The Loom of the Hollow Pines

The summer of 2011, I drove with my partner, Evan, to a remote cabin in the foothills of the Cascade Range, near the town of Pine Hollow, to attend the wedding of his sister, Dana, to a man we had never met: Alaric. Alaric was a weaver, not of cloth, but of dreams and memories, a practitioner of an obscure craft he called ‘Lucid Looming.’ Dana had met him at a retreat in the desert, and she’d been transformed, speaking of threads and patterns that connected all living things. Evan and I were skeptical, but we were curious to see the man who had so entranced her.

We arrived at the cabin, a two-story structure of dark timber that seemed to lean into the surrounding pines, as if seeking shelter from their whispered secrets. The air smelled of resin and damp earth. Dana greeted us on the porch, her eyes bright with a fervor I hadn’t seen before. She hugged us tightly, then led us inside. The interior was lit by candles and oil lamps, and the walls were draped with tapestries of intricate, unnerving patterns. There were no mirrors, only woven mandalas that seemed to shift when you looked at them sideways.

Alaric emerged from a back room, tall and gaunt, with long fingers that moved like spiders. He wore a vest of patchwork leather, and his eyes were the color of the lake at dusk. He welcomed us with a voice that seemed to come from all around, and his gaze lingered on me a moment too long. ‘You have a strong thread,’ he said. I laughed, but Evan didn’t. Dinner was served by Dana and a few of her friends from the coast, all of whom had studied under Alaric. They spoke about ‘looming the self’ and ‘unraveling the past,’ but their talk was light, and the food was good.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind through the pines sounded like whispers, and the cabin creaked like an old ship. I got up for water and saw Alaric in the living room, weaving at a massive loom. The threads glowed faintly, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw that some threads seemed to pulse like veins. He looked up and smiled. ‘Can’t sleep? Your thread is tangled. I could help.’ I declined, feeling a cold dread, and hurried back to bed.

The next day, Evan and I went for a walk in the woods. We found a clearing with a circle of stones, and in the center, a small child’s shoe, worn and weather-beaten. Evan picked it up, and a chill ran through us. ‘Maybe we should go back,’ he said. But we were guests, and the wedding was in two days.

On the eve of the wedding, Dana confided in me. She said that Alaric’s weaving was a form of soul-mapping, and that he had ‘rethreaded’ her own soul, removing the frayed parts of her past. ‘He took away my memories of a terrible thing,’ she said, her voice dreamy. ‘I don’t remember what it was, but I know I’m lighter now.’ I felt a knot in my stomach. I remembered the shoe, and I wondered if some past had been stripped from someone else.

That night, I woke to the sound of singing, high and thin, like a child’s lullaby. I followed it down the stairs. In the living room, Dana was standing at the loom, but she wasn’t weaving. She was the warp, her body stretched taut with glowing threads running through her, connecting to the ceiling and floor. Alaric was moving his hands over her, pulling threads from her head and attaching them to the pattern. Her eyes were open but vacant. I screamed, and everything snapped back to normal. Dana was in her bed, and Alaric was nowhere. I shook Evan awake, but he thought I’d had a nightmare.

The wedding was held in a grove of pines, a canopy of needles overhead. Alaric and Dana exchanged vows that were not of love but of ‘binding.’ He placed a woven cord around her wrist, and she seemed to shimmer. At the reception, I noticed that the other guests had similar cords, and they all seemed to move in unison, like a flock of birds. I looked at Evan, and his wrist was bare, but he was watching Dana with a strange longing.

As the sun set, Alaric approached me. ‘Your thread is strong and wild, but it can be tamed. I can show you the pattern of your life, the beauty of the weave. Would you like to see?’ I shook my head, but his eyes held me. He reached out and snipped a single lock of my hair with a small silver scissors. ‘A reminder,’ he said, and pocketed it.

That night, I dreamed of threads. I saw Evan and I as two distinct cords, intertwined, but there was a darkness around Evan, a fraying. I woke with a gasp and looked at Evan. He was staring at the ceiling, muttering. ‘She’s so beautiful,’ he said, more to himself than to me. ‘Dana. I never noticed.’

I knew I had to leave. I packed our bags and convinced Evan to go, telling him I was sick. But as we drove away, I saw in the rearview mirror the cabin, its windows glowing, and I felt a tugging at my mind, a pull to go back. I floored the gas, but the road seemed to loop. We passed the same twisted pine three times.

Then the car died. We were alone in the dark, the pines closing in. I heard the lullaby again, and I saw Alaric standing at the edge of the forest, the loom behind him, and in his hand, a thread of light that led to my chest. He pulled, and I felt my will unravel.

Now I sit here in this cabin, my body woven into a tapestry on the wall, beside Dana and Evan. Our faces are frozen, our eyes hollow. But in the center of the pattern, there is a small child’s shoe, and a thread that leads out the window, into the woods, to the next traveler who gets too curious. Alaric weaves, and the pines whisper, and the loom of the hollow pines never stops.

I write this in a journal that Alaric lets me have, though he thinks I’m just a memory now. But I am not. I am waiting for a moment when his attention wavers, when the thread loosens, and I will pull, and the whole tapestry will unravel. And then the world will see what he truly weaves.

Until then, if you come to Pine Hollow, and you see a cabin with a loom in the window, do not stop. Do not look back. Run. Because once your thread is seen, it can be taken.

And the pines will sing you to sleep.