Only the bottom border consisted of a line of trees sprouting from nothing and full bunches of leaves and fruits halfway up her thighs and midsection, where she wore a thin orange belt to cinch in her tiny waist. 

She had deep lines next to her eyes and at the sides of her mouth, but more notably, she had an indentation on either side of the bridge of her nose from her many years as a spectacle wearer. She’d taken off her glasses to clean them when Ben entered and distracted her. It never ended well if she didn’t place her small frames back on her nose. 

“Oh, lord, where are they?” She was looking behind the main desk now, feeling over every surface for something but careful not to knock anything on the floor. 

Ben spotted the glasses quickly and handed them to her before she did manage to do any actual damage. She placed them on her face and looked again at the letter. 

“You know I had a guy look at this once. He transcribed the whole thing out for me, and I had your girlfriend type it up so I could display it, but for the life of me I can’t seem to find it anywhere.” 

Ben smiled patiently. “Ginger isn’t my girlfriend, Joanie.” 

“Oh, that’s right. Apologies. Anyways, let's see here. It’s an invitation, so you know there is a greeting.” 

“A dear sir or madam?” 

“No, actually. It reads ‘Dear Child’.”

Ben’s brows creased. 

“Dear Child. It has come to our attention that you have been asking questions. Questions that nay your pa nor your ma nor thy holy man will venture to answer. They’ve informed you that you don’t need to know the answers and life will be far easier to simply let them slip from your mind. This is nonsense.

I know the answers you seek, and I seek to reward curiosity. After all, curiosity is but natural instinct. It expands your mind, your world, and your pleasure.

The timing of your curiosity is well-aligned. My brothers and I seek an audience for our annual ball. Not so much a gala, but larger than a mere meeting. It’s something we do every year. We, men of curiosity, gather. We dress in our finest, feast and wine, and allow our minds to question any and everything. But we don’t do it alone. You can only discuss so much with thine brothers. You see, we seek your questions and you, knowingly, seek our answers. And so I write extending an invitation to you and those who may share your curiosity.”

She paused. “There is a bit in the middle here I can’t make out. Something that ends in -ship is about all I can read.”

Then she continued:

“If your ailment of wonder sickens you to inclination, come to the clearing just past the edge of the treeline on the night of the full moon. You’ll know when you’ve found the right place when you can no longer see the meadows behind you. This invitation is extended to anyone else who may share your sense of wonder. 

I implore you. Come. Be filled with the knowledge you seek and unveil a path you never could have imagined. 

Until then, 

Edward and the Brothers of Curiosity.”

Joanie had a way of adding her own performative flair to the reading. Nothing over the top like what one might see in the theater, but more along the lines of a well-trained orator. Ben loved to listen to her read. 

With little left to do with it, she returned the letter to its display case, and Ben admired it. 

“And when was this found?” he asked. 

“Relatively recent, considering the age. 20, 25 years ago? Someone in the community was cleaning out their parents’ estate after they passed and found it in a trunk. The original envelope was there too, but it couldn’t be saved. I still have what’s left of it in the back, but it’s just bits of material.” 

“Was there anything else in the trunk?” he asked. 

“Memories of a generation, but nothing as unique as this. The lettering is unlike anything I’ve seen from the time period, Benjamin.” 

“I noticed that too,” he nodded. “Do you think it’s from the area? To host a ball in such a rural backdrop. A gathering, sure, but to call it a ball.” 

“I often wonder if we share a stream of consciousness because I considered this too. The woman who brought it to me was adamant that it couldn’t be from around here. Maybe an ancestor had traveled with it from a bigger city, but…” 

“There it is,” he nodded. 

“But the passage that mentions where to meet. I shouldn’t encourage the behavior, but like any curious teenager that grew up in this town, I’ve been in Black Bile, and I’ve seen a clearing similar to what is described.” 

“Okay, but how can you know it’s the same? How do you know one clearing from another, Joanie?” 

Ben leaned away from the display case. He wasn’t about to lose faith in Joanie, but recognizing a clearing in the woods from a 200-year-old letter seemed like a stretch. 

“It’s not the clearing, Benjamin. It’s the inability to see the meadows, or in my case the town. It was there one moment and gone the next. It’s difficult to explain, but does that description of where to meet not raise alarm bells in your head?” She was used to bickering with Ben and found it enjoyable, but catching the inkling of doubt in his eyes was something she couldn’t tolerate. 

“Alarmingly vague,” he agreed. 

“Well, you asked for my opinion, and this is it. I have no other way of putting a location to the letter, but I’ve shown you far stranger relics.”

Ben tilted his head from one side to the other, pondering the mystery of the letter, but there was something unconvincing about it.

“Oh, you can’t even humor an old woman for a second, can you?” she snapped. 

“I didn’t say anything.” 

“You didn’t have to. I know why you’re here. The archived news prints in the back. I’ve got a couple of boxes that wouldn’t fit. If you carry them out of storage, I’ll let you look through those, too.” She left him at the display case before he could rebut with sass or flattery, as was his way. 

And while she swayed her way to the back of the small building, Ben took another glance at the letter in the case. 

“Whose hands held this letter?” he pondered aloud before meeting Joanie at the storage closet. 

***

Stella’s hands held the letter delicately. Her fingertips were numb in the cold morning air, but she had just enough feeling in the pads to feel the indentation in the paper from the letters etched with a quill. 

She’d never received a letter before. Her house rarely saw mail. Any news that needed to be shared was brought by messenger, and since her family lived so far into the woods, the message would have to be dire for her family to get it. 

She could see the town, the smoke trailing from chimneys that sat on thatch roofs. A small collection of buildings where 6 or 7 families shared the space with room for a blacksmith, a mill, a small outpost, and a well. It was more common for gatherings to take place at the well than for a messenger to walk to her family’s farm. 

Maybe this was due to the distance. Or maybe it was simply because something about Stella’s family made the town uncomfortable. Either way, no one bothered to contact them unless they needed something. So there would never be a reason for the family to receive a letter, but here one was, with her own name on it no less. 

She’d found the letter pinned to the oak tree just outside her family home. Her pa often started the day before the sunlight filled the valley, and so she wasn’t surprised he missed it. She had been on her way to deliver the letter to him when she noticed her name scribbled on the front. Seeing her name startled her; it caused her to run to the river behind the farm and examine it closer. 

It took a while for her to fully read it. She was a fine reader, but the thin slanted lettering was something she’d never seen before. Something she thought might have been a different language until it seemed like the words began to take form in front of her very eyes. 

“Mutually empowered companionship,” she read aloud, but had no idea what the phrase meant. 

She settled upon a flat stone near the edge of the water, which was only a couple of feet deep. It didn’t pose much of a danger to her, but the current moved fast enough to deafen her to much else in the world. That and her mind lost in thought regarding the letter didn’t allow her to hear the footsteps that approached. 

“What’s that you got?” 

She jumped, nearly tearing the letter in her hands, but managed to not only save it but tuck it behind her back as she quickly faced the speaker, her mother. 

Ginny had yellow-blond hair, the color of wheat in late summer. She had bright blue eyes, fair skin, and red freckles over her nose and cheeks. She was small, nearly shorter than the 14-year-old Stella, with wide hips and a thin waist. 

Stella hardly resembled her mother. In fact, she hardly resembled either parent, but assumed she had taken after her dad, who had chestnut hair and brown eyes. Stella had long, sleek brown hair. She wore it tied with a leather strap at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were neither blue nor brown but a sort of amber gold. Her mother had called them sweet as honey, and there were times when her mother would simply stare at them, and Stella thought she might be dreaming. Like looking into her eyes reminded her of being somewhere else in time. A time or place that caused her cheeks to grow pink and a tiny smile to pull at the corners of her lips. 

That was likely also the reason why her mother couldn’t stand to look at her for long. 

“What’s that you’re hiding from me?” Ginny asked. 

“Not a thing, mama.” 

“Stella.” 

“Just a letter.” She confessed, but didn’t hand it to her mother. She folded it into thirds, slipped it back into the envelope, and tucked it away in the apron of her dress. She kept her gaze down and hoped that would be enough to satisfy Ginny. 

Ginny read her daughter’s face. The averted gaze and flushed cheeks would tell her more than any letter would. “A love letter, aye?” 

Stella’s gaze shot up to protest, but she stopped herself. There was a glimmer behind her mother’s eyes, something that even looked pleased to see her daughter hiding secret words with a secret person. “Yes, but please don’t ask me who.” 

“Since you asked so politely.” She grinned. “I can remember being your age and getting letters from the boys in town. I’d get two or three in a week, and your grandfather would take to the streets threatening every little boy he met. Oh bless ‘em.” 

“Did Dad write you letters?” 

Ginny’s face crumbled. Stella had broken the veil of her daydream, and she re-entered the reality of being married to Robert Davis. “No, he didn’t.” She said plainly. “And he’s gone missing again. That’s why I followed you out here. I need you to go into town and look for him,” she said. 

“Must I?” 

“Yes, girl. I don’t have it in me to deal with the townsfolk and if your dad’s…” She paused in thought. Her cheeks flushed red again, but this time her hand rubbed stiffly at the back of her neck. “Just be quick about it. He didn’t sleep last night, and that oft’ means the worst.” 

Stella needed to hear little more and left her mother near the river. She made her way quickly to the house to grab her bonnet and the last slice of apple bread, which she rolled in a kerchief and tucked into the pocket of her apron. 

Stella tied her bonnet under her chin as she walked the worn path in the tall grass between her family farm and the town. The path was little more than a deer trail with only the impressions of her and her parents’ feet bending the tall, thick grass. In the height of the summer when the grass grew the thickest, it made it nearly impossible for Stella to trek, the layers of her dresses catching on every thistle and thorn in the field. 

She had barely made it down the path when she heard the commotion. Whatever it was, it was coming from the middle of town. It was shouting and laughing all at once, and this was enough for her to lift her skirts above her knees and high-tail it past the stone wall at the edge of town. 

Her boots sank in the damp ground at the entrance of the town, and this caused her to tumble forward, scuffing a knee and dirtying the front of her apron. She felt the pockets for her letter and the bit of apple bread, thankful to still have both, but noticing the delicacy was thinner than it had been when she left home. 

The commotion continued ahead of her. There was little to the town other than the well at the center. It was so newly established the locals were unable to settle on a name, most just calling it The Town. And so when she was finally able to get her feet steady, she made it across the small town and to the well within moments. 

A small crowd of 8 or 9 was gathering around the well, obscuring her view of what held their attention. 

“None of ya’ll believe me, eh? No one ever believes me, but I saw him. I did!” 

Stella recognized his voice before she saw his chestnut hair from over the tops of the crowd. His voice was slurred and frantic, eager for anyone to believe him, but no one seemed to care about what he was saying. All they cared about was the fact that he had stripped off his trousers and top and paced in front of the well in nothing but a thin pair of knickers. The ass of which was stained brown and sagging with the weight of excrement. 

When Stella pushed past the townsfolk and finally got a good look at the man, she wanted to turn on her heels and disappear. His body was covered in either mud or shit, whichever it was, being a stark contrast to the pasty skin of his flabby belly. It was like time ate away at his muscles and fat and left folds of flabby loose skin that hung over the tops of his knickers and caused his chest to sag like the tiny breasts of a grandmother. His hair was a tattered mess of mud and knots that stood every which direction except for down. 

“Oh, Pa,” Stella uttered. It was hardly a whisper that slipped over her lips, but it was a familiar enough sound for Robert Davis to pick it out from the laughing crowd and turn his wild eyes to her. 

The apples of his cheeks were bright red as though he had been leaning too close to a fire. Close enough to burn his whiskers and singe the skin of his face. His eyes were sunk into his skull and appeared black. In fact, they were sunken in so far that Stella couldn’t even make out an ounce of brown. Still, they looked at her wide and wild and penetrating. 

“My Stella.” He stumbled a step or two in her direction, but then stopped as though he remembered the crowd of laughing townsfolk. “Stella, you have to tell them what I saw is true. They’ll believe you!” 

The crowd quietened and shifted their attention to the girl who clutched the front of her apron in her hands, too frightened to speak. 

“The man. The man in the woods. The tall man with the body of a tree. Remember? We used to look for him in the treelines.”

Stella could only manage a trembling shake of her head. 

“Don’t make me look a fool, girl! Tell the people you believe me!” 

“She doesn’t need your help looking like a damn fool, Bobby. You’ve gone and shit yourself with your bits nearly hanging out!” The voice came from a boy not much older than Stella, Sam Gentry. He, joined by the other boys of the town, pointed and laughed at the bits of pubic hair that peeked over the top of his knickers as they continued to sag lower and lower. 

“Please, Papa, let me take you home.” Stella pleaded, but her voice was too quiet to be heard over the laughter. 

“Goddammit, girl! Tell them! Tell them the truth!” Robert spewed the words with such force and diction that spit shot out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. There were tears uncontrollably falling from his eyes as his mouth silently formed words no one could make out. 

An uneasy quiet began to settle over the crowd. Like the joke had passed its prime and there was nothing left to laugh at, only the reminder that the man in the street was extremely unwell. 

Mothers began to usher their young kids away, and men went back to their work. Sam Gentry and his group of onlookers continued to snicker among themselves. 

Stella took small, delicate steps towards her father, her hand extended as though he were a wild stallion. “It’s okay, Pa. You’re just not feeling well. I’ve got some apple bread here. It’ll help.” 

She retrieved the squished baked good from the pocket inside her apron and unfolded it from the kerchief. 

For a moment, Robert eyed it. He licked his lips and wiped at the drool on his chin, but then his wild eyes met hers once again. 

They weren’t mad. They didn’t pierce through Stella, frightening her. They were wide and quaking. Two small black dots in a sea of bloodshot white. His eyebrows so high they disappeared under the shag of hair that covered his forehead. 

“It’s okay. Come on home. Let's get you cleaned up, and we can forget about this.” 

His eyes held hers as he shook his head and inched away from her. “There is no forgetting.” He began to weep, covering his face with his dirty, muddy hands as his body seemed to fold into itself. His shoulders hunkered lower, and his back curved downward, his spine protruding outward. 

Stella inched another step closer. 

Robert had removed his hands from his face and clutched his own neck with skeletal hands. “If I go back, he’ll just be waiting for me.” He took a step back from his daughter. 

“I’ll keep him away. I promise. Let’s just go home.” She said, taking another step towards him as he took a step away. 

“There is no keeping him away,” he said. “I see him in my sleep. The man with beetles for skin. He wants my heart. He wants my face.” 

“Then we will get rid of him together. Just come home.” Stella plead. Her own vision was going blurry from the tears that filled her eyes. She was frightened that her father would change at any moment. That he would lunge at he and strike her, but he couldn’t stay here. Not alone. She took one last step toward him, closing the gap between them and letting her fingertips brush softly against his cold skin. 

For the briefest of moments, Robert’s face lightened. The red in his cheeks dulled, and Stella recognized her father. Her touch had been warm and just delicate enough to cause him to let go of his own neck, where she could see the red indentations of fingers and nails left behind. He sobbed fully now. Saliva and snot trailed down his face, and his eyes so filled with tears the black dots that were his pupils were being drowned. 

“My sw-sw-swweeet g-g-ggirl… I’m sooo… sooo fr–fright–tened.” His words matched the shaking of his convulsing body. 

Stella reached her kerchief to his cheek to wipe at his tears, but Robert hazarded a step back; only he’d been too close to the well to fully step back. His heel caught the ridges of the uneven stones, and he lost what little balance he had left. His arms swung wide, frantic, with an effort to catch himself as he fell backward, but it did no good. He’d lost his balance fully and tumbled backward headfirst into the well. The top of his head collided with the rock side, giving a solid thwack that echoed down the well before he disappeared. The only sound left was the splash of the water where his body made contact. 

Stella didn’t move. She couldn’t move. He’d been within reach a moment ago, and now he was gone. She couldn’t bring herself to look into the well, but there was no need. 

Sam Gentry shoved past the girl and scaled the stone outer wall of the well to look down.

“Oh, disgusting! Old man Davis’ shit and blood’s in the drinking water!” 

Stella’s body felt cold. Unaware of how, her feet carried her home before the boys could turn their attention to her. She needed to tell her mother and more than anything, she couldn’t be there when they pulled him out. 

*** 

Ginny saw Stella traveling the deer trail from their farm to the edge of town. She wasn’t surprised to see that the girl was alone; it simply meant her husband had disappeared beyond the boundaries of the town. She took little notice of Stella’s slow pace, her heavy footfalls that shook the youthful fat on her cheeks. She was too busy kneading dough. 

Not that anyone asked, but Ginny was the best baker in the region. She could turn scraps into delicacies. She just so happened to notice that her daughter had taken the last slice of apple bread, and instead of being annoyed at her robbed breakfast, Ginny craved toast. Crispy, soft toast drizzled with honey. 

She was so lost in the pull and push of the dough under her palm that she barely noticed when Stella entered the house, her muddy shoes still on her feet. 

“Not in the town, was he?” Ginny asked. 

With no answer, she glanced to her daughter and noticed the muddy tracks from the door to the fireplace where Stella stood stiff with her arms to her sides. 

“Eh, Stella! You’re tracking mud!” 

Stella didn’t respond. 

Ginny approached her daughter hotly, her flour-covered hands grabbing the girl by the back of her arm and turning her around sharply. “Didn’t you hear me?” 

The sight of her pale face frightened Ginny enough to release Stella’s arm and step back. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Pa,” she mumbled. 

“You did find him? Was he in town? Surely telling his tales again, drunker than a skunk even this early in the morn.” Ginny looked her muddy apron over and the mud caked to her shoes. “You know better than to wear those shoes in here.” 

“Sorry, Ma,” she said. Cold, flat, and dull. 

“Alright then, where’s your dad?” 

“He… he fell…” 

“So he is drunk,” she scoffed. 

Stella shook her head, and the tears fell without her knowing.

Ginny came to understand the longer she looked at her daughter’s face. Yet, she didn’t hurry from the house. She didn’t cry or scream or grab frantically at her shoes and bonnet before taking off to the town to find Robert. She placed a hand over her mouth, swallowed down the tears, and sat slowly in the rocker next to the fire. 

“Mama?” 

“How’d it happen?”

“He… he tripped and fell. I found him near the well, and he wouldn’t come with me. I tried so hard, Mama, but he wouldn’t listen. He just tripped and then… then he was gone.” Stella spoke through heaving sobs, but didn't bring her hands to her face to hide the tears. She wanted her mother to do that. She wanted her mother to hold her and comfort her. To pet her hair and tell her it wasn’t her fault and everything was going to be okay. 

But she didn’t. Ginny Davis chewed at her lip deep in thought and barely noticed Stella and her sobs. “I thought I had more time.” 

Stella’s sobs stifled. She thought she’d misheard her through her own crying. “Mama?” 

“Another year at least,” she said. 

Stella stepped towards her mother, arms outstretched, but Ginny stood from her chair before she could reach her. She pushed past Stella as though she were a stranger and returned to her dough. She gave a knead and a pat, covering her hands in the flour once again, when suddenly she stopped and placed her hands to her head. 

“What am I doing? What am I doing?” 

“Mama?”

Ginny mumbled to herself. 

“Mama!” Stella cried loudly. “Mama, please talk to me!” 

Ginny didn’t turn automatically to look at her daughter. She turned slowly as though examining the room around her, and when her eyes landed on Stella, she appeared surprised, with two white handprints on either side of her head and not a tear in her eyes. “I… I have to go.” She said simply. 

She disappeared to the back of the house before Stella could stop her, and when she emerged, she had one bag, a shawl, and her bonnet. She pulled her shoes on carelessly and started towards the door, pausing only long enough to give her daughter one last look. 

“My how you must ache with questions. I… I–” She stopped herself from saying more, though the words burned her throat like a hot pepper. “I’m sorry.” 

And with that, Stella’s mother was out the door and gone from her life, fleeing across the field without a mere glance back. She moved with such haste one might have thought she were being chased. 

Stella sat in her mother’s rocker by the fire until the sun had set and the fire had long since died. The chill of the night air seeped through the door her mother had left open, and Stella trembled. 

It felt like a bad dream, the events of the day. To watch her father tumble to his death and her mother flee without reason. There was no sense in it. Stella wasn’t oblivious to her mother’s distaste of her father, but they had been a family no less. Perhaps it was all a ploy. Her whole existence. Perhaps this was why the townsfolk avoided them, and it had nothing to do with her father’s episodes. 

“Am I cursed?” 

The question slipped from her mouth without her knowing, and when she heard it, the realization that there was no one there to answer settled in. 

Her hand slipped into the pocket of her apron, and she removed the letter she had forgotten about. 

“The Brothers of Curiosity." She recalled and looked out the open door. 

The moon illuminated her mother’s path and seemed to beckon her to follow it. She dropped the letter to the cold stone floor of the house and did so. The mud on her shoes long since dried, leaving a crumbling trail out the front door, down the steps, and into the tall grass. 

She wasn’t sure where she was walking, but seemed to be guided by the moon. It led her past the treeline and into the woods until she could no longer make out the field in the moonlight behind her. Soon she was surrounded by nothing but trees, and still her feet carried her onward. 

She entered a clearing not long after losing sight of the field, and only then did she stop. The space was vast and open. An entire town could have fit in this clearing, but for now it was empty except for her and… a man. 

A tall man. A man who stood as straight and stiff as the trees that surrounded him. He was thin and gangly in shape with limbs covered in bark and vines, but on his face… on his face he wore a smile. 

Stella approached, unafraid. 

“I was worried you would never show,” said the man. The man stepped forward into the moonbeams illuminating his face… the face of Robert Davis. 

Stella smiled as she craned her head upward to peer at him. “I… I’m not dressed for a ball, I’m afraid.” Her voice pitched as she spoke, choking back tears. 

“No matter. I only seek your questions. Of which I know you have many.” 

The man brushed away her tears with a rough finger and held his hand outstretched for her to accept. 

“My dear Stella, let us find the answers together.”