Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  “What happened, girl?” I asked, righting the stool and running a hand along her side. She shivered under the ministration, and a heavy worry pressed into me. Was she getting sick?

  It wasn’t wholly unusual to get a little blood in the milk—udders could grow raw and chafe—but I’d never seen so much of it in one bucket before. This wasn’t a soft pink hue that Papa would overlook and Sadie would refuse to drink. It was a dark red, harsh and angry in the soft predawn light.

  I took an udder, inspecting it with a critical eye. There wasn’t any damage to it, nor on any of the others. The skin was as pink and smooth as ever.

  “Then how—”

  Cringing, I tilted the lip of the bucket toward me. Pale liquid sloshed along the bottom, frothed with bubbles from the force of Bessie’s stream. I blinked heavily, trying to clear my eyes.

  It was just milk.

  Nothing more, nothing less.

  I seized hold of the udders once more and gave them an experimental pull. More milk hissed out, every bit as white as it ought to be.

  I kept working, slowly allowing my head to rest against her side. The rhythmic motion of my hands and the steady beats of the milk into the bucket lulled me into a hazy trance. My eyelids fluttered shut, once, twice as I struggled to keep them open. My sleepless nights were catching up to me, making me see things that weren’t there.

  We would make the sugar cakes this morning, as soon as we were done with breakfast. I’d tell Merry and Sadie everything and finally be able to rest once more. My forehead pressed into Bessie, a dead weight, unable to hold itself up. I felt my mouth fall slack, and my breath deepened.

  In the far corner of the barn, something stirred, and my eyes shot open. My neck creaked, stiff and sore, as though I’d spent the entire morning propped at that awkward angle. But the stalls were still dark and the bucket not even half-full. I couldn’t have been out for longer than a minute or two.

  “Merry?” She must have come after me when she realized I wasn’t in the house.

  There was no answer.

  “Sadie?” I tried, though it was wholly unlikely my littlest sister would have come all the way down to the barn by herself at this hour.

  I cocked my head, trying to pick out what noise had drawn my attention, but I couldn’t hear anything over Bessie’s even breaths. Picking up the lantern, I left the stall, straining my ears against the quiet. I held out the little beacon of light to cast back the darkness, but it only deepened the shadows in the corners, allowing them to fester while my imagination ran wild.

  The silvery woman had learned of the sugar and had come to take it. She’d waited until my defenses were down, my mind sluggish from lack of sleep. She was real and she was here to steal it, and like a fool, I’d left it out in the middle of the room.

  A series of soft whispers came from just over my shoulder, and I whipped around, ready to catch the thief. Thieves. It was probably a whole team of smugglers. An army of women in pale dresses with long, taloned fingers.

  But there was no one, only Bessie.

  The whispers came again, now from the far wall where Papa kept the pitchforks and scythes. Each one hung properly on its peg, shining with dull splendor in the feeble lighting. I crossed over to them, certain the intruders were hiding behind the half wall bordering the birthing stall, but there were only bales of hay, stacked high into columns. The birthing stall wouldn’t be used until spring. Papa was fanatical about keeping everything as neat and tidy as he could.

  The whispers persisted, growing loud enough for me to nearly make out actual words, and they all seemed to be coming from the hay.

  “Who’s hiding there?” I cried out. “I can hear you—show yourself!”

  “Shhh!” someone hissed, and the murmuring cut off with an abrupt halt.

  Exchanging the lantern for one of the smaller pitchforks hanging on the wall, I paused on the threshold. The wall of hay loomed in front of me, dominating the small space like a tangled hedge grown wild and unkempt. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the woman had wedged herself within the bales, but I knew I’d heard her hiding there. Brandishing the wickedly pointed tines, I stepped into the stall. “I know you’re in there,” I said, trying to force the trembles from my voice. “Show yourselves.”

  The silence dragged by as I waited for a response. My entire body felt taut, like a cord wound too tight and about to snap. When a rustle sounded, soft and low to the ground, I sprang into action without thinking. I ran toward the bales with the pitchfork raised high, then brought it down again and again, stabbing at the straw with as much force as I could muster.

  I knew I was being illogical.

  I knew there couldn’t truly be people hiding inside such tightly packed hay.

  But I didn’t care.

  I was tired of the worrying. Tired of the fretting. I was sick of waking every morning in fear and dread.

  It felt good to stab that hay, physically attacking the anxieties and doubts that had haunted me since the fire. I remembered how Mama had said she did the same when making dough, and I redoubled my efforts, flinging chunks of straw about the stall without care. Every bit of me felt like it was screaming itself raw, and the only way to make it stop was to raise that pitchfork again and again.

  Then, I struck something decidedly not hay.

  The pitchfork jabbed into an object within the straw. There was a moment of resistance before the points sank in, finding their mark. Instantly I let go of the handle, but it remained in place, stuck within the hidden obstruction.

  My mind raced, trying to imagine what could possibly be stored within the bales. I’d not gone deep enough to encounter the wall, and I couldn’t remember a post being in the stall. Had Papa squirreled away some extra stock of rations here, saving away sacks of flour or cornmeal for a rainy day?

  Pressing my lips together in a grim line, I wrapped my fingers around the wooden handle and gave it a tug. With a wet squelch, the pitchfork came free. It fell to the ground with a clatter as I caught sight of its bloodied tines.

  Slowly my eyes lifted to the wall of hay. Blood trickled out from the section I’d destroyed. First one rivulet wet the dry stalks, then another, and another. I opened my mouth to let out a cry, but the only sounds I could make were choked gasps for air, like a fish pulled from water and left to die on a wooden dock.

  With trembling hands I began to pull down the remainder of the bale. Hot blood coated my fingers, smudging and staining Papa’s heavy coat. The front of my nightdress was soiled beyond repair. Whatever I’d struck was bleeding out fast.

  I pulled down chunk after chunk of straw, but still the blood flowed, creeping down the hay to be sucked into the dry ground.

  Where was it? Surely I couldn’t have struck so deep, not even in my wildest fury. And why was it so unnaturally quiet? The wounded creature—animal or human—hadn’t uttered a sound. Not when struck. Not now in what must be an agonizing death. Why wasn’t it crying out in pain or shock? Shouldn’t it have shown itself?

  Behind me the lantern flickered, casting long, wavering shadows across the birthing stall, as if the flame was being pushed about by an unfelt draft. I turned just in time to see the wick blow out, plunging me into darkness.

  “Oh,” I whispered, finding my voice once more.

  I reached into the pockets of Papa’s coat, fumbled about with sticky fingers before finding the little box of matches he kept there. Blindly I opened the lantern’s door, struck a match, and fed it the oiled wick.

  The lantern sparked to life, lighting the room once more. I moved the lantern out of the draft and turned to the gruesome task at hand.

  But the stall was clean.

  The hay bale was still in ruined shreds—piles of discarded straw littered the ground—but there was no blood.

  Anywhere.

  Not seeped into the
dirt. Not oozing from the stacks. Not even on me.

  I pawed at Papa’s coat, checking deep into its folds and creases. It had been horribly stained just moments before but was now clean. The pitchfork looked pristine. There was nothing to suggest I’d ever stabbed anything.

  “I don’t…” I wiped my fingers over my face, certain I would blink once and the massacre would return. “I don’t understand….”

  Twice this morning I’d seen things one moment that were gone the next. I wanted to believe—I had to believe—the sleepless nights were to blame. Once the cakes were made, I wouldn’t have to worry over the sugar any longer and things could return to normal.

  “Please, God, let them return to normal,” I whispered, clutching my fingers together so tightly, the tips turned white and tingly.

  An unwelcome memory stirred in the back of my mind, like a thin cotton curtain caught in the draft of an open window. Just a wisp of a remembrance, truly. It wasn’t even my story to remember, only something I’d heard Papa speak of once, when he hadn’t known that Samuel and I were in the adjacent room, listening in.

  A few harvests ago, Levi Barton—one of our neighbors to the south—had become convinced there was gold to be found in the caves along the Greenswold. He wandered off to search, leaving his wife, the farm, and the harvest. Days turned into weeks. The wife was beside herself, certain he’d fallen into a crevice. Search parties were sent out, but no one knew exactly where to look. After a week of scouring the caves, the people of the Falls gave up and declared him dead.

  But then, one morning, Levi sat down for breakfast as though he’d only been gone for hours. His wife told other ladies in town that there was something peculiarly off about him. He was always muttering to himself, responding to questions no one had asked, staring into empty corners and nodding as if listening to someone who wasn’t there. Her friends told her not to worry—the caves must have been stressful, full of echoes and dark shadows. An overworked, overstimulated mind was apt to imagine all sorts of unusual things. Once rested, he’d be fine, they promised.

  A week later her friends came visiting for tea and found the wife at the dining room table, a pickaxe lodged deep in her skull. Levi had slaughtered all their animals too, quick slits across the neck, and had left their bodies in stalls and out in the fields, festering with flies. Before the farmer had taken his own life, he’d left a message scrawled across the side of his barn, written in blood.

  “THEY HAVE WATCHED AND I HAVE SEEN AND NOW I WILL SEE NO MORE.”

  That phrase had haunted me, eliciting chilled shivers on even the hottest summer nights when it had inevitably popped into my head, always as I was on the cusp of sleep.

  What had he seen?

  Had Levi seen blood too?

  The rustling noise came once more, snapping me from my thoughts. It sounded as if someone was crossing the loft above, stealthily on tiptoe. I grabbed the lantern and raced into the open area, keeping the light as high as I could.

  It caught a dark form slipping between the posts, keeping to the shadows.

  I hesitated for only a moment before climbing the ladder to the loft. If it was a hallucination, I had nothing to fear, and if someone was truly in our barn, they needed to be caught.

  “Show yourself,” I called out, searching for movement. “I have a gun,” I lied. “Come out now and I won’t shoot.”

  “Ellerie, don’t!” The voice came from behind a stack of old wooden crates not far from me. Though it was distorted and too highly pitched, I’d have recognized it anywhere.

  “Sam?” I hissed. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on the supply run. You—” I stopped, coughing against the horrible, raw odor filling the loft. It smelled like the Kinnards’ pig farm on slaughtering day, coppery and biting and so terribly, terribly wet. Covering my mouth and nose did nothing to help mask it. “What is that?”

  All I could make of Samuel were his eyes, reflecting the lantern’s glow and shining brightly even in the midst of the barn’s shadows. They looked too large for his head, panicked and stretched open wide. “They’re dead,” he whispered, and my heart plummeted into my gut.

  I wanted to move, wanted to step forward and take Samuel’s hands in mine, but I was frozen with fear. It was Mama, I was sure of it. Though the idea was utterly preposterous—Sam couldn’t have made it all the way to the city and back in just a week’s time—in that moment, I was certain my mother was dead. “Who is?”

  “All of them.”

  Tears pricked at my eyes, blurring my vision. I’d never felt so impossibly small. “Papa too?”

  “What? No!”

  “I thought you meant…What did you mean? Who’s dead?”

  “I—I’ll come out now and explain everything, but…please don’t scream, Ellerie. Just…please.”

  I squinted around the glow of the lantern, trying to make sense of what I saw, trying to find my brother within the monstrous shape that crept forward.

  “Oh, Sam,” I whispered, fighting the urge to flee.

  The smell, that blackened, foul odor, was coming from him. From the viscera coating his clothing, his arms and chest. He was covered in it.

  My eyes flickered over the streaks of red that had trickled down his face and dried there, unnoticed and unwiped. It couldn’t be his, not all of it. There was no way he’d be standing before me if he’d lost so much…

  Blood.

  “You’re not really here,” I said, clarity dawning on me. I shook my head, trying to force his image to disappear. “You’re not real.”

  His eyebrows furrowed together, his hurt evident. “Why would you say that?”

  I shut my eyes tight, certain he’d be gone when I opened them.

  He wasn’t.

  “You’re not Sam, you’re not Sam, you’re not Sam,” I whispered as he stepped closer. My thigh bumped against the ladder. I had nowhere to run.

  “Ellerie, I’m right here,” he said, tears welling up in his words. “Aren’t I?” His voice broke, so soft, I almost didn’t catch it. “Am I still in the pines? Oh God, let me be out of the pines, please, please.” His entreaties morphed into giant sobs racking his body. He fell to his knees, his chest heaving.

  I rubbed my eyes, but still he would not disappear. With shaking fingers I dared to reach out and touch his shoulder.

  “Sam?” I whispered. My hand came away stained dark red.

  This felt real.

  But so had the other visions.

  He uncurled from his fetal position and gazed up at me with such hope that my heart hurt. “Can you see me, Ellerie?”

  I knelt beside him. “Of course I can. Of course I— What is that?” I dared to ask, rubbing my fingers together to get rid of the sticky, stinking paste coating them.

  “The supply run,” he said dully, glancing down at his ruined clothing. “What’s left of them.”

  “The supply run,” I repeated, piecing together his sentences. “They’re dead.”

  “Every last man.” He pushed one hand across his cheek, flicking aside a piece of…something best not dwelt upon…and sniffed. “Everyone but me.”

  It was incomprehensible. We’d seen them just days before. “Asher? And Jonas? They can’t be—you’re saying they’re…”

  His back teeth ground together and his mouth wrinkled into a sneer. “If they went on the supply run, they’re gone. Dead. Dead and gone and gone and dead and what about that phrase don’t you understand?”

  “How?” The word escaped my lips, even as I cringed from his grip on my shoulders.

  “The monsters. They’re back. Or…they’ve been here all along….I don’t know how Papa and Whitaker made it through without encountering them.”

  “Did you…did you actually see them?”

  He nodded grimly. “We heard them following us for the first two days, mak
ing a horrible clicking noise and laughing….They waited until the third night to attack. It was…” He let out a strangled noise, burying his face in his bloodied hands as he remembered. “They’re not wolves, Ellerie. They’re something far, far worse.”

  “A bear?” I hoped, even as my mind recalled images of that misshapen stag.

  “No bear could scoop Jonas Marjanovic into the air.” His throat constricted. “He was the first to go. I still hear his screams. His blood showered down on us like a hot summer rain. They took Asher next.” The memory of whatever had happened to the poor man brought up a wave of bile Samuel was helpless to fight. He turned his head, emptying out his stomach with a shuddered cry.

  I knew I should ask what had happened to Joseph, but I didn’t truly want to know.

  “Did you hurt any of them?”

  He frowned as if my words were incomprehensible.

  “Sam—there were guns. Were you able to shoot any of them?”

  “Them.” His eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “The creatures.”

  “There…there were no guns.”

  “None of the men took guns?” Disbelief colored my voice.

  “They weren’t there. Not when we needed them. Even my pocketknife was gone.” He patted his pants, feeling for it. It was one of his most treasured possessions. Papa had given it to him on our sixteenth birthday, and Sam was never without it. “Am I really here now?” he asked quietly, laying his head against my side. Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes and spilled down his cheeks, running red. “When I was lost in the pines…sometimes I thought I was back at home, back with you and Merry and Sadie. Mama and Papa too. I was so certain I was there…here,” he corrected me. “But then I’d wake up and I was even farther from home.”

  “You’re here now,” I promised. “You’re home and you’re safe.”

  “You said that before, but I always woke up in the woods,” he whimpered. Then he let out a long sigh. “I’ve messed up, Ellerie. I’ve messed up so many things. When I was out there, with those things talking to me, laughing at me, they said…they knew…”