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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ArgiopeAurantia on 2024-11-25 00:44:11+00:00.

I’ve always been envious of other people’s childhoods. The way they describe it, the country of the past was all golden sunlight and green fields and happy families and warm, safe blankets to curl up in. A longing sigh, the memory of starlight.

I didn’t have that.

I don’t remember much of my childhood. Only snatches of images here and there, burnt around the edges. The twist of a long, bitter night, November wind whistling through the cracks in my bedroom window as I shivered under a pile of dirty laundry. The whispering ghosts of bruises on my upper arms, my lower back, my pudgy little legs. The teeth in the memory of laughter which was never, ever mine. The whine of mosquitos and the squelch of mud as I weaved my way through the woods, sticking to the creek bottoms where no one ever came. It was safe there, among the sticker-bushes, the tight green tunnels with room only for an escaping rabbit or a small-bodied girl hiding from the big bad world that wanted to eat her.

Those are my happy memories. Among the biting insects and stinging nettles, I was safe. At least for a while.

I remember the day I first found the Hanged Man. I don’t remember what I was running from, quite. It could’ve been anything. The world was full of things to run from, in those days. But I broke out of the drainage ditch I’d been following for what felt like miles into a space I’d never seen before. I stopped, shocked. I’d thought I knew these woods like the back of my hand, but this place was new.

I’d emerged into a tiny botanic cathedral, a dome of green vines split by golden pillars of light that filtered down through the canopy far above. A silver filigree of spiderwebs scrolled between brambles, ornamented with glorious gold and green garden spiders like jewels, bigger than any I’d ever seen before. I was familiar with spiders. I was friends with the ones who lived in the crawl space under my house. They listened to my whispers with silent sympathy, carrying on their incomprehensible arachnid missions in reassuring peace. I’d never found them threatening. But I’d never understood how beautiful they could be, either, until I saw them in the diffuse, watery light of this new place.

The floor of the chamber of vines was the bed of a stream, several drainage ditches flowing together. At this time of year it was mostly dry, puddles of standing water swimming with larvae and water striders and crayfish, but with plenty of large, flat rocks to skip between so my sneakers didn’t get even muddier. It was dim in here, under the creepers, and I poked around the edges of the chamber first, in awe of the newts and jeweled beetles that skittered in the near-darkness. Maybe that’s why it took me so long, on that first day, to notice Him.

I don’t know why I decided that the Hanged Man was a Him, but the moment I saw it it seemed obvious. At the very center of the dome of vines, high above my tiny head, hung a lump of wood, entangled in a nest of creepers. It didn’t look at all like a man dangling upside down, but my child’s mind painted the picture, and it was immediately permanent, undeniable, and irrevocably named. I had found the Grotto of the Hanged Man.

I stayed for hours, that first day, until it was too dark to make out the print of the book I’d brought with me in my flight after school. As I wormed my way out through the tunnel I thought would lead me most quickly to my house, I hoped I’d be able to find it again.

I did. Nearly every day of that long, dark September I squirmed through the mud back to my chamber of safety and stayed until the light above went out. The spiders thickened and then disappeared one by one, until, by October, the place was bejeweled only by the changing leaves, and I brought an old blanket full of holes to wrap up in. And the whole time I talked to Him, to the Hanged Man, who ruled this place as surely as I came in supplication to it.

The drainage-ditch cathedral became my temple, my confessional. I would talk to the Hanged Man about my troubles at home, the children at school who pulled my tangled hair and laughed at my dirty clothes. And he would listen, I was convinced of it. Not like the spiders under the house, now mostly neglected except for the really bad nights, who didn’t object when I talked to them as they wrapped up their prey, but weren’t really paying attention. No, the Hanged Man truly heard me. He stored my words up in the rotting wood of his heart, and I poured them into him like the lonely child that I was. The Hanged Man couldn’t speak back, of course. But sometimes, when the wind sighed cold through the brambles, I almost heard him.

It was only two months. But when you’re seven years old, two months is so much of a lifetime that it seems endless. When you’re seven years old, two months is such a big slice of everything you’ve ever been that it might as well be the whole cake. Two months is an eternity. When you’re seven years old, two months can be a lifetime.

It was a lifetime with the Hanged Man before I thought to ask him for anything. I could consider regretting at this point the fact that I ever did, but I know it was inevitable. Those in need, no matter how battered, eventually figure out that it doesn’t hurt as much to ask for help as it does to keep muddling on without it.

Unless, of course, the wish is granted. And that teaches a different lesson entirely.

I was bleeding, that day. I remember that. I think it was a split lip and a burning scalp, though all these years later I can’t be sure. There were many small wounds, in those days. But this time I couldn’t hold back the tears. This time I couldn’t escape into a fairy tale. This time, I had to make my own.

So I cried, flat out. I told the Hanged Man what had happened. I sobbed, I nearly shrieked, and I begged him for help. Save me, I must have said, or something like it. Please help me. Please don’t let this happen again.

I didn’t think to place limitations. I didn’t think to ask the Hanged Man for some things, but not everything. Not absolutely anything He decided to do. And even now, if I could go back and change it all, I’m not sure whether I would.

I fell asleep in the grotto that night, eyes aching, breath raw. I’m not sure when I awoke, but I know only blackness met my eyes when I opened them. No moonlight, no starlight. It was the darkness of a sinkhole, of the deep places under the earth where sunlight never comes. And before I turned, shaking, and felt my way along the black passage out to the real world I’d run from, I heard the chill wind whisper, from a thousand directions, in one voice:

Yes.

I picked my way through the woods, blind, until the sun peeped above the horizon. I was utterly, utterly lost, and I don’t remember much about the morning until I found a road and a man in a car found me, tattered blanket around my shoulders, all out of tears and words. He took me to a police station, and they took me to the smoking ruins of the house I’d lived in all my life. And all they found were bodies.

Later, it was assumed I’d run from the flames and injured myself in my frantic flight. Later, it was assumed that a small child couldn’t have caused the fire that started when the old, neglected stove shot a spark that ignited the tilting wooden house. Later, I mourned the poor spiders in the crawl space.

That morning, as the sunlight filtered golden and watery through the windows of the police station, I knew only that the Hanged Man had listened to my plea.

It did get better, though not much better. But when you’re seven years old and all you’ve known is pain, any little thing can be enormous, can be everything. I cried myself dry a hundred times in my new, slightly-improved, home before I managed to escape and find my old familiar grotto again.

It was spring, by then, and the water was higher. My new sneakers splashed in the cold, clear water of ice-melt as I explored the room. I was slightly bigger, it was slightly smaller. But it was the same vegetable cathedral. Twisted and brown with the quickening of the year, not flowing and green with the end of summer, but very much the same place. It was only that the Hanged Man had gone.

A few vines swung from the roof, empty. But the hunk of wood that I’d poured my soul into was simply gone. I looked around the floor of the space, but I knew I wouldn’t find Him. The Hanged Man had answered me, and the Hanged Man had gone.

I’ve grown a life since then. It’s not a very good one. Maybe it never could’ve been. Maybe the curse placed on me when I was young was inescapable, no matter what happened. Maybe this is the best it ever could’ve been.

Or maybe it could’ve been better. Maybe, if I were older at the time, I could’ve phrased my wish more consciously. Maybe the Hanged Man could’ve granted me something else. Maybe I’d be a princess, now, in a castle. But I doubt it.

After all these years, after all this education, I still believe that the Hanged Man was real. I still believe he heard me and did everything a lonely forest spirit could to save me. And maybe that was the only wish I’ll ever get.

I touch my scars, sometimes. I trace the spaces where the bruises used to be with soft fingers, and I remember. And I’m grateful that I found that space, that dim place in the woods. And I wonder what happened to the Hanged Man. I wonder what he was, to grant the deepest wish of a lonely, battered child who had no one else to run to.

I wonder …

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