“That’s just the fever talkin’.”
“No, no it ain’t. I saw them standin’ up like m-men.”
“Standin’ up? No sir. They ran off on all fours like dogs is supposed to.”
Calum clutched his gut and moaned. He caught his breath and looked hard into Billy’s eyes. “I saw it, Bill. Just when they reached that little g-girl. They stood up on two legs and she greeted them with some kind of salute. One of them turned and l-looked at me with them evil black devil eyes. That’s when I fell over. Like it pulled somethin’ out of m-me.” Billy tried to shush him, but Calum only spoke louder. “Leave me, brother. Bury me in the w-woods. Ain’t nothin out here but the worst kinds of evil.”
Calum had lost consciousness again. Billy rinsed the bloody shirt in the stream and cleaned the wound the best he could. The bullet had hit him just under the final rib and there was now a sickly green flare around the wound and a constant gelid substance that welled from the hole. Billy dressed Calum and carried him to the path beyond the stream.
The light began to change as the trail curved into a narrow valley. Beyond the treeline was a large cornfield, the summer light smoldering in the golden anthers. Green blades hissing in the breeze. Billy elbowed through the cornfield and, when he finally crossed the length of it, he found a small barn and a farmhouse built against a grassy bluff.
He called out, but there was no answer.
He lumbered onto a dirt driveway and made a circle as he went, looking for signs of inhabitants. He called out a second time. A pair of crows gawked from the roof of the barn. Bumblebees meandered in the blue houndstongue. Beside the barn sat an old stable, but no horses. No carriage or wagon. It was as if the property had been abandoned for the season, if not for the entire year.
Or perhaps longer.
Billy went to the barn and toed the door open. It was dark and cool inside. Thin sheets of sunlight filtering between the clapboards. There were two small stables in back and the rusted chassis of an old, steel plough. He found a pen full of loose hay in the corner and he kicked open the pen gate and set Calum in the straw. He patted Calum’s chest and kissed him on the forehead and he went back up the driveway toward the farmhouse.
The house was old and weather-worn. The paint had mostly peeled from the wood, revealing the gray woodgrain beneath. The door had rotted off the hinges and it lay slanted in the threshold. He stood in the doorway with one hand on his hip and the other holding the wood grip of the revolver. Bloodstains on his hands. On his clothes. He looked like an outlaw from some dime-store paperback.
He peered into the darkness of the front room.
A cool breeze.
The dry rustling of leaves.
He turned. The girl from the woods stood in the driveway, the bloodhounds sitting on either side. Her messy black curls fell over her shoulders, skin pale as the moon. She stared coolly, eyes unblinking. If there was an expression on her face, Billy couldn’t make it out.
“Hello, miss,” he said. He tried a polite smile, but it was short-lived. He eyed the hounds and they eyed him back. “Your ma and pa around?”
“They’re away,” she said.
“They comin’ back? My little brother’s hurt bad. I set him in the barn ’til I could find somebody.”
“They’ll return tonight for the festival.”
Billy glanced around the property. “Don’t look like you’re settin’ up for a festival.”
“Tonight, the full moon will pass completely through the Earth’s shadow. It won’t happen for another three years.”
“Is that so?” Billy wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He came down the porch steps and stood in the driveway. “There’s a fella out in the woods,” he said. “Looked like he got chewed up pretty bad. You wouldn’t know what happened to him, would you?”
The hounds licked their snouts and their ears perked.
“Could’ve been a mountain lion,” she said.
“Someone jammed a whole ear of corn in his mouth.”
“Maybe he was having a picnic.” She turned her head slowly to the barn and watched it a long while, as if she had heard a sound there. When she turned back, she said: “Your brother is about to die.”
Billy stiffened. “Why’d you say that?”
“I can help him, you know.”
“How?”
“I have medicine.”
“What kind of medicine?”
“The kind that will bring him to his feet again.”
Billy hurried to the barn. When he kicked the door open, he found Calum sprawled in the straw with his eyes hammered in their lids and his mouth slanted open. Billy knelt beside him and cupped his face with both hands. The pupils were dilated, red veins spidering through the sclera. His skin hung pale and loose against the jawbone. He lifted Calum and pressed his forehead to the young man’s temple.
“I’m sorry, brother,” said Billy. “We’ll get you fixed up. This little girl here says she got medicine. I told you I ain’t gonna let you die.”
A shadow passed through the barn and the girl appeared in the doorway. She was dragging a canvas tarp piled with cornstalks, the dark green ears still attached, cornsilk spilling from the husks.
“Lay him there,” she said, pointing to the center of the barn.
Billy did as she asked, gently settling Calum’s head and wicking the sweat from his hair with his fingers. A stain darkened the young man’s trousers and the smell of urine folded into the air. “You brought the medicine?” he asked.
“Yes. Now, remove his clothes.”
Billy unbuttoned Calum’s shirt. “Just the shirt?”
“Every stitch. Put it in a pile.”
Billy worked the clothes off. The body smelled of profound sickness. When he finished, he set the clothes in a pile and backed away slowly. “What’s next?”
“Take the clothes and set them outside,” she said. She’d stripped the leaves from the cornstalks and was fashioning the bare stalks into tightly wound braids. “There are two pails outside. Bring them to me.”
Billy went to fetch the pails. Along the outside wall sat two crude buckets hollowed from oak rounds with handles made of braided reeds. One of the buckets contained water, in the other was a thick white substance like wall paint. Billy set the pails by Calum’s feet. The girl had spread Calum’s arms out and moved his legs apart like da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man.’ She gathered a large handful of cornsilk and dipped it in the water, wringing it over the lightly breathing body.
The bloodhounds had slipped into the barn and were panting in the shadows. They pressed their bellies to the ground and watched with a peculiar interest.
“He ain’t breathin’ too well,” said Billy.
The hounds growled when he spoke.
“The medicine will help,” she said, pointing to the second bucket. “Hand it to me.” She dipped the cornsilk in the second bucket and began pasting Calum with the white substance. It clung to his skin like grease. She worked slowly, starting at the bullet wound and circling outward. She lifted his limbs to cover the undersides and rocked the body on its side to paint his back. When she moved him, she did so with the strength of someone of a much larger stature. Within minutes, Calum had become a pure white figure that nearly glowed as if by some inner luminescence.
“How fast will it work?” Billy asked. “He still don’t look good.”
The girl shushed him and arranged the cornstalk braids around Calum’s body in careful geometries. A line from his head to his left foot. Another to his right. She lifted the head and placed a cornstalk along the length of his outstretched arms. She crossed another pair from hands to feet so that he was now laying atop a precisely fashioned pentagram.
“I’ve seen that symbol before,” said Billy. “Calum dreamt of it last night.” He took a step toward Calum, searching for signs of movement.
The body was still.
The breathing had stopped completely.
“He better start brea
thin’ again,” said Billy, moving closer. He called his brother’s name, then turned to the girl and said, “I don’t know what you done here, but it sure as hell ain’t natural.”
The dogs rose, showing their fangs.
“Stay back,” the girl hissed. Her voice was harsh, her eyes like tiny dark fruits. “You must not disturb the body.”
“The body? You told me you could help him. He sure don’t look helped.” Billy squared off with the girl and she took a step back. As if by some silent command, the hounds leapt at Billy, jaws clamping his wrists. They dragged him toward the open doorway. Billy shook them off and shouldered against the door. He pulled the revolver from the back of his pants, but before he could shoot, the dogs attacked a second time.
The gun fired and a round hit the dirt.
The animals tore at Billy’s arm until the gun fell away, and one of them leaped onto his chest and tackled him to the ground. He fell hard, the air knocked from his lungs.
Gasping.
He slapped the ground, searching for the revolver.
“I told you to stay back,” the girl said.
The bloodhounds now stood over him, towering on their hind legs. Nightmarish beasts with jet black eyes. From their heads had grown slick obsidian horns. One held a long wooden spade, claws curled around the handle.
The spade came down on Billy’s head.
A flash of white followed by darkness.
The full moon was up when Billy awoke, sprawled in the dirt with his left eye swollen shut. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, a sharp pain at his temples. His mauled arm still bleeding. He saw a flicker of light in the barn. Calum was gone, but the cornstalk pentagram was still intact. There were candles sputtering at the five points of the star and a ghostly white impression where Calum had lain.
He searched for the leather knapsack, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
The revolver was also gone.
He turned to the driveway.
“Calum,” he called.
He staggered to the farmhouse but found it dark and empty. Coyotes yipped from some faraway den and Billy thought he could hear a steady drumbeat echoing through the valley. He climbed the old porch steps, the wood creaking as he went. At the top of the steps, he turned and looked over the cornfield. He saw a flutter of light at the far end of the field as if a bonfire was raging there. He could almost smell the smoke.
The beat continued.
Da-dum da-dum da-dum.
Movement at the field line.
Someone stepping from the cornstalks.
A nude male, painted white, an ear of corn in his mouth.
“Calum?”
It was him, no doubt. Calum waved in an exaggerated arc with his palm sweeping the air and he turned and disappeared into the cornfield.
Billy followed, calling after him. The corn was white where Calum had passed through, and he followed the stained leaves deep into the field. He could hear him walking just ahead, the lashing and whipping of leaves and husks as he pressed ever deeper.
“Calum. Wait up, little brother.”
The beat grew louder, the smoke thicker.
The glow of a fire.
The crackle of firewood.
He emerged at a circular plot in the field where a large fire raged and figures danced to the beat of a deerskin drum. Men and women circled the fire, their nude forms painted a ghostly white. All of them with their jaws hammered open and corn stalks dangling from their mouths. At the outer rim of the circle, animals danced on their hind legs, stomping like drunkards. From their necks hung the stolen necklaces. Silver and gold. Opals and pearls. Some with large pendants swinging at their hairy stomachs, sparkling in the fireglow.
Billy stood in a sort of mute wonder.
At the edge of the circle, the black-haired girl sat atop a brambling woodpile in a nest made of straw and cornsilk. Her beetle black eyes locked on Billy, face distorted in the roiling heat. On her head sat a crown made of yellow corn cobs.
Calum circled by, and Billy grabbed his arm.
The skin was cold and yielding.
“Calum, let’s go.”
Calum stomped to the beat in a mechanical lumber.
From the eyes wept a sickly rheum.
The smell of rot and woodsmoke.
The girl rose atop her strange nest and pointed at Billy. She drifted higher still, so that she hung suspended in the smoke-thick air, a bewitched form pressed against the full moon.
The dancing stopped.
The revelers turned to Billy.
He gave Calum another glance and released his arm.
“I’m sorry little brother,” he said, tears building in his eyes. “I’m sorry for all of it.”
Billy turned and ran
He ran without any notion of which direction he was headed. The cornstalks rose above his head, occulting the landscape. All he could see of the world beyond the cornfield was the full moon, and it was now dimming in a bloody gradient.
The night grew dark and the stars returned.
He heard a sound behind him.
Something careening through the cornfield.
Billy looked. A bloodhound scrabbled at his heels. It bit his calf and sent him tumbling into the furrows. He flipped on his back and the hound crawled atop his chest, biting his face. He bent a cornstalk around the hound’s throat and pulled tight. The hound thrashed its head with its tongue lolling from side to side and soon the cornstalk tore from the soil, roots breaking from their rootbeds.
He got to his feet and ran.
This time, he didn’t get far.
He cleared the cornfield, but the hound leapt and brought him to the ground again, biting and tearing every limb. Billy batted it with his fists but it wouldn’t quit. Other animals appeared at the field line, and they skittered toward him with their lips snarling. Some catlike and some caprine. All with horns and eyes black as coal.
Billy couldn’t hold them off.
The animals pinned his legs to the ground and he felt their hot mouths nudging at his chin, trying for the soft of his throat. He punched and bucked his body, but they were too strong, too many.
The painted figures arrived, swaying in the dark.
Dead eyes wandering in their lids.
Calum stood over him and slid the ear of corn from his mouth.
Shattered teeth, black gums.
“Pa was right, brother.” His voice popped and hissed like pulled roots. “It’s cold and dark, just like he said.”
Billy screamed.
The animals tore his stomach and clawed at the wound.
The smell of blood and redwood needles.
Calum pointed to the sky. The moon had turned completely red, ragged lines tearing across the surface like claw marks. The lines ran to the very rim of the sphere in five points, forming a crude pentagram. An evil eye blearing from the cosmos.
“It’s cold, Billy,” he said. He stood hunched and crooked like a tangled marionette. Jaw working as if by some hidden lever. “Cold and dark.”
The beat returned.
Da-dum da-dum da-dum.
Billy’s vision waned, a vignette of bloody snouts and fangs.
A chill welled from deep within his body.
“Come, brother,” Calum said. “It’s just like Pa said. Come see, brother. It’s so very cold and dark.”
The Fork in the Road
By J. Thorn
The boy stares at you through the flames crawling through his hair. He’s screaming. You can’t hear his words, but you can read his lips before they burn off.
“Help me!”
You could be in a room. Or a cavern. You don’t know. What you do know is that you’ve never experienced heat like this, a nauseous feeling in your stomach like sour milk and rotten eggs. The air shimmers as paint bubbles and rolls down the wall like giant tears.
“I can’t!” you scream, but the raging inferno steals your words. You can’t hear yourself and so you know the boy can’t hear you.
; Something falls, fire devouring the board or beam. You want to take a deep breath, but you can’t—every inhalation is filled with shards of glass.
The boy turns around and you can now see that he’s standing in front of a window. The flames dance before the opening, passing in front of the night sky like demonic clouds.
Is the boy going to jump?
Should he jump?
These questions roll through your head. You try to take a step forward, but nothing happens. You feel paralyzed despite the fact that you’re standing upright.
“I’ll come for you,” you say, although you don’t know what that means. You don’t know where the boy is going or how you’ll get there. You can’t imagine standing in a world not drowned in fire.
And then the fire fades, the smell of burnt plastic lingering on your tongue as darkness closes in from all sides.
You lean back into the leather bucket seats, the glow from the gauges casting a golden haze across the dashboard of the 1977 Corvette.
You reach for the gearshift, the FM radio crackling with static. No songs, no talk. A dry, cool wind whistles past your ear as you rest your arm on top of the door. The sky stretches above the open T-top, a black curtain of silk punctuated by a handful of glimmering stars. The air smells like fresh asphalt, but you can see weeds sprouting through cracks in the highway, the painted yellow lines faded to a ghostly luminescence.
When you turn your head to the right, you see her for the first time.
“Shift.”
“What did you say? Where did you come from?”
The woman laughs, her eyes wet and ancient. She has pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail, filaments of gray dancing through jet-black locks. The woman smiles at you, her teeth as white as a spring swan.
“You need to shift. Can you drive a stick?”
You look down and notice your left foot on the clutch. Your right hand is on the gearshift. You realize you can.
“Yes. But why should I shift? The RPMs aren’t even in the red.”
She nods but does not respond.
You glance in the rearview mirror and see nothing but a black void. Through the windshield and beyond fenders flared like the curve of a woman’s hips, you see the road sliding beneath the Corvette. You’re driving somewhere. With someone. In some time.
The Other Side Page 17
