Dopecentury XXV --- The Hut
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: “the monotony rarely becomes tedious.”) My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these “Dopecentury” entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
Follow along a country lane that winds back and up into the hills, far past where the streetlights end, where the trees turn gnarly and cling darkly to the ground between boulders. Turn left onto an overgrown track. Two tracks side-by-side, actually, with overgrown weeds rising up between them. The track rises and falls, crosses a small stream of pebbles, and climbs around and up a knoll.
There the track ends at a hut that sits hunched among high grasses that grow up its side: two rooms, dark wood saturated with time, a roof of chipped slate. A chimney of brick crumbles down the slope of the roof. The porch droops, its shallow roof dipping at an unnatural angle. Part of the glass is missing from one of the window panes. Moss grows on the uprights and there are gaps like missing teeth in the deck of the porch where the planks have rotted away.
The door of the hut, made of thick slabs of wood joined together, is bolted firmly. It is not opened easily, requiring a pry-bar and a willingness to disturb a place that does not wish to be disturbed. Beyond the door is the dank interior. A floor of gray and faded wooden slats, worn smooth.
Through a doorway with shoulders shrugged, the room to the right is almost entirely occupied with a large bed with moldering bedclothes. The broken window looks into this room, so the gathering dust has been stirred by the occasional breeze that sneaks its way in. A shelf with a collapsed row of books. A small chest with a rusty-barreled rifle lain upon it among a scattered handful of ammunition.
In the center of the room to the left is a splintered wooden table and a pair of rickety chairs that accompany it. Shelves line one wall, filled with cans, some rusted through, some fat and bulging with pressure. One of the shelves has collapsed and dropped it load of cans that rolled across the floor to their final resting placed.
On the table is a large book, the binding and paper edges gnawed at by critters. It lays open to a page heavily illustrated with unblotted ink, and heavy black notes printed by hand. Dust lays thick on the book, the table, and the seats of the chairs. The glass in the room’s windows has been blacked out with some kind of thick paint. Very little light penetrates. Small movements shake the shadows in the corners.
A circle is drawn on the floor in chalk, around the table, chairs, and book.
To the side of the table, at the very center of the hut, is a squat stove of iron. Rust has eaten away at the stove, tearing down one whole side. The bottom of the stove is filled with ash, many inches deep, with bits of char and small chunks of wood burned thoroughly through to utter blackness.
Directly in the center of the ash sits a small box. It is of a pure glassy black, and carved all over with tiny images and symbols, some of which match the illustrations in the book. A faint, dark hum seems to emanate from the very center of the box. A line that circles the box indicated some kind of operable lid, but the box is closed tightly. It rests shining like an opaque jewel; unmarked and free of any trace of dust or ash.
Scattered around the stove are bones, gray with time. The skulls of one, two humans. Femurs, ribs, metatarsals and ulnas. The bones are charred black. Some are snapped in two. One of the skulls is crushed in the rear. The bones are mixed and swirled about as if tossed by a great wind. A large black stain mars the floor in front of the stove where the bones lay.
The box hums quietly to itself in the silence of the hut, in the silence of the woods.