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Old Man Brier Moran
Skibo LeBlanc
They still speak of Old Man Brier Moran. They tell tales of his feats in their cozy confines during the night, and sing songs of his legend out in the Field during the day. Parents tell their children bedtime stories of his exploits and, at the end of these yarns, the same children pray for his protection, their own visions of the man dancing around in their tiny minds. They have never known the truth of the circumstances behind his legend, however, and their ignorance continues to this day. He is their hero “now and has always been” they say, but time twists memories, and in reality, ‘twas not always so.
I only knew the man for a very short period of time, three nights to be exact. This is his story, as told by the only surviving source.
Many years ago, Brier Moran had resided in the same House, the house near the woods to the west, as his current following, following their monotonous routine, and living their monotonous lives. He had woken up every morning to the soft smacks of the loving Master’s sandal-laden feet, as she opened up the door, bringing fresh food and crisp water. Every afternoon he was brought out to the field by the loving Master, allowed to prance about, explore, and eat his fill of the bountiful harvest. But never was he, nor the rest of them, for that matter, to venture into the Wilderness, or the Barn that sat inches from it. If they tried, the Master would quickly sweep them up and bring them back to safety before they had even caught a whiff of the place. Brier never questioned these rules, never wondered why they were not allowed to approach the Barn. He had, on a few occasions while lying in the Field, thought he had heard sounds from the distantly mysterious building, but immediately dismissed as imagination, pushing any questions he may have had deep within his hide. He was as mentally stagnant as the rest of them.
Of course he understood the Wilderness’ connection to the Red Men, and why they were prohibited from venturing to its borders. His people’s histories were filled with stories of them, terrifying creatures whose sole purpose was to prey on the people. But such was the loving protection of the Master that none in his recent memory had ever actually seen the Red Men. They were as much myth as reality, relics of an ancient past. No one knew if they even existed, or if the warning of their existence was just a way to keep them from the Wilderness. Either way, the people were content with their peaceful lives at the House and did not dwell on hypothetically distant possibility of danger.
Unfortunately, not all was good in the House. Though the inhabitants were oblivious, under the sweet surface there lay a stench. This smell was not obvious, and it is understandable that nobody caught on, but every now and then, under conditions that stank of foul play, a person of distinguished age would be taken to the “home.” The “home” was a place with the greatest of facilities, a place that cured any ailment the people supposedly suffered from. Sickly children too were taken to the “home,” as well as the maimed. These cursed were sent to be cured, but none had ever returned. “Miracles take time” was the explanation that travelled throughout the House. But they were always forgotten before questions arose concerning their whereabouts. The People of the House have never been known to question, though. Their lives of contentment do not promote the exploration of the suspicions they all carry deep within their hearts.
Brier Moran was an old man when he was taken to the “home”. He had lived in the House for seven unchanging years, doing no wrong but also no right, only living for himself, when one night, the routine changed. That evening, on the first night of spring, the Master came. She picked him up and took him to the dew-glistened Field. There, he was marked on the damp grass, picked up again, and taken in the direction of the Wilderness. Oddly, he said that he was not afraid at this time. As they approached the Wilderness, a veil had been lifted off his eyes and, for the first time, he saw the world. He saw the beautiful blue-hued leaves of the trees for the first time, how they seemed to glow in the moonlight. He heard the million-and-one sounds; the chirps, the barks, and the howls, which must have lain dormant during the day. Brier was excited for the Wilderness, was ready to understand its mysteries, and was altogether disappointed when the Master stopped just short of it, in front of the Barn. She then dropped to one knee, unlatched and opened the wooden door, and sent Brier sprawling inside. It was now very evident that there was no “home”, only the Barn. In the back of his mind, he told me, he had always known there was no “home,” but, like the rest of the people, had chosen to ignore the unpleasant truth for the comfortable lie.
The metallic scratch of the bolt, followed by the burst of light at the opening of the door, woke the two of us within the Barn. This was the first time I saw Brier Moran, and this is where our story really begins.
He landed clumsily in a pile of hay and slowly got to his feet, brushing himself off in the process. Old Brier was just that; very old. He was rather unremarkable looking; dark skinned and of rather average height and weight. He did not look healthy, but there was youthfulness in his eyes that contradicted his body. Once he had achieved his bearing, the old man looked to his left and then to his right, where those blazing eyes rested upon us, cowering in the corner. “So this is the ‘home’, huh? From what I’ve heard I kinda thought it’d be more like the Ritz than a Motel 6.” This was our introduction to Brier Moran. His voice had a soul we could not remember having ever encountered in our brief stints at the House.
The “we” I am referring to are I, Derry Scallon, and my brother, Kerry. We had both lived in the Barn since the previous summer, which happened to be the majority of our short, pitiful lives. We were twins, and very weak ones at that. I was tiny and unhealthy, and had trouble keeping food down. Kerry had more meat on his bones, but was a cripple nonetheless, having been born with a lame leg. After nearly a month, despite the loving nourishment from our mother and the Master, my condition did not improve. As the days dragged on, I became sicker and sicker, until finally, near death, an angel came to me. I now know it was the Master, as Brier’s and Kerry’s descents to the Barn were much the same, but, at the time, in the midst of hallucinating through the sickness, I thought an angel had come to save me. She picked me up, took me outside, and painfully marked me on the Field, just as she would with Brier and Kerry. She then took me to the Barn, the setting of my early life, and went back for Kerry and did the same to him.
There were a few already living in the barn when we arrived, but their time was short. Kerry said that they perished from the squalid conditions, having been treated like animals. I can neither confirm nor deny this story. He said there were three in the Barn when we arrived. I have no recollection as to what occurred as I was nearly comatose for the early stages. He claimed that the Barn had made them the way they were, and he said this with bitterness in his voice. I don’t know exactly what happened during that period in our lives, only that my condition gradually improved to the point where I could walk around on my own. Kerry had cared for me during the rough stage; he had been my eyes and legs. He doesn’t talk about how he was able to keep me alive in those early weeks, doesn’t mention what he did, and I don’t ask. He was forced to grow up faster than I.
Our roles began to reverse, however, as the summer faded into the fall. As I grew healthier and stronger, his leg grew worse. I became the breadwinner, so to speak, and soon was caring for him as he had cared for me. It was during this time that he began to retreat within himself. When I was sick, Kerry had had a purpose in this world. He was able to push through his debilitation so that I would survive, was able to keep the “sodomites” as he called them, out of his mind, if not his body. When I became healthy, though, that strong will left him forever, and never returned to the poor soul. With nothing to protect his mind, he slowly slipped into the darkness. Kerry no longer spoke by the time Brier arrived at the Barn. He only sat, constantly staring at nothing and cleaning himself, always cleaning, licking away and away – licking away at the dirt he thought of himself as, I imagined.
“This is the Barn as we know it,” I replied. I rose to my feet with caution, wary of strangers. Since Kerry and I had become the only two inhabitants of the Barn, the only visits we received were from the Master, never looking at us as she delivered our weekly slops and murky water. The man seemed harmless enough, though, and had already displayed more human-like personality than I had ever seen, so I decided to approach him.
“This is where they send the discarded. The ‘home’ is a myth. This is it.” I opened my arms and motioned for him to look around. I noticed his marking when he turned to examine his new home. Tattooed into the man’s back was an archaic depiction of the head of one of us, with a single green ear. “Yours is green,” I exclaimed, unintentionally letting the words slip out of my mouth. “Mine is red, and Kerry’s blue.”
He gave me a confused look. “What in the world are you talking about, son.”
I nodded my head and chuckled for the first time in awhile. I turned around and showed him my nearly identical mark. “I’m sorry; it’s just that we’ve never had one of the old here before, only people like us. All of us ‘reedy’ ones have always had blue ears, and the ‘cripples’ like Kerry over there have always been red. Apparently the ‘old’ are green. We now have a full set of ORC’s. The people here before us mentioned that the ‘old’ were sent to the Barn too, but we hadn’t met any yet.”
At the mention of his name, the man looked over at Kerry for the first time. “What’s got your boy’s goat?” He just sat in the corner, staring into the Wilderness, looking at the past, I can only imagine.
I spoke quietly to the man now. “Kerry doesn’t talk anymore. Please leave him be.”
He continued to look at my brother for a few more moments with concern in his eyes, and then turned his attention back to me. I could feel his eyes looking me over, boring through me, and analyzing my condition, which, though much improved since birth, was not what one would describe as healthy. He then looked around the Barn once again, really taking it in for the first time. Though he did not initially say anything, I know he was affected by what he saw. The hay was cold and wet, the food decomposing, and the water stagnant. He extended his hand and for the first time I learned his name. “I’m Brier Moran. I can’t even begin to understand what has happened to you two here, but it can’t go on any longer. We cannot live like this. We must get out. To be honest, I’m surprised y’all have last this long, based on the conditions of this rat-infested place. How long’ve you been here?”
Words cannot encapsulate what I felt at that moment. This man, within minutes of arriving in this hell-hole, was already going to bring about change. We had been here for months, and the thought of escaping had hardly crossed my mind. It had, on occasion, but where were we to go? How were we to survive in the Wilderness on our own? The arrival of this man changed everything however, especially when he said the word ‘we’. He seemed like a man who could be followed. “I’m Derry Scallon and this is my brother Kerry. We’ve been here since the end of the summer. We were brought here shortly after birth. We will follow you wherever you may lead.”
With that, we got to work. The two of us pried and prodded around the entire Barn, attempting to find any weak point from which to launch our escape. The Barn really was not a barn though that was the name it was given long ago. The building had a wooden frame, with crisscrossed wire walls on all sides. The floor, raised a few inches off the grass, was made of wood, but was covered with a thick coat of years and years of excrement. The only real protection from nature was the slanted plywood roof, off which slid the melting ice, winter’s last memory.
We worked until the Red Men arrived. They smoothly emerged from the Wilderness with their crimson eyes burning and malice in their smiles. In an instant, the two of them had surrounded the Barn, watching. All I saw of them was their malevolent faces, those eyes and jagged teeth, like stalactites and stalagmites in the caves of their mouths. One stood between the House and the Barn, the other between the Barn and the Wilderness. For the longest time the only sound was silence. Nothing stirred in the Wilderness. Two of us within the Barn were frozen with terror, while the alien visitors looked on, amusement evident on their faces. After what felt like eternity, I slowly moved over to Kerry, who was still sitting on the corner of the Barn, easily within reach of the Red Men. He was still staring into the Wilderness, apparently unaware of our visitors. He cooperated enough, though, and after a while I was able to bring him to the center of the room. At this action, the Red Man closest to the Wilderness spoke. “Let him be, for he knows the truth; the end comes soon, for all of you.” Right on cue, the beast on the other side chimed, “Every once in awhile we come to play. Until you’re gone we’re here to stay.” At that, they proceeded to walk around the Barn in a clockwise direction. They continued like this for the remaining hours of darkness, always keeping the same distance from each other, and never taking their eyes off their captives. As the new day’s light was moments from arrival, the two stopped exactly where they had started. The one, who had spoken first, hours earlier, turned towards us and said, “You’re meat so sweet, we’ll surely eat.” The one who spoke second followed suit. “On the night after next, we’ll lay you to rest.” Without another word the two retreated and were soon engulfed by the Wilderness.
During that first night, as the Red Men walked their tours, the three of us sat in the middle, and I wished for death. Kerry had told me stories of the Red Men from our first few weeks in the Barn. How they had come when I was sick, had watched, had done nothing but watch. They were terrible creatures he said, that he had nearly died of fright from just watching them, but he did not share with me the details then, and I doubted he would now. I had never seen them before, never seen their graceful steps, or heard their banshee shrieks. Nothing I had imagined could have prepared me for their actual presence a few feet away. Kerry did not have the luxury of imagination.
Kerry killed himself on the second night, while we had been searching for any chinks in the rusted armor. How funny was it that only the night before we’d been praying for a hole so we could escape, when only a day later we’d hope the opposite? Things do a complete 180 sometimes. He had been sitting in the center of the room, having not moved since the encounter with the Red Men. I don’t know if he ever slept by this time. He only stared outside the Barn. During that night, Brier and I were so caught up in our work that we failed to notice when Kerry actually moved. After a while, I turned around, and noticed him standing in the corner, still looking out into the darkness. His stinking leg had left a trail of blood and dead skin along the way. A part of me died as I witnessed the evidence of the agony that had befallen him every moment of every day during his stinking life. Before I even remembered the two jagged wires sticking out of that corner, I knew what Kerry was about to do, and I will never truly know why I did nothing to stop him, possibly out of indifference, possibly out of pity. Brier saw the same as I, and sprinting towards Kerry, he screamed for him to stop. Kerry turned to look at us one last time and said, “Red Men, Red Men, I wish you had come faster. Too long have I yearned for a place with no Master. Go to sleep, and run away, find my mark, and tear the clay.” He launched himself at the wire and drove it deep within his brain, hopefully vanquishing the memories he had carried for too long.
I felt no reason to go on after Kerry left. His body still lay in the southwestern corner of the Barn, but he was no longer there. Of course, he had not been there for a long while, but I had always kept hope that that he would become better. Brier tried to stay busy to keep his mind away from Kerry, but he too eventually joined me in the center of the room, sitting and staring at the Wilderness. I felt much affection for this man who could display such emotion for a person he had only recently met. He owed Kerry nothing, yet mourned as if he did, or maybe he felt as if that was exactly the case. He had lived his cushy existence on the inside, with no knowledge of ours on the outside. He was ignorant, and therefore guilty.
We both knew that our efforts were helpless. The Red Men would find a way inside, would find a way to end us. This thought oddly brought a sense of peace to me, the possibility that I may end up in Elysium with a Kerry who would speak. Hopefully, he would fill me in on everything that I had missed.
Kerry had had other plans for us though.
As the third night approached it became obvious that Brier would not sit and wait, whether he had hope or not. I found it strange how a man so old could still fight so hard, but I suppose his mind was young. Though his body had seen many winters, his mind had only just discovered its true purpose.
I sat in the center as the yellowish-red sunset slowly turned to purple, then black, the newly colored trees and plants illuminated by the vibrant moon, while he perused the room, looking everything over again and again. There was moisture in the air, heavy and pungent, a lively smell, a smell of new beginnings. I heard him rustling through the hay, breathing heavily
“Do you think Kerry knew something we didn’t?” I asked after a long while, staring into space like Kerry so often had. “What did he mean by what he said? He hadn’t spoken in a dogs-age.”
From the corner, his haggard face lifted into a smile. I didn’t see it, only felt it. “I think your brother knew everything we didn’t.”
This brought me out of my sullen trance in an instant, as I hopped up from where I was sitting and ran to where he was standing, in the corner opposite Kerry’s corpse. “What are you talking about?”
“Find my mark, and tear the clay...” he muttered through that awestruck smile, a smile childlike in its pure joy. It was refreshing to see such unbridled happiness on an old man’s face, especially in such times.
I followed his eyes to the spot on the floor that he had cleared of hay and rotting apples and carrots. The damp grain had waterlogged the wood, making it difficult to see the rune that had been hurriedly etched into it. I bent down to look. Carved into the floor was a head with only one ear. Upon further inspection, I noticed that the ear had been stained red, with Kerry’s own blood, I imagine. Around the depiction there was a ragged circle, cut in a rush and uneven, done by a man who had not much time. At this point I was stifling tears. They were tears of pride and tears of shame, tears of many different emotions. All I knew was that I felt emptier now than I ever had before, emptier than the space beneath the Barn, as we opened the circular hatch and looked into my brother’s secret chamber.
This chamber turned out to be a tunnel, or at least the beginnings of a tunnel. The air was stale, filled with the smell of copper, the clay, like the wood above, stained red. Who knows for how long Kerry had been working down there, every night, maybe when I was sick, maybe after, maybe to escape the “Sodomites”, who knows. I had more questions to ask than ever.
He had used the excess space under the Barn to store the loose dirt, and had made some progress, but not quite enough. For a brief second I thought maybe we could stay here, hide it out, wait for the inspection to end, because, even with Brier, what was I to do on the outside of the Barn, with nowhere to go. I did not share his ideas of heedless adventure, not yet at least. But when the Red Men tore their way through the Barn, and they would find a way in, they would find the hatch, and find us. They were methodical as well as brutal, and I could not think of a combination more dangerous. We had to dig.
We took shifts, with one of us in front, furiously clawing through the thawing earth, while the other cleared the path from behind, like Kerry had. All I could think about were his dark nights down here, alone and lame. He had had nothing. Maybe he was going to leave me behind, was going to take his chances on the outside. Anything must be better than in here. I dug faster, creating a much narrower path than Kerry had. We did not have time to worry about a comfortable escape. The tunnel was pitch black, but it felt like a comforting blanket, that if we couldn’t see then neither could they. Of course I knew this to be completely untrue. They’d be able smell us, follow us down here. Our best bet was to dig until time ran out, then head up and hope to the Lord that we’d be covered. It’s so hard to tell when you cannot see.
Brier was in front when they came, their howls as sharp as their teeth, the former slicing through the air as the latter cut through the wood. Even in our catacombs underneath, I could hear them in the Barn, and then I heard nothing. The silence was the worst, taking away the ability to visualize what they were doing, even if what you imagined proved false. The banshee’s blood curdling cry of rage a few moments later, however, released me of this uncertainty. At least Brier had something to occupy his time, as he was still grasping for the surface. All I could do was look behind me, and hope it was still there.
I heard the wood on wood scrape as the hatch was lifted, revealing its secret, and the quaking rattle as it was launched against the metal cage. There was sound at my end of the tunnel when Brier broke through, the suffocating sweat inside immediately going to battle with the dewy cold outside. I turned and saw red at the same moment Brier screamed, the upper half of his body he used to break on through (to the other side) now in the jaws of the beast. I turned towards him, then back to the other, and tried to move as far forward as possible. The other Red Man was pulling Brier up through the hole, and I was trying to follow. There was nowhere to go. As the eyes came closer and closer, and I backed into Brier’s writhing body, something happened. They stopped. The eyes stayed where they were, but were now accompanied by that familiar shriek. The creature did not back away, though. It was so close that it could taste me. I could feel the heat as its mouth watered and yapped, trying to grab a stranglehold. It kept pushing and pushing, until it finally gave in and attempted to scramble back from whence it came. But it couldn’t. It shrieked and shrieked, louder than Brier even, its bloody eyes filling with tears. I was surprised they didn’t come out red.
With one of the Red Men currently subdued, I turned my attention to the other, the one treating Brier as if he were a rag doll. I gave myself as much distance from Brier, while giving my Red Man a safe berth, and sprinted as best I could, head down and shoulders hunched, towards my damaged friend. I connected with his back side at the same instant the Red Man above gave him a tug. The added momentum sent us all stumbling onto the cool grass. The fresh air was suffocating in its purity compared to that beneath.
The Red Man still had a shocked Brier in his grips, but had not expected to be outnumbered at this point. My first instinct was to run, be rid of this mess, but I did not listen. Instead I ran at it and sank my teeth into the Red Man’s arm, near the shoulder. Stunned, it dropped Brier, who had enough awareness left in him to realize this was our only opportunity. He launched himself at the larger creature and went for its belly. The beast thrashed around as hard as he could, sang its terrible song, but we did not let go, and continued to tear away at its vitals. We were both clawed, though, and eventually flung off of its torn body, one after the other. I took with me its right arm. The beast took a few drunken steps towards us, its former arm a stump like Grendel, before collapsing to the soil.
I tasted the beast’s warm, bitter blood, its life source, in my mouth, and spit it out, choking on the vile taste. Brier was not so active. He was breathing, though they were the very long breaths of those not meant long for this world. Deep gashes ran up and down his chest and back, and blood poured from him like a river. He was as pale as could be and shaking. He too was going to die.
He spoke before I had made it over to him. “Finish the other one,” was all he said. And he was right, I’d completely forgotten about my friend in the tunnel, though its screaming had yet to cease. I walked over to the hole on the outside, the hole that was only a few feet from the Barn, near the border of the Wilderness. From underneath we felt as if we’d dug miles. Only until I began to kick dirt back into the hole did I realize how much pain I was in, not injured, but pain nonetheless. I only wanted to lie down and go to sleep, sleep away this nightmare. But I didn’t. I kicked the dirt until the shrieks of anger and for help became shrieks of terror, as the beast knew what lie next. After I’d kicked as much loose soil as possible from the outside, I went back to the Barn, and entered through the hole the Red Men had torn through. They had chewed where the wires met the wooden frame, had peeled the metal back like a banana, and entered in this way. Once inside, I climbed down through the hatch, and continued to kick. I did so until its screams became muffled, as if listening to them in a dream.
I figured Brier’d be gone by the time I returned, but that was not the case. His chest was still producing feeble soft-rock beats, but he had a smile on his face.
“This sure beats the hell outta dying of old age,” he laughed, though a painful grimace followed. He looked, from where he lay, at the house and then at the Barn, the only two places of residence in his life. “I lived more in a few days here than I ever would’ve back there,” he said, nodding towards the House, “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
He then looked me in the eyes and spoke for the last time, “Don’t go back there, you can’t go back, must not be tricked down that mindless, thoughtless path. You won’t be free mentally, let alone physically. Face the unknown. I saw too late, but at least I did, see it, when I came here. Don’t go back, or you’ll just become another cog in their machine.” With that last command, his fire extinguished.
I did listen to a portion of his request, and never, ever became one of them, a cog in their machine, but I did go back. Where was I to go?
After the old man’s death, I went back to the Barn, waiting for the Master to arrive and witness the carnage. At first I climbed into the chamber underneath, and listened to the distant struggle within, helping mat down the earth, so as to expedite the process. The sound soon ceased, and I laid myself down on the ground, much cooler now than earlier, and went to sleep. I woke on the hay to the beat of her soft-padded footsteps on the grass. When she finally arrived, I was taken back to the House, while the Barn was cleaned of the evidence. Once in the House, my health began to improve. I became strong. The return to the Barn that I had expected never came.
I saw my mother upon return, looked right into her eyes and was about to speak, but fell silent when her reciprocating gaze was filled without recognition. She had not a clue who I was, none of them did.
I lived in the House for many years, never finding the motive within to leave, but telling the people about that night, and always hiding my mark. I told whoever cared to know, how the “home” had been attacked by the evil Red Men, and how Brier had smote them down, saving all of us within, at the cost of his own life. I spoke of witnessing him rise into the sky after his death, the ascent of a holy being. He had been one of them and I thought they should care.
I never spoke of Kerry, for he was not, nor had he ever, been one of them.
Towards the end of those many years I was once again taken to the Barn, this time as an old man. The Master came, picked me up, and marked me for the second time on the Field. As she walked us towards the Barn, her grip on me loosened for a brief second. In that moment, I sunk my teeth in to her hand, and felt the warm blood on my lips. She cried out and dropped me on the Field. I ran. I ran faster than I can remember, past the Barn, and into the Wilderness.
