Perfect Apples

Cold wind nipped the exposed sliver of Ramona’s back as she reached for the apple. It hung beneath a tall branch, seemingly invincible even as the dreary weather fought to dampen its perfect red glow. She plucked it off and shakily descended, each rung of the ladder creaking despite her light form. Ramona gratefully reached the ground and set the apple in the wicker basket. 

About twenty yards off towards the house, Mr. Haywen sat in his rocking chair. A dog laid beside him, some kind of old weathered mastiff. On his other side was his trusted rifle. They both stared at her, unblinking. Ramona fidgeted and averted her gaze. 

She was grateful for the job Mr. Haywen offered her, sure. In this town, it was difficult to find work when you haven’t already lived here your whole life, and Ramona had the lucky circumstance of being brand new. Mr. Haywen's apple orchard was the hidden gem of the town. Many of the older residents refused to bake their apple pies if the filling didn't come straight from Haywen's orchard. Ramona didn't care too much for apples, although Mr. Haywen's were delicious. She was just fond of the orchard's beauty.  

The trees stood in long, uniform lines like soldiers. Large, gnarled roots crawled out of the ground and roughened the terrain. A cold mist covered the tall grass in dew, dampening Ramona's pants as she trudged from tree to tree. What Ramona liked most, however, was the silence. It hung in the air like fog, a thick void of quiet stealing the sound of her breath from the air. No birds chirped, no frogs croaked, the leaves barely rustled in the wind. 

After Ramona set the last ripe apple in the basket and made sure the orchard was free from the sanguine red, she made her way back to Mr. Haywen. The man continued staring. “Excuse me, sir,” Ramona’s voice shattered the silence. “I’m all done, can I head out early tonight?” 

Mr. Haywen’s deep sunken eyes cut into him as the mastiff growled. “Settle, Tor,” Mr. Haywen snapped. The growling stopped. Haywen’s age showed in every crevice of his being. White hair floated in the wind, mere will o’ wisps against the breeze. Heavy lines dug into his face like a gravedigger. The worst part was his eyes: their periphery burned an angry, strange red. “Go home,” he relented at last. 

Ramona didn’t release her breath until she reached the outer fence. 

The ritual continued. After school she would bike to the old man’s orchard, feet pumping with frenzied vigor lest she be late. Ramona would pluck the day’s ripe apples, making sure not to miss even one within the expansive orchard. Every day, she’d haul the collection over to Mr. Haywen. Every day, the ancient hound growled at her. Everyday Mr. Haywen would dismiss her with a minimal amount of words. But Ramona was thankful, she got paid every Sunday with stained, crumpled cash that she used to support herself where her family failed to. It was a strange arrangement, but one that worked regardless. 

All until she heard the stories. 

“You should quit.” Brittany May fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. “I mean it doesn’t hurt to be safe.” The girl’s honey-colored eyes peeked up at her through her lashes. 

Ramona paused as she reached to grab her milk. “What do you mean?” 

“You do know the rumors, right?” Brittany leaned in, her faint southern drawl bleeding into her tone. 

Ramona thought back to what her neighbors said when she moved. “Not really, everyone just says that his apples are really good.” 

“Well, some people say that he killed his wife, chopped her up, and fed her to his dogs.” 

A chill ran down Ramona’s spine, but it vanished in a heartbeat. “Dog. Singular. And besides, that’s dumb,” she retorted. 

Brittany May bristled. “Fine, believe what you want.” She stormed off with her lunch tray and left the school dining hall. Ramona sighed, finished her lunch, and returned to class. She didn’t think much of Brittany’s words: they were probably just tall tales conjured by teens to scare their younger siblings. 

But the idea followed her from school to the orchard. Her bike tires cut through piles of flame-colored leaves as she zipped over the neglected dirt path. Ramona’s thoughts spun wildly like the leaves around her, whirling in a gust of wind. She froze before Mr. Haywen’s house. As always, it was silent. Ramona fought her childish fear away with a stick. She was just as stupid as Brittany to give those stories any credence. 

“Hurry up.” Mr. Haywen’s voice shook Ramona from her stupor. She rested her bike on the fence and jogged towards the orchard. 

As she worked, she imagined the apples’ vibrant red color spilling out of Mrs. Haywen’s abdomen, her scalp, her neck, nourishing the orchard soil. It didn’t help that Mr. Haywen continued to stare, mastiff by his side. She hated how immature she was being, but the paranoia never ceased. 

Eventually, Ramona settled down into her usual routine. Her shoulders ached, her feet throbbed, but she continued on, relishing in the peaceful quiet. As she set her ladder upon the youngest tree, she stopped to catch her breath. Her eye caught an unusual pattern within the whirls and texture of the tree bark. Ramona stepped forward to get a closer look. 

It almost looked like a…  

“You should go home.” Ramona whipped around to see Mr. Haywen, but not ten feet away. His ever-faithful watchdog stood beside him. The eyes, those bloodshot, angry eyes bore into her bones. 

Ramona’s heart pounded; the cold grip of fear encased her. “Sorry, sir,” she sputtered out. “I’ll get going now.” 

She had to force herself not to sprint away. Their gaze trailed her as she reached the fence, man and dog. It was only then that she realized how large and dark a shadow all those apple trees cast. Ramona biked home as fast as her legs allowed her. 

The next day, Ramona took a closer look at the trees as covertly as she could. Mr. Haywen had always stared, but today it seemed more intense, more pointed. Ramona wanted to move away some of the bark and confirm her suspicions, but she felt her every move being monitored. 

For a while, she gave up. It was impossible to investigate while he was on such high guard. She plucked the apples mindlessly, losing herself to the infinite terrors her mind conjured, each more gruesome than the last. The sun eventually touched the horizon, straddling the thin line between night and day. The trees cast long, grotesque shadows upon the ground. The air grew ever colder. 

Ramona felt a burden lift off of her soul. She glanced back at the porch and saw that Mr. Haywen and his mastiff were gone. Ramona seized the opportunity to get a closer look at the young tree from the day before. Her heartbeat quickened as she drew near. 

The bark hung loosely upon the wood of the tree. Ramona began to brush it off, using her oversized shirt as a makeshift rag. As the bark crumbled off, pale ridges began to show, barely protruding out of the wood. Ramona’s eyebrows furled. She reached out to touch the ridges, quickly recoiling upon feeling the texture. 

It was skin. 

Ramona fell backwards, her hand clamped down upon her mouth, silencing a scream. The pattern became clear: it was someone’s hand, reaching out of the wood. Ramona’s stomach rolled at the thought. It had to be a mistake. This couldn’t be true. 

“Damn bitch,” Haywen huffed from behind her. “Sic ‘er, Tor.” 

Ramona didn’t waste a second. She took off running through the trees. The muddy ground sought to hold her in its grasp, keep her here to die. The mastiff barking propelled her forward. Ramona heard a pop. His rifle, she thought with dread. The bullet splintered a tree about twenty feet in front of her. Blood oozed out of the crater as the smell of rot permeated through the air. 

Ramona’s panic swelled. She was going to die. Wet tears muddled her vision, distorting the orchard into a mangled mess of demons and monsters. Gravity left her for a moment, before she crashed onto the ground. She had tripped over a root. Unwillingly, her focus shifted to the trees, the endless rows of coffins before her. They towered above her, each a unique form. Focusing, she could see the silhouettes of the other bodies. They were trapped. Dead and trapped and rotting and nourishing the apples. Ramona thought of nothing but her own body, stuffed into a tree and rotting with the wood. No, no, this can’t be happening! 

Ramona scrambled forward just as burning nails carved down her legs. A scream tore loose from her lips. A brief glance back showed the hound, its savage jaws stained red with blood, her blood. She ignored the throbbing pain in her leg, sprinting forward once again. Her body shook with adrenaline. Terror wracked her mind. The apples on the trees merely mocked her plight.  

She was almost at Haywen’s house when the second bullet fired. It shattered the glass window to her right. Ramona held back a sob in her throat. What had she done to deserve this? Her leg was becoming dead weight, dragging through the leaves as she limped toward her bike. Mr. Haywen followed. She knew he followed because she could feel him only a few dozen yards away from her, hunting her with those angry eyes. 

Ramona ducked under the weathered fence as the third bullet streaked above her. Feverishly clambering onto her bike, she began to pedal hard and fast. She focused on the uneven path, trying so desperately not to slip. She knew one more mistake would cost her life. The dog’s barking was omnipresent. It pounded in her skull in time with her pedaling. Each time she pushed her right foot down the wound pulsated, soaking more blood into her shredded pant leg. 

Then she heard the last bullet. 

A strange wave of hot dizziness spread from her bicep. Warmth trickled down her arm, down her hand, dripping off her fingertips. She became increasingly aware of the strange feeling, as if a walnut had been shoved deep into her arm. Ramona saw her arm, coated in red, hot blood. Oh, she thought. Nausea overcame her body, as she struggled to keep pedaling. The arm slumped to her side. 

She expected she’d die, but with that final shot came silence. Ramona didn’t stop, even when her arm began to agonizingly ache, even when the shock rendered her a vacant husk. She reached the main road just as the fog overtook her consciousness. She and her bike fell to the ground, a cold pile of red soaked cloth and flesh. 

Ramona didn’t remember how she got to the hospital, or when the police arrested Mr. Haywen for that matter. Those days were like the wind, fleeting and confusing and cold. She gave her testimony countless times, explaining in great detail the tree coffins and the rotten fingers, yet no one believed her. They all blamed the trauma. They even cut down the trees to prove their emptiness, their normalcy. No one could deny that they were pure wood, through and through. Ramona would’ve believed their fabrications if it wasn’t for the apples: they weren’t truly red anymore. At least not the red they were prized for, not the red that glistened through the dreariest days and nights, not the red the color of…  

Well, it didn’t matter much. 

All that did was that Ramona didn’t eat apples anymore. Each time she bit into them, she saw blood, tasted blood. The feeling spilled down her arm and dripped off her fingers, sending her into a frenzied panic. 

She didn’t like them much to begin with, anyway.