Listen to the Diggerman, the crooked music in his steps, the muddled drumbeat in his cusses. He can’t walk straight or talk straight. All those years of digging left him bent.
A story of change and renewel and supernatural bears on this week’s Drabblecast! We bring you “The Bleeding Tree,”by Joe Koch. Also, Norm announcies The Strangies awards! Go here to learn more and vote for your favorite stories of 2023 and 2024:
Norm Sherman’s latest CD, “The Instruction Book”
Joe Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Their books include The Wingspan of Severed Hands, Convulsive, Invaginies, and The Couvade, a 2019 Shirley Jackson Award finalist. His short work appears in Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Southwest Review, PseudoPod, The Mad Butterfly’s Ball, and many others. Find Joe (he/they) at horrorsong.blog. Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/horrorsong.blog Twitter: @horrorsong
Łukasz Godlewski is a comic book creator from Gdańsk – Poland. He is an author of Painter, his first big graphic novel which is a tribute to Lovecraft and other classic weird fiction authors. Currently he is about to publish his new horror comic book – Black Heart. Story combines modern horror and the ancient history of India. Facebook: @godlewskiart Instagram: @godlewski_art
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The Bleeding Tree
By Joe Koch
Small Emma cuts out the hearts when she’s lucky enough to find them intact. The insides don’t look like the diagrams she studies online. Real parts bulge and flap into confusing shapes. Things that look alike on the outside don’t necessarily match on the inside, and those that do vary depending on how hard and when they were hit. A squirrel squashed flat three days ago has a different form than a fresh one with a broken back. This one, for instance: the squirrel Emma’s dissecting right now looks like it could still be alive.
Sweet little slits for eyes, the sleep-dead squirrel dreams of poking his quick nose into the bird feeder, of stealing cherry tomatoes off the vines. Vandalizing squirrels make the other grown-ups mad, but not the Diggerman. That’s why Emma likes him best. He doesn’t plant crops or feed birds. Plus, he’ll give small Emma a dime for each heart.
He’s out by the gate. It goes right up to the highway, or what used to be the highway when the Diggerman was young and didn’t have to dig. Emma knows all about it since he tells her everything on his mind. He’s not wary, not good at making up lies. Diggerman tells Emma all sorts of things a grown man shouldn’t tell a little girl, all the things he remembers about certain bodies and grave plots and the needs of the land they walk on.
The land was here first, he says.
Grown-ups call him touched. Small Emma thinks that means he’s smarter than the rest of them based on the respect he’s shown her in comparison. She’s bored being dressed up like a pretty doll, coddled as if she’ll be coaxed into speaking again by some ventriloquist’s gift. She’s tired of people treating her as if her silence since the accident proves she’s weak.
Emma’s tougher than any boy in town. She can cut out animal hearts quicker and cleaner than any of those farm boys and biker wannabes shooting off pistols and selling meth down the way in Peeling Pine Valley. Diggerman says she’s the best harvester yet. Today she brings him three.
See spot run. This one didn’t run fast enough. Emma isn’t slow. She understands plenty: words, numbers, faces, and most of all, the biological patterns in sounds. Since the accident, she’s been gathering rhythmic information and saving it up. Saving it like most kids saved the dimes Diggerman gave out for each heart before Emma came around. She doesn’t want the money and slips it back into his coffee can after he falls asleep. Diggerman doesn’t hear coins clatter over the rattle of his snores.
Listen to the Diggerman: the crooked music in his steps, the muddled drumbeat in his cusses. He can’t walk straight or talk straight. All those years of digging left him bent.
“Shoot. Hot one today. Devil dog hot.” He hunches far enough down so his palms reach his knees near Emma. “Okay, girl. What you got?”
Small Emma doesn’t smile for him the way she’s been taught. First of all, Diggerman doesn’t count as a grown-up no matter how old he gets, and second, she doesn’t smile unless she’s happy because she doesn’t believe in telling lies. Emma hasn’t been happy in a long time.
Emma fiddles in her pockets on purpose, drawing Diggerman’s attention to the fact that the oversized army jacket she wears droops heavy with treasure on the left. The olive drab layer balloons over bright pink leggings. Emma’s two pink popsicle sticks holding up a rotten melon that’s starting to implode. Her coat is the color of mold. She dips her left shoulder down to make the pocket full of hearts hang lower.
Diggerman’s shoulder leans down in sympathetic interest. In his case, it’s the right. Emma tips over a little more, leaning into the fact that the positions they occupy in relation to one another are necessarily polarized.
“Aw, hell. Let me see, godammit.”
Diggerman dances and bobs with restless steps. He’s twice as tall as Emma and much more round, despite the bubble of her oversized jacket. She’s not intimidated by his massive, stamping demands. Emma likes his dance, his dirt, and the way his beard covers him solid down his neck like there’s an animal climbing up ready to jump inside his mouth. Flecks of leaf matter and dried mud hide in the hairs. The same stuff resides in the folds of his jeans and the frayed sleeves of his t-shirt. It used to be white, but now the armpits are the color of tobacco-stained teeth.
The two moon-shaped clefts where the color has deepened smell good to Emma, like freshly turned soil. No traces of the burned sweetness and skunk musk on the inside of a killed animal, or the chemical lie of formaldehyde.
He hoots, scuffles, and bobs. She can’t deny him the prize much longer. Working him up is her favorite part besides listening for the conjuration. Diggerman patters out a beat by slapping his thighs. Small Emma cracks a smile, nodding in time with Diggerman’s dance.
She lifts her cupped hands and holds out three shriveled hearts. Like dusty stones or crumpled leather, the rugged objects look out of place in her smooth palms. Diggerman goes still and quiet. Emma rises on tip-toes to help him see her bounty since Diggerman’s back doesn’t work right.
He reaches out, then at the last second draws back instead and fiddles with his bottom lip. “That there an opossum? Or some beaver from down the creek?”
Emma wrinkles her nose and clacks her front teeth.
“That beaver got hit? Don’t work if he come up the road sick.”
Emma tilts her head and rolls her eyes at the sky miming elaborate offense. It’s not as if she’d forget everything she’s learned all of the sudden. Diggerman should know better. She’s read more books than he knows exist and memorized anatomy charts for all kinds of critters. If Emma knows anything, it’s about respecting the power attached to violent deaths.
Diggerman straightens his back the best he can and mumbles under his breath. “Pretty damn things.” Scratches his privates, then his rubs chin. “Awful sad, huh?”
If Emma were inclined to talk, she’d have nothing that simple to say about it.
“All right then.” Diggerman claps his hands three times. He rubs them together fast until the palms heat up. They come apart with a sound like scissors slicing fabric. “We ready to go out back!”
Emma bounces through the black wrought-iron cemetery gates and weaves through the maze of monuments to skittle into the overgrown elderberry grove on the eastern edge. Anyone passing by sees nothing but weeds at the back of the lot. Mourners keep out, scared of poison oak. Emma dips under a winding arch of branches and past a clot of knotted brambles into the clearing where Diggerman tends the bleeding tree in secret.
Old hearts that reach back through time hang on the highest limbs. The first one Diggerman hung is halfway up the trunk, way over his head. He was near Emma’s age back then.
No one taught him the difference between dried out hearts and dead leaves on the bleeding tree. Both rustled the same in a troublesome wind and crackled underfoot if they snapped loose and drifted down. Back then, hearts were scarce.
Diggerman takes longer than Emma to push through the overgrowth into the grove. He moves like a see-saw. Emma’s done clearing a patch of dirt by the time he catches up. She tucks her three new hearts beside piled brittle husks. Old animal hearts like dried fruits past season, leathered like dog ears, fallen.
“When I was your age, hearts held fast. Seasons don’t make sense anymore. It’s too hot for October, and the ground froze twice overnight last July, remember? Have mercy. Times done changed.” Diggerman shakes his head at the ground litter.
Emma sits cross-legged in the midst of it. She threads the fallen hearts onto a gnarled twig while twilight calms the day’s accumulated heat. Autumn light glowers in the cooling glade. Soundlessly, Emma mouths a rhyme:
The Bleeding Tree holds her leaves.
The more she cleaves, the better she bleeds.
Diggerman gets a big fat grin on his face. Nose in the air, he sniffs the scent of strong winds, aging iron, vetiver mulch. Even with the old highway running right by, exhaust fumes don’t penetrate the glade. “Don’t you worry none. The dead got ears to hear. She gonna do good tonight.”
His absent-minded hand rests heavy on Emma’s tousled crown. Diggerman doesn’t understand his own weight. Her neck hurts from bowing, like a prayer she can’t escape.
When he moves and the pressure lets up, Emma hurts a little bit on the inside, missing the burden even though the muscles in her neck feel better. Diggerman hangs the twig Emma threaded with old hearts higher than she can reach. It’s as close as he can get to the top, close as he can get to where he started long ago. Meanwhile, Emma unwinds strands of hair from a brush she keeps stored in her pocket. The plastic handle could stand to be cleaned. The hairs are long and shimmery, nothing like hers. Emma wonders if hair changes over time. If hers turns long and golden like this as she grows up, will Diggerman one day raise his shotgun at her like a stranger? Will she return to find him gone or hidden under the sod?
A strand snaps as she fiddles with a knot. It gets harder each time Emma unwinds another hair from the brush, and she’s running out of strands as the months pass. Emma bites the stubborn tine and yanks it free with her teeth. She pinches it between her fingers, extracting the tangled golden thread, knot and all.
Diggerman says Emma’s smart like that, figuring out how to get things done regardless of the rules. He says she did good grabbing the brush out of the church basement where the undertakers did their work. Hiding in the water heater closet, peering through the door slats, Emma felt like her own body was a truck getting an oil change all pumped through with lube and antifreeze when she saw the tubes going in and out of the corpse.
After everyone left, Emma came out and poked a hole in the reconstructed forehead to touch the truth hidden under a cowlick. Her finger sunk all the way down to the skull.
Part of the face was missing beneath the clay. Too many pieces are still missing in Emma’s memory after the accident, and not enough remains whole to hold together the broken parts. A hand with wet nail polish gripping the steering wheel; white teeth flashing praise; the noise outside ending her voice; the exposed nape of neck generic, immobile, and impossibly stretched while long hair hides the beloved face.
Diggerman said the box wasn’t very heavy when he laid her under the dirt.
He smells like the land. Emma hands him a bit of string she’s made by braiding hairs. It’s shorter than she’d like. Best she could do with the remnants from the brush. Diggerman ties the three newly harvested hearts together with her homespun thread. His thick fingers float like nodes on an aquatic organism. They belong on a body adapted to deep water instead of a creature weighing heavy on native ground.
Diggerman’s murmur concentrates into a whistle that exits regularly through his uneven teeth. He’s lost in words that Emma’s never heard before. She listens when he talks, notes the thoughts in his pauses, the concepts that he can’t rightly state. There’s a part of Diggerman’s talk that no one hears except for the land and its cradled dead.
Lips moving, teeth whistling, thick fingers fumbling with finite thread, Diggerman strings while Emma stuffs the brush deep into a fatigue pocket. Her coat’s so big no one else knows what she holds close against her chest.
Diggerman’s murmur rises to a hum. Old hearts are restored and new hearts strung. Emma kneels down and unties his boots because he can’t crouch low to take them off without straining. That’s why he sleeps with them on most nights. One arm of the sofa has a threadbare hollow where his soles rub away fabric and mash in black mud. Emma loosens his laces, checks to see they’re in good shape. She carries an extra set in case one needs to be replaced.
He sways and hums, lifting each foot while Emma yanks off the heavy boots and peels away socks. She gathers dirt. Spits onto her palms and coats Diggerman’s feet and ankles with fresh mud while he rocks from side to side.
Covered up to the ankles in mud, Diggerman’s big feet look like bear paws. Lumbering up and down on the damp earth, he’s singing now. Head thrown back, mouth open, mournful melodic sounds pour out of his throat.
Emma moves off the rutted path that goes around the bleeding tree. Diggerman staggers and stomps forward along the circle as if he’s about to fall on each slow step. Emma’s muddy hands touch the ground to track the pulse of the old man’s effort. Her metabolism slows in sympathy with his mired progress.
The song he sings reaches a higher pitch. Side to side and forward he hops, less pained with every lurch. Faster now, his mudded feet more agile, his large frame reels but never breaks the circumference of the dance. In the center of the circle, the bark darkens on the bleeding tree. Deep red ruts enliven splits and crevices like arteries under aging skin. Diggerman spins and hops now, heavy yet lithe as a dancing bear. The pulse strengthens in Emma’s palms. She hears the high-pitched song of longing in her heart. Her body beats with the land.
Veins in the bleeding tree throb. Dissected hearts plump up. Diggerman speeds up his dance.
Clothes, hair, and skin blend into the color of mud as Diggerman orbits the tree. Swirling with violent grace, less man than bear, he sprouts a mud hued pelt from the ankles up. Fearsome bear paws pad the ground. Hirsute forearms claw the air. Diggerman is a brown dervish of dirty fur. His snout howls a song of inhuman ecstasy and want. He pounds the path around the tree so fast Emma’s heart races to keep up.
Desiccated leaves on the bleeding tree flesh up strong and begin to pump. They thump and thunder in time with the dance.
The trunk runs thick with blood. The bear goes wild.
Claws slash bark. The tree bleeds from new wounds. The animal roars. Terror scorches Emma’s ears. She holds her ground. The dead hearts fill and empty faster, pumping with sturdy muscles, giving and taking from the trunk.
Powerful jaws sink into the bleeding tree’s center. Blood spurts into the bear’s mouth. Blood streams down its relentless maw. Blood drools from the corners of its jaws and coats its thick fur as it growls and worries the wounded trunk, tree clenched tight in its teeth.
Hearts shudder and thump out of sync. Against Emma’s palms, the pulse of the earth splits into wild arrhythmia, into a million out of tune eulogies. Each forgotten creature died by violence. Each heart holds to a different tempo of anguish and loss.
In the bear’s jaws, the scarred trunk shakes. The canopy bows. Hearts shudder to the ground. Hot carrion breath wafts over Emma from the raging beast within the circle.
The song stops.
It’s almost time to run. Diggerman’s howl is a rumble of mindless bloodlust as the bleeding tree seethes and pumps. Hearts swell and deflate, strain and burst.
Emma catches the animal’s crazed eye. The bear huffs in her direction. She shoves off from the dirt and darts away. The bear breaks the circle.
One leap closes the distance between them. Emma swerves through monuments and markers. She knows her way past obstacles and dead ends, but she’s human and a child and knows she can’t outrun a bear. She flies by stones and crypts, slicks through the bars of the wrought iron fence, and skids to a stop. Hot breath meets her nostrils with a nauseating scent. Drooling snout and dripping claws clamor at the gaps in the fence. The bear can’t fit. Emma turns toward the snarling face.
The black bars between Emma and the bear look thin as licorice. They’re the only thing keeping Emma from being mauled. If she moved right or left to escape, she’d lead the bear to an opening to pounce. If it had the capacity to stop and think, it would climb a stone and jump the gate or turn back and track her down. As it is, as long as Emma keeps its attention, the bear focuses so hard on Emma it only sees one impassable route. She stands firm, trembling.
Growling, slathering, pacing, the animal doesn’t take its eyes off Emma. Muscled body beats against the iron bars, scraping fur, bruising flesh. When the bear roars, Emma cowers at the width of the glistening throat. The jaws look strong enough to snap the fence in half.
When the creature calms, she taunts it. She throws a stone or spits, maintaining eye contact. If that doesn’t work, she stomps her feet, or jumps up and down. Emma’s incendiary version of Diggerman’s dance keeps the animal riled up, pummeling its body to exhaustion on the iron grate. One last attack hammers its head into concussive collapse.
The graveyard is silent. The ground is still. Midnight has come and gone. With tiny steps, Emma makes her way around the outer edge of the gate towards the newer graves, listening all the way.
Her heart races, not with fear or exertion this time, but with hope.
The open grave with a shovel propped nearby isn’t newly dug. It’s not empty, and hasn’t been for a few months. But Diggerman says you have to leave a layer of dirt, so the shovel’s ready if the conjuration worked this time.
Emma goes down on her hands and knees. She leans her head as far inside the grave as she can get without getting nauseous from the odor.
And listens.
With her cheek resting on a cushion of sod, Emma tucks her hair behind her ear, leaving it open to the faintest sound. The earth pressed against her body responds with a subtle breathing motion, but not a voice. Not the voice she wants to hear.
The lives this land holds are lost and wandering, but not gone. Sometimes Diggerman can dance them back.
Problem is, he’s warned her, it ain’t like science.
Emma hears it then: a high pitched sound, not too far off. It’s similar to the sound of Diggerman’s howling, a bit like the distant train whistles that go by once or twice a week in what used to be downtown but is now an empty depot.
The sound is a frantic squeal dampened by hundreds of pounds of dirt. Muffled by interior upholstery and the wooden lid of a coffin, cracked and parched from the deprivation of rot and decay, a woman is screaming inside a covered grave. Helpless soft shrieks rise under the heavy blanket of earth.
Emma’s heart sinks. She feels sick.
A woman is screaming under the ground. The crescendo of the unidentified woman’s panic will increase over the next few hours. Stifled pleas will give way to gagging agony. Desperation will ring in Emma’s ears until dawn, and she could try to dig, but there won’t be enough time. She’s tried before. And when the screaming stops, it will stop forever, no matter who dances on the land.
Emma will pray for the woman, or something akin to prayer.
Diggerman’s explained he can’t keep all the graves open. Too much digging for one man, and even if they got a team out there digging with them, which they won’t because he’d get fired for one thing, most of the older folks don’t have any family left to take them in anyway. No place to return.
He tells Emma there are hits and misses in life and you just gotta let some things go. That’s what growing up is all about.
He finds her beside the open grave. He’s bloody and battered, more muddy than usual, but Emma doesn’t care. She scoots close and puts her arms around him. Diggerman rocks her a bit and says, “I didn’t hurt you none, did I?”
Emma shakes her head without looking up from the filthy shirt that was already wet before she smeared it with tears. She’ll help him clean up later. He’s an old man, shouldn’t live alone, but who wants to care for anyone touched? People in town say he’s a nut.
Later, Emma will find Diggerman’s boots, scrub his clothes, and make sure he eats something besides whiskey. She’ll scold him if he doesn’t want to take a bath. He’ll say okay, but don’t look. She’ll do as he says until his back is turned to her, and then she’ll sneak a look at his rough skin and furred back.
Emma thinks it’s beautiful. Shows you he’s part bear.
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