The Taking

moss, like a scene from the swamps of Louisiana or from the mind of Poe on opium. The gnarled trunks were embossed with luminous lichen and deformed by growths that Molly had not seen before, ringworm forms the size of ashcan lids, fat and festering under the bark.
        "We couldn't get onto the roof," Elric told Molly, "we couldn't see what happened after that."
        "But we could hear them out there," Bethany said solemnly.
        "Screaming," Eric said, "out there in the rain above the house."
        "We were scared."
        "Real scared."
        "So pretty quick their voices faded in the rain," Eric said.
        "They were beamed up," Bethany explained.
        "To the mother ship," the twins said in unison, shaped by the enduring age of techno-fantasy that their parents and grandparents had bequeathed them.
        "Mother ship. That's what we think," their sister agreed. "So they'll be back. People who get beamed up sooner or later get beamed down again, but sometimes in other places."
        Even in the middle of the street, they had to pass under the spreading boughs of the infected trees. Molly almost turned back, but they were on the last leg of the shortest route to the tavern.
        In the windless stillness, Molly thought she heard furtive noises overhead. Squinting up into the fretwork of branches, which at fifteen feet vanished in the purple fog, she could not see much, for where the limbs were not leafed or hung with moss, they were leafed and hung with moss.
        The kids, creeped out as well, resorted to more chatter to talk themselves through this haunted woods.
        "When we went up into the attic, after Grandma," Elric told Molly, "this thing was there, though we didn't see it at first."
        "We smelled it though, right away," said Eric.
        Bethany said, "It smelled like rotten eggs and burnt matches."
        "It smelled like shit," Elric said bluntly.
        "Poop," Bethany corrected, clearly disapproving of his use of the vulgarity. "Rotten eggs, burnt matches, and poop."
        Through the piercings in the woody fretwork above them, against the purple backglow of the luminous overcast, Molly saw quick and fluid movement. She glimpsed too little to judge the form or size of whatever tracked them from branch to branch.
        "We didn't see the thing until Grandma was gone through the roof," said Elric.
        "And then we didn't exactly see it," Bethany recalled.
        "The power hadn't gone off yet," Eric said, "so there was a light in the attic."
        Elric remembered: "But when you looked at the thing straight on, you couldn't see any details, only this shape."
        "And it kept changing shape," said Bethany.
        "You could see it clearest like from the corner of your eye," said Eric. "It was between us and the attic trapdoor, and it was coming toward us.
        "Then we were way scared," said Bethany.
        "Shitless," said Elric, but he at once apologized to his sister, although perhaps not with complete sincerity. "Sorry, Grendel."
        "Dork," said the girl.
        "Geek."
        "Walking fart," she countered.
        The longer they proceeded beneath the canopy of branches, the more movement that Molly detected above them, although it remained stealthy. She suspected that they were accompanied by many arboreal presences, not just a single creature.
        When she glanced back at Neil, Abby, Johnny, and Virgil, she saw that they, too, were aware of the secretive travelers in the trees.
        Neil held the shotgun in both hands, in a semi-relaxed grip, the muzzle pointed upward as he walked, ready to swivel left or right and fire into the branches at the first provocation. This lovely man had passed thirty-two years in gentle pursuits-scholar, shepherd, cabinetmaker- but this night he'd proved to be a courageous protector in a pinch.
        "The thing in the attic," Elric said, "might've got us if she hadn't made it back off."
        "Would've gotten us for sure," said Bethany.
        "She just sort of shimmered out of thin air. She was like that guy in that old movie, that Star Wars guy," Eric said, "but she wasn't a guy, and she didn't have a light sword-or any sword."
        Immediately ahead of Molly, though not stirred by a breeze, leaves spoke to leaves, moss trembled at this conversation, and a hand of one of their stalkers appeared, only the hand, gripping a branch for perch, for