Antlers

This is a run-through of the amazing game Carved by the Garden by Cassi Mothwin. Much fun to write. Heed its warnings!

Content Warnings

This work contains references to: cannibalism, child abuse, vague sexual content, transformation, body horror, stalking, blood and injury, animal death, dubious consent, and death.

My name is Basil. I live with my Ma and Pa and my brother Bailey, and no one I know gives a good goddamn about me. They want me to stay out of the woods so they can control me, I think, but Bailey gives me this look every time I sneak out like he’s afraid I won’t come back. Lately, I think he’s right.

I’m leaving this journal for him, just in case, but I hope to god he’s wrong. I love the woods, and I want them to love me.

Day 2

Shit fuck goddamn. Bailey’s not best pleased with me tonight, considering I bled all over his fucking bunk on my way in. It’s hard to focus, but I’ll try to get everything down. I took some medicine and stole a beer from Pa but this shit hurts.

Lately I’ve been finding this oozy black shit in the woods. Some kinda rot, you know, eating away at the trees. Cold to the touch. Turns the leaves black if the tree’s infected. It’s gross and it’s spooky to look at. Sucks the life right out of the day, and I’ve been seeing more and more of it lately. It’s hard to tell if it’s one patch that’s spreading or if it’s just everywhere. I told Ma about it one time and the next thing you know she’s setting up candles in the windows. Pa didn’t like that very much - he made her take them down the next night, but the woods that day felt… nicer. More clear.

Should've left some candles out last night, because today that shit was fucked. It seemed everywhere I turned there was another rotted out black tree, another pile of rot to put my heel through. I got turned around today and it nearly killed me.

It was everywhere and the woods kept winding deeper. Darker. Sometimes, I like to get lost in them, but not today. Not with the rot.

There was a tree. A tree, I think, just a spindly thing, in a clearing in the woods. The light hit it wrong and the wood was black, or else just really dark brown. Something was dangling from its thin branches, but I didn’t get a good look because there were people there, too. Four of them, wearing masks of bone, or maybe they were just straight up skulls. I wasn’t supposed to be there and I knew it, so I tried to back off, but one of those rotten branches turned to mush under my food. I tripped, made a huge fucking ruckus, the whole nine yards. When I looked up, they were looking back.

When I tell you I ran. Oh God did I fucking run. I know the woods. I love the woods. But the rot confused me, and they knew it better. I managed to give a few of them the slip, hiding in a den - an animal den, in those woods? Yeah, no one would be so insane, of course they overlooked me.

But when I tried to slip away after I thought they were gone, another stepped out of the shadows. There was a deer skull over her face, and she had a bone knife. I only found that out after she stuck me with it. Right in the gut.

I tried to get away. I tried to talk to her. Fuck, I told her I was just a kid, like that would help. In the woods that sort of thing doesn’t matter. A baby is still food when the chips are down. She didn’t stop, so I.

Fuck, I got the knife from her and I killed her. I didn’t want to. I didn’t have a choice. She was trying to kill me and now I have the fucking stab wound to prove it. I took the knife. I didn’t even think about it. She had such long red hair. I left her in the woods. Her friends will have found her by now. I wonder if they’ll come for me tonight, or if they understand.

Bailey doesn’t want me to go back. Probably won’t let me, while I’m so fucked up. At least he didn’t tell Ma yet. I don’t want to go to the hospital, and Pa wouldn’t take kindly to the bill.

I have to go back, though. I don’t know what happened with that tree - if it was a tree - but maybe it’s important. Maybe it’s the rot. Maybe the woods will thank me if I get rid of it.

I lit a candle tonight. For the woods. For the girl. Tomorrow will be better.

Day 3

I couldn’t stand the idea of Ma finding about the fact that I got stabbed, so I left early this morning. It hurt, but the air was lighter today. I had dreams about the girl with the red hair and the deer skull. Nightmares where I’d left her alive and she was bleeding for the animals. I hated the thought, so I went to find her again. It was stupid of me, especially because the rot was gone. Or, the rot was changed? Everything was somewhere else. I was probably kind of woozy from blood loss, or maybe infected? Whatever the case, I tried to look for her. I got confused.

I got lost. Really lost, not just shitting around having a good time sort of lost. I think I was deeper than I’d ever been. Not a black leaf to be seen. Only enormous trees, more than I could fit my arms around, blotting out the sun. It was beautiful. I should’ve been scared, scared that I wouldn’t find my way out or that the people in bone masks would find me again, but I wasn’t. It was so peaceful.

Again, might’ve been the blood loss.

Eventually I found a garden in bloom, framing some old ruins. All manmade things to crumble away in the woods. Each flower bed was supported by a trellis of human remains - hands and arms, clutching each other. A lifeline. I didn’t look too closely. I didn’t want to see it. I don’t want to die to support the woods, not like that. I just want them to love me.

I went deeper into the ruins instead. Old, stone ruins, crumbling, with a story painted on the walls. It was only pictures, but it showed a fox man chasing after a deer man, I think. They were playing, but also not. It was a game of life or death, a chase where the winner gets to live another day. A lot of my life feels like that, lately. It ended at an altar, with viscera in the fox man’s teeth, but it didn’t feel… bad. It was kind of

Well. I won’t write that down to spare you, Bailey, since I figure you’ll be the first to read this.

The altar was stone, and lit by candles. For a second I worried maybe the people in their masks had caught up to me, but then someone spoke. “Kneel,” he said, with a deep, dark voice. “And let me taste of your skin.” I looked around, but no one was there after all. No one who meant to finish the job, anyway. I went and kneeled for a while, because it felt right. I shut my eyes for a while, too, but I don’t think I slept. Not really. I just listened to the woods, and something touched me where the girl had cut me. Fingers, maybe, or a snout. A wet nose. Teeth.

I don’t know if what I felt was the fox, but it hurt so good, and then it was over. I got up and I just knew which way to go to get home. My gut didn’t hurt so much anymore, either.

I looked when I got home, you know? There’s still a hole there. It’s just full of soft tan fur now. I haven’t shown Bailey. He wouldn’t get it.

I lit another candle before I laid down tonight. Hopefully it’ll help.

Day 4

The crows came for me today when I snuck into the woods. I hadn’t seen them in a while with all the rot and the panic, but today they flocked to me and pulled at my hair and my clothes like they were trying to drag me further in. It didn’t bother me much - I like the crows. I should have known it was some sort of omen, following their voices deeper into the woods.

When I first started visiting, I only stayed at the edge. I was scared of getting lost, you know. But the crows were always there at the edge of the trees, curious, and after I started giving them trail mix and coins out of my pockets I guess they took a liking to me. Sometimes they led me to treasures - sometimes they led me home. I guess I kind of considered them friends, so when they went quiet as I tried to follow them deeper, I got worried.

The trees were dark, but not rotten. It wasn’t like them to vanish unless something dangerous came along, so I was scared the people in masks had found me. Instead, something warm and wet began to drip on my face. Bailey, it was blood. There was a trail of animals speared on the branches above me. That’s what the crows wanted me to see, and they left once I’d found it. What choice did I have but to follow it? The blood ruined my clothes again. It drew me deeper, always deeper, but at least I knew it would be easy to find my way home today.

It was too quiet on that path. I followed it, dripping, to a dried up pond stacked with hundreds of turtle shells. The smell was awful, but an eggshell caught my eyes, so I covered my face and crept closer. There in the middle of it all was a huge nest of brown hair, a clutch of mostly smashed eggs resting inside of it. They were fucking huge eggs, too, and the whole thing was wet with putrid yolk and dead animal. I can’t imagine what sort of thing was supposed to hatch out of them. A turtle, maybe? Or a crow? I hope at least one of those babies managed to escape. It was nesting in my hair, after all. I kind of feel responsible, like it’s my fault its siblings didn’t get to live.

I turned to leave when another path caught my eye. It still wasn’t too late at this point, and I didn’t want to head home and have to explain to Ma why I was covered in blood. It’s easier to sneak back in closer to dusk, so.

Yeah, I took the path. I don’t regret it. I think maybe it helped. At the end of the animal tracks there was a statue like a goat. She was also like a human, and she was gorgeous. A real queen of the woods, I guess. She was falling apart, but her hands were held out as if to point to the stump in front of her, and on that stump? A flower crown.

After yesterday I had a sense of what to do. The woods healed my gut. Maybe this would be something similar.

Fuck, was I wrong. I put that crown on and she showed me the girl again. Her long red hair. The deer skull over her face. The eyes underneath, soft and doe brown. I understood her more than ever. She loved the woods, just like me. She loved them, and I fucking killed her for it. I cried. I sat there and I fucking wept until the Goat Queen told me what to do. She showed me tomorrow, and I got down on hands and knees and kissed her stone for it. I left the crown on the stump and I was going to go back the way I came, but the crows called out to me again.

I followed their voices to a well, where all of them were gathered, hopping and cawing. The bucket was too heavy for them to pull up, so I did it for them, foot by sticky foot. There was honey in that well, sweet and overpowering and delicious. We all feasted on it like wild things.

When I came home tonight, covered in blood and honey, somber with what the Goat Queen told me, I just tapped on the window to our room until Bailey let me in. Pa would’ve taken me outside and hosed me down like a dog. Bailey only wrinkled his nose and told me to take a shower, but I saw his eyes.

He was afraid.

Day 5

I had to go to school today, but I already knew that would happen. I knew everything that would happen today because of the Goat Queen’s kindness. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t fucking terrified. When I got home I packed a bag with a candle and some food and the bone knife still wet with our mingled blood. It made me sick to hold it, but I knew to make this work I needed to return it.

I went into the woods and traced the path the Goat Queen showed me, deeper and deeper, so quickly. If it weren’t for her I would have been lost, and I still second-guessed myself the whole way, but I knew I was in the right place when the woods parted into a clearing. It looked different now, with the rot gone, but I knew it was the one I was looking for by the dead branch in the ground, black and withered, dripping with finger bones. I knelt in front of it and lit a candle, and then placed the knife she used to cut me. The knife I used to kill her.

I waited.

I waited a long time, until the first fingers of dusk dusted the trees. I waited until the wolf came. He was one of the skull-wearers, the one in the wolf mask, and he put his knife to my throat like I knew he would. He also didn’t kill me, like the Goat Queen showed me. Instead he snarled, and - it wasn’t English, man, but I understood. It was tongues, animal speak, the language of the wood.

I spoke English. I’m not fluent in the woods yet. I told him that I love the woods, that I hadn’t meant to interrupt, that I wanted to honor her. I told him how there was fur poking from my guts and he cut my shirt off to make sure, which led to some other shit I won’t explain here. I’ll just say it was transcendental. When we were finished he told me to wait, and he brought me her heart.

I ate it.

There’s no two ways about it. I ate her heart. It was what the Goat Queen showed me, so I did it, and I cried again while I did. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so full in my entire life. The wolf grunted his approval and, even though it was nearly dark by then, he showed me to the tree line with no problem.

Something shifted inside of me. I can’t explain it.

Day 6

Ma was at the mouth of the woods today, stacking stones. She looked at me as I tried to sneak past and the expression on her face… I thought she would stop me for sure, and that would be that. She looked like she was about to cry. Her eye was bruised. Must have happened last night while I was with the wolf. I almost wanted to invite her to come in deeper with me, but… I didn’t. Does that make me shitty? Or does it make me smart? It’s dangerous in the woods, after all. She told me to be careful what I seek to unravel, so she probably wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway.

I didn’t ask about the stones as I passed, but I feel like they were for protection. Ma’s always been scared. So have I, but I went into the woods this morning excited. I thought I might see the wolf again, or something like that. I should have known better. Some animals mate for life, but I don’t know if wolves are one of them. I just wandered for a while, following my gut.

After a while I came to a ravine and I thought I saw someone. She cried out to me, begging for help. She said someone in a fox mask had pushed her, and I skidded down to help. I thought maybe she’d seen something she shouldn’t have, but she could make amends, like me. Nobody who goes into the woods as often as the people who get trapped there goes because they want to get hurt. They just love the woods. When I got down there, though, she was gone. Or, not gone. There was only an old skull, mossy and fractured. Missed her by decades, apparently. I don’t know what sort of people don the animal skulls, not really. They’re protective, that’s all I know, but they follow certain rules.

It was silly, but I thought maybe I could understand if I put on a mask of my own. Only tree bark, because I wasn’t about to try to turn that woman’s skull into a mask. Too fucked up. Something about it drove me deeper into the woods, though, like magic. Unlike the fox mural or the Goat Queen, though, I’d had no idea about this. Wearing that mask almost dragged me into the woods, further and further, faster and faster. My feet were certain until they weren’t, until I slipped on something black and rotten and fell into it up to my elbow. It was so fucking cold and numb and rank that I tore myself free of it and threw up right there in the woods, but still the the mask urged me forward. Time slipped away again.

That black shit is still on my arm, by the way. No matter how hard I scrub it, it won’t come off. It’s like a bruise, I guess. Something sunk under my skin instead of over it, and it won’t go away. At least the bruises heal.

Eventually I got the sent to pull the mask off and tore a good chunk of skin with it but by then the damage was done. Deeper in than I’d ever been. Again. Somehow the trees were even bigger this time, so it was inconceivable to me that in this dense, nearly untouched woodland I would find an old dilapidated cabin. It definitely wasn’t up to code, but I went in anyway, totally enchanted. It was a wreck in there, but everything was homemade, hand-stitched. At one point it might have even been well cared for, this one room cabin where someone tried to carve a home out of the woods.

Bailey, you should have seen it. It was so much more than our house. I could tell whoever lived there also loved it there, more than anything. Not like you and me, just tolerating each other. Not like Pa beating on me and Ma. I wish you could have seen it. The weirdest thing wasn’t even the fireplace, lit with scraps of this very fucking journal from back when I still wrote about school. Back before I ventured into the woods for the first time.

No, the weirdest thing was the mirror. It was propped up against the log wall, and it reflected the cabin as it might have been, warm and well lit and inviting. I never wanted to stay somewhere so bad in my entire life. It showed me too, obviously. It’s a fucking mirror. It just… showed another version of me. One with hooves and antlers and fur. He lived there in that cabin, I know it. Or maybe he’s not an alternate at all. Maybe he’s me in the future, like was with the Goat Queen. My skin has been itching ever since I got back. I think maybe there’s some truth to that. I could go back to the cabin. Fix it up. I could stay there and peel the rest of this skin off. The hole in my side is getting bigger. Maybe I’ll find it again tomorrow. Maybe this time I’ll stay.

Day 7

I shouldn’t have gone back.

I shouldn’t have looked for the cabin again. I should have stayed home. I could have dealt with Pa for another couple of years. I could have run away to the city somewhere. Fuck it, I could have done anything that wasn’t this.

I did this. I understand that now.

The woods were different this morning. It was rainy. I don’t usually go in the rain but I wanted more than anything to find that cabin again, to go back to the woods and find a new home. I wanted to leave it all behind, to be free. The rain wasn’t going to stop me. Bailey with his disdain and his fearful eyes - he wasn’t going to stop me either. I ditched school and I went to the woods. The paths all looked different today and my feet kept slipping out from under me in the leafy mulch.

No crows to guide me, no rot to warn me off, no sign of the bone masked strangers. I was just struggling. I got to the ravine where I first saw that woman and I didn’t expect it when the waters rose and washed me away. I cracked my head on something and I don’t remember a lot after that. I’m not even sure it’s the same day, actually. I lost a lot of time.

It was sunny when I woke up in the woods again. My head was throbbing and I was soaking wet. My hands were red and there was a strange new weight to my head. I cracked my skull, sure, but not that bad. I was disoriented, confused, terrified.

Everything was blurry as I reached for that weight. I really felt it out, you know? Just to be sure. And yeah. I had antlers. While I’d been unconscious they burst from my skull like the world’s worst migraine made manifest. They weren’t huge. Two or three prongs each. Nothing like the huge rack I’d seen in the mirror in the cabin, but for a minute I was fucking elated. I didn’t stop to consider how much blood was on my hands till I turned and saw the bodies.

I saw Ma first. She was just hanging there, strung up in vines. She’d been burned to a near unrecognizable state, but I saw her cross and I knew it was her. I could smell her suddenly, too , charred until black. Greasy. Burned meat. I threw up once I understood what I was seeing, hands and knees, heaving like a dying animal. That’s how I saw Pa. He wasn’t so disfigured, but somehow that made it worse.

I hated Pa. I did. Sometimes enough to want him dead. It was a familiar bone knife in his chest, his blood on my hands. I couldn’t figure it out. Every time I tried to connect the dots I almost got there and then something in me broke and I couldn’t comprehend it. I was like that for a long time, retching and sobbing until I didn’t have the energy for it anymore.

When I was mostly quiet, the wolf man came out of the woods and crouched next to me. He touched my antlers and my bloodied hands and my teary face. He spoke in the way of the wood, but I understood him perfectly.

“She bore witness.”

I didn’t have anything left in my stomach to throw up, but I understood. Ma had seen me murder Pa, and she’d needed to die for it. That was the way of the ritual. I tried to ask him why, but my voice only came out in a croak. He got it anyway.

“You can’t go back now.”

He said that. Here I am anyway. Alone.

I moaned in the moment, low and afraid. I didn’t know what I thought would happen next. I flinched away from him and he let me be. He left for a while.

When he came back he was flanked by more wolves, and he had Bailey in his arms. Bailey was kicking and screaming in his grip. I knew what was going to happen at once. I shook my head. I begged and pleaded. I screamed too.

“You love the woods, don’t you?”

Bailey didn’t understand the wolf but I did. I shook my head no, but I couldn’t get up. I’m so fucking weak.

“You can’t go back,” he told me again.

He and the wolves tore Bailey apart. Made a meal of him. I saw the whole thing, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do a damn fucking thing. I wanted to fight or scream or cry but as I watched I think something shattered in me. Something cracked open in my chest and oozed out across the ground. The wolf fed me a piece of him. I’m not sure what.

He said, “You are but prey to the cycle,” and pushed bloodied meat past my lips and I sat there and I took it.

Bailey was my twin. We never got along. For some reason Pa never touched him even though we were the same age. I never understood that. What did Bailey have that I don’t? Why was he worth so much more than me?

Now he’s dead, and I’m alone. I’ve never been this alone. I always shared a room with him. Now I don’t share a whole lot with fucking anybody because I got them all killed.

Escaping was easy in the end. I let the wolf fuck me and when he turned his back I ran away, naked and furred and skin pulling away as branches tore at me. I ran until the woods let me go and I was in an empty home. It’s been ransacked, but they left my journal, so here I am. Writing.

I could call someone, I guess, but what would I saw? How could I explain? No. No, I’m not doing that. It would be smartest to leave, I think. I should.

But for Christ’s sake, I have antlers.

There’s nothing left for me outside of the woods. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.

Day 8

I found the cabin again. I went into the woods this morning sure that I’d wander until the wolves found me again. Sure I’d die at their fangs for running like I did. Sure that I would never go home again.

I never will. Not when they’re gone. But I can stay here. It’s shelter enough. The woods might love me after all. There’s nothing else left.

Day 9

Things are blurring together. I dreamed about the deer girl last night. Her flowing red hair. I wonder if she was like me. If the wolf killer her brother too. I wonder if someone killed the wolf’s family. I wonder if that’s just how it goes around here.

There’s an orchard nearby, but it’s got the rot. Can’t eat from it. I’m not hungry though. I don’t want to do anything. It’s like there’s a haze settling over me. I didn’t go far today, or maybe I did. I remember a grave. I found it. I thought someone must be sick to leave a grave half dug like that, maybe the wolf left it for me. Or maybe I started digging it for him.

It’s so hard to think.

Day 10

The woods are different at night. They whisper. They tell me things. They talk about the girl. They talk about bodies. If I went outside I think they would swallow me whole. I’m not supposed to be here yet, but my body is changing. The great gaping wound in my stomach sloughs away to reveal more fur every hour. Last night something crept up to my window and whispered a secret, but I might have been dreaming. I feel like I haven’t slept. I went out today to find out. I was just supposed to gather some tongues. It shouldn’t have been hard, but as I wandered a fucking bear trap closed around my foot. My ankle shattered on impact. When I tell you I screamed…

Some people came to help. I don’t think they were from town, though. At least not anymore. They’re not like me, either, caught between human and animal. But they belong here. To them I was a strange commodity, and they touched my fur and antlers like I was something to be revered. I asked them if they knew who used to live in the cabin, but they didn’t. I told them I do now, if they want to come see me again. I don’t want to be alone. I would let them touch me again. I liked the way it felt. Like I was something sacred. It’s maybe the first time I’ve really felt something at all, since.

Since all of that. Was it really just a few days ago? It doesn’t make sense.

By the time I left them my ankle had healed into something different. Hooves. Spritely. Sure of foot. I don’t know what’s fucking happening to me. I felt like I had to run, to try it out. I felt better, sprinting, through the woods. I got distracted, though. I never did figure out if the secret was true. I think it must have been, but I’ve forgotten it already.

I found an axe on my way home. It’s good. Sturdy. It wants something from me, but I just want to build up the cabin. Maybe it can be happy with a home. And fuck, if it wants blood, it can have it when the wolf comes back.

Day 11

I tried to fix up the cabin today, but every time I blinked it seemed like the work I meant to do was already done. I don’t get it. Maybe I don’t need to get it, but at the time I was so confused I just went for a walk.

The woods are stranger to me now than they ever were with the woodspeech in my ears and the antlers on my head. I went through the rotted orchard and came across some enormous snakes draped over the trees. Not the rotted ones. Anything in the wood avoids that shit like the plague if it knows what’s good for it. My arm’s still black. The snakes looked at me before I could leave, and there were enormous lumps in their bellies, the size of some huge animal. They asked what I was hungry for, but I didn’t know what to say. I haven’t been hungry for anything since I ate Bailey.

A piece of Bailey.

He’s still sitting in my stomach. I think I can feel him. I left them to it. I didn’t want to hear the people crying inside of them or give my brother any bright ideas. I don’t know if I could handle it. I went back home instead.

I don’t remember digging a graveyard, but it’s there now. There’s a hole for Ma and a hole for Pa and one for Bailey, too. I sure as shit don’t remember carving any headstones. But who else? The wolf? The woods?

Day 12

Should’ve stayed inside today. It was raining again. Rain is a bad sign. I just can’t. I’m restless all the time now. I want to be moving and there’s something blooming in my gut. I want to be in the trees, listening to the animals. I want to unravel the secrets. There’s nothing else left for me but the woods, but it’s still dangerous. It’s too much, sometimes.

I passed by the mouth of a cave while I was running, and I heard Bailey’s voice filter out. My voice, too, but it was so clearly him. His flat affect. His disgust. He called out to tell me he found something, did I want to see it? And I almost forgot he was dead. I nearly went to him right then.

The wolf stopped me. I don’t know how he was there. I think he’s been following me. He grabbed me by the arms and snarled. I panicked. Tried to hit him with the axe but he batted it out of my hands like it was a toy. He put the bone knife in my palm instead. Her bone knife.

“You can’t go back,” he told me again. He wasn’t angry at me for running, and I don’t think he was angry at me for trying to stab him. I could feel Bailey inside of me and he wanted me to. Mostly I think that amused the wolf, but it was hard to tell. He led me back to the cabin after that and bit me on the shoulder like a kiss. More of my skin came off. I tried to stab him again.

He left, but I think he was laughing.

nightfall.

The woods are quiet tonight. Outside the wolf, fox, and ram are waiting. The deer is gone, because now she’s me. Almost all my skin has given way to fur. It must be late, but the moon is full. I can see their eyes gleaming outside the cabin windows.

I know if I go out there they’ll accept me completely as one of their own. I’ve done everything for them that I can, given everything I have.

I only wanted a home, and now I have this.

But Bailey is still in my gut, and he’s furious. He won’t rest until the wolf gets his. Vengeance is beyond the woods. We’re all animals now, but not Bailey. Bailey is a spark of rage in my belly and he tightens my grip on the bone knife.

I’m going to go out there.

And I’m going to let him finish this.