The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

  He knew when the footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a difference in the sound. He thrust one palm out toward the swinging door and pushed it, but he kept his eyes on the narrow vista he had of the living room. The kitchen door swung back and slapped against his open hand.

  In the opening of the living room door stood a young black girl, whom he vaguely recognized. He felt suddenly reassured. “Martha-Ann,” he said, her name coming to him suddenly—as names often came happily to politicians—“Martha-Ann, listen, I think I’ve done gone and broke my leg here. You got to—”

  Odessa’s Martha-Ann had died in 1969, drowned in St. Elmo’s Lagoon. Lawton reached out for the swinging door again; when he pushed it open he could see into the kitchen. The sun through the windows gleamed on the gasoline can on the great table in the center of the room.

  Martha-Ann smiled at him, but didn’t come into the dining room. In fact, she turned to the side and disappeared. Lawton crawled toward the kitchen and got his shoulder against the door.

  Martha-Ann stood in the doorway again. In her arms, pressed against her shoulder, was the thing that had been laid on the bed on the third floor. Martha-Ann’s small body was tilted with the weight of it, but still she smiled. Her mouth opened wide in a grin and white sand spilled out of it over the back of the monster’s pinafore. She brushed it off carefully with her tender black hand. She stooped and laid the monster belly-down in the sand, just inside the dining room. It began to crawl back toward her, but she turned it around, and pushed it gently in Lawton’s direction.

  It came carefully along the edge of the dune of sand. The hard yellow nails of its misshapen feet and the numerous rings and bracelets on its clawed hands clacked against the wooden floor as it approached. It hadn’t eyes to see with and no nostrils to smell, but its ears were very large; and though Lawton McCray tried to remain still, it quickly found him out by his irregular, frightened breath.

  PART IV

  EYESIGHT

  CHAPTER 26

  On the morning of July Fourth Big Barbara McCray waited for her husband in vain. He had so often stood her up, however, that she did not attach much significance to his failure to appear. At the luncheon for local Republican dignitaries she sat across from Leigh and Dauphin, but it was Luker who took the place at her right-hand side. It was also without Lawton that the entire family attended a semiformal reception of the Mobile County Horticultural Society at Bellingrath Gardens that afternoon. Lawton wasn’t present that evening at supper either, when Leigh announced to the family that she was pregnant.

  At this unexpected news Big Barbara screamed and leaped up from the table to embrace her daughter. Odessa came too and hugged Dauphin. Luker and India, who had no particular liking for infants and—despite their own relationship—could not understand the joys of parenthood and childhood, added feebler congratulations.

  “I just don’t believe it,” cried Big Barbara when she finally sat down again, “a child and a divorce in the same year! What family is as lucky as ours?” No news could have improved Big Barbara’s spirits so much as that of Leigh’s pregnancy. She was full of plans for the baby and for themselves; now she wondered how she could have lived with Lawton all these years. “Just him and me and not a baby in sight.” On the spot she decided that when they returned from Beldame at the end of the summer, she wouldn’t be returning to Lawton, but would move directly into the Small House—this assuming, of course, that now they were about to make a family, Leigh and Dauphin would remove to the mansion.

  “Mama,” laughed Leigh, “you got to take care of me. You’re moving in with us.” And Big Barbara blushed with pleasure at the invitation that Dauphin so warmly seconded.

  “Well, y’all,” said Leigh then, “when are we going back to Beldame? Up to me, I’d go tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s fine,” said Big Barbara. “Sooner the better. I want everything to be just like it was before.”

  Leigh knew hesitation in her brother. “Luker,” she said, “you don’t have to go back to New York yet, do you?”

  He shook his head. “Depends on India. If she wants to go to Beldame I’ll go too, but if she doesn’t, then we’ll go back to the city.” He glanced warily at his daughter, knowing what she had suffered her last night there.

  “India,” cried Big Barbara, “you got to go with us! It wouldn’t be the same! And Thursday is Dauphin’s birthday—we got to celebrate!”

  “Barbara,” said Dauphin, “y’ought to let India make up her own mind. She already knows how much we want her.”

  India sat very still in her chair and contemplated the happiness of those around her. In a measured voice she said; “This is what we’ll do: We’ll go back tomorrow, but I’m not going to promise I’ll stay. Luker’s got to promise that when I say I’m ready to leave, we’ll leave that very minute. Luker, will you promise me that?”

  Luker nodded, and no one thought it strange that a thirteen-year-old girl should have the power to impose such restrictions.

  * * *

  It was puzzling that Lawton didn’t return that evening either, and Big Barbara even contemplated telephoning Lula Pearl Thorndike to see if anything were the matter. They all had been invited to a party at the Civic Center, but feeling that they had done their duty by Lawton all day long without his having the decency even to make an appearance, decided not to go. Big Barbara went home to pack and Leigh accompanied her. Luker went out looking for a decent bar and someone to lead astray, and India was left at the Small House alone with Dauphin. She watched television while he wrote checks at the long trestle table. When he had finished he sat down on the sofa next to her.

  India looked meaningfully at Dauphin, and turned off the sound on the set. “Tell me what happened to your sister,” she said.

  “Mary-Scot?”

  India nodded.

  Dauphin laughed. “You just been sitting here waiting for me to get through so you could make me answer your question, haven’t you?”

  India nodded again. “Luker told me what happened to him in the third house, and he said something happened to your sister too—but he wouldn’t say what it was. What was it?”

  Dauphin was serious. “I don’t think I ought to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Why don’t you ask Odessa?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me either. Tell me, Dauphin.”

  “Well, you know I had a brother—Darnley.”

  “He drowned. Like Martha-Ann.”

  “He went out in his boat, and he never came back,” said Dauphin. “We guess he drowned—of course, what else could have happened to him?”

  “So?”

  “So that was about thirteen years ago. It was in the summer—August. Mary-Scot was about twelve or thirteen I guess. It happened at Beldame. He went out sailing one day and he just never came back. Coast Guard went out after him, whole shrimp fleet along the Alabama coast was looking for him—nobody ever saw him. Never found the boat. And Mama was always looking out the window, watching for Darnley’s sail. We stayed at Beldame later that year than we ever had before. We stayed there till October first. On October first we were all packed up to go, but we couldn’t find Mary-Scot. We called and called, and she didn’t come. We looked in all the rooms of both houses and we couldn’t find her, and Mama was mad—Mama could get real mad—and she started up the jeep and started blowing the horn and saying we were just gone leave her there. But Mary-Scot still didn’t come . . .”

  “Where was she?” asked India, knowing.

  “She was in the third house. Mama and I never would have looked there, ’cause we knew Mary-Scot was so scared of the place. But Odessa climbed in through one of the side windows—she had to break a pane to do it, but she went right on inside. Mary-Scot was in one of the bedrooms upstairs, in a chifforobe. She was passed out.”

  “What was she doing there? Was she playing hide-and-seek or something?”

  Dauphin shook his head. “The chiff
orobe was locked—from the outside. And Odessa never did find the key. She had to break it open with a hammer and a table knife.”

  “Wait a minute. If it was closed and Mary-Scot was passed out, how’d Odessa know she was in there?”

  Dauphin shrugged, as if to say, How does Odessa know anything like that?

  “So who locked her in?” India persisted.

  “Darnley,” said Dauphin as if it were something India ought to have guessed. “Odessa got her out, and we just put her in the jeep and we took off. She didn’t want to talk about it, she wouldn’t say a word about what happened. But one time she told Odessa what had happened, and Odessa told me. Mary-Scot was looking out of the window of her room, and she saw somebody walking around inside the third house. She couldn’t see who it was, just that it was a man. Then he came to the window and waved at her, and she saw it was Darnley, so she thinks he’s come back and is hiding in the third house so he can jump out and surprise everybody. But he never comes out, so Mary-Scot goes around the third house, and up on the porch and right up to the window. And there’s Darnley—he was twenty when he died—looking right out at her. But his eyes aren’t right. They’re black and they’ve got white pupils, so Mary-Scot knows something’s wrong and she’s about to run away, but next thing she knows she’s inside the house and Darnley’s got his hands all over her and he’s saying things to her and sand is coming out of his mouth. She tried to get away, but she couldn’t.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s all she remembered. She didn’t come to till we were all the way to Gasque.”

  “When did Mary-Scot decide to join the convent?” India asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, long ’bout that same time I guess. But Mary-Scot had always been big on confession . . .”

  Next morning Big Barbara went to the lawyer’s where she argued with him a while about the terms of the divorce settlement and wondered with him why Lawton failed to appear when the matter was of such importance. Leigh was at the pharmacy having prescriptions filled and looking over tanning lotions; Luker was at a bookstore buying indiscriminately; and Dauphin was at his office giving discouraging answers to Sonny Joe Black over the telephone. India and Odessa, who had long been packed and ready to go, sat in the swing suspended from one of the great arms of the live oak in the backyard of the Small House. It was dark here and cool, and the damp wind whipped at the Spanish moss that hung from the branches.

  “Glad you decided to go back, child,” said Odessa after a few moments of silence. “Don’t do you no good to be scared. No good at all.”

  “But I am scared,” said India. “I don’t want to go back to Beldame. I think it’s probably stupid to go back there, in fact. I feel like it’s just sitting there waiting for me to come back, and all three houses are going to jump up and fall right on top of me.”

  Odessa shrugged. “You wasn’t hurt the last time, and we’re not gone be going inside that house no more, I can tell you that right now.”

  India laughed shortly. Her entering the third house again seemed as likely as being inducted tomorrow into the Baseball Hall of Fame. “Odessa, when I think about that house now and what happened when we went inside, all I can think is that it was a nightmare, and that none of it happened. Even the scratches on my leg—I tell myself they weren’t real. It’s like I could explain all that away, and I think I could go back now and look at that house, and say, ‘Boy, did I have a nightmare about that place!’”

  “That’s right,” said Odessa encouragingly. “That’s what you ought to be saying.”

  “But then I look at those pictures—”

  “Don’t look at ’em!”

  “—and those things don’t go away. They’re on the film, they were in the camera. I was looking at ’em yesterday—”

  “Ought to throw them things out!”

  “—but before I took ’em out of the drawer, I said to myself, ‘There’s nothing on those pictures. I’ll take ’em out and look at ’em again, and I won’t see anything. It’s all just shadows and reflections.’ But then I took ’em out and I looked at ’em, and everything was still there, and it wasn’t just shadows and reflections. And when I think about those pictures, then I’m afraid to go back. Listen, Odessa, I want you to tell me something—”

  “What?”

  “And tell me the truth. Is it dangerous for us to go there?”

  “Been going to Beldame for thirty-five years,” said Odessa evasively.

  “Yes, I know, and eleven years ago your daughter was killed there. Your only daughter was killed inside the third house. I know that for a fact, Odessa, and don’t try to tell me anything different. And last night I got Dauphin to tell me what happened to Mary-Scot. She would have suffocated inside that chifforobe if you hadn’t gotten her out. And how did you know she was in there? If it was closed and locked and she wasn’t making any noise?”

  Odessa didn’t answer the question. “Listen,” she said, eyeing the Mercedes which was just then pulling into the long gravel driveway, “you don’t need to ask me all this. They’s no need. You don’t think I’d let you go back there if I thought something bad was gone happen to you, do you, child?”

  “No,” said India.

  “Child,” said Odessa. She stood out of the swing and turned her back on Luker and Dauphin, who were getting out of the car a dozen yards away. Odessa loomed before India, blocking sight of her father and uncle. “If anything happens at Beldame,” said Odessa, looking down at India sternly, “I want you to do something . . .”

  “What?” said India, craning around to catch sight of her father. Odessa’s tone and her suggestion that something else might happen made her fearful.

  “If anything happens,” Odessa said in a low voice, “eat my eyes . . .”

  “What?” demanded India in a hissing whisper. Her father and Dauphin were coming nearer. She longed for their protection. Odessa stepped closer to India, pressing her hands behind her to signal the two men to keep back. “What does that mean?” cried India desperately. “What do you—”

  “If anything happens,” Odessa repeated slowly, nodding her head with terrible significance, “eat my eyes . . .”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was sprinkling as they loaded the car. When Dauphin drove by Lula Pearl’s house in Bay Minette to satisfy Big Barbara that Lawton was indeed there, the pink Continental in the red clay driveway was spattered with mud thrown up by the increasing shower. The drive through Baldwin County took half an hour longer than usual because of the severity of the rain. It churned the fields, beating down plants that were more than two feet high; it created vast pools across the road that threatened to drown the motor when Dauphin splashed through; in Loxley and Robertsdale and Foley the rain brought people to the screen doors of their houses and the front doors of their shops to watch the water pour off the roofs and awnings in thunderous destructive cascades. When they got near the coast the rain was even heavier, though five miles back that had seemed an impossibility; but its effects on the landscape were less severe. Any amount of water will fall on sandy ground and be immediately absorbed, and scrub pine may be blasted on the Day of Judgment, but nothing will harm it until then.

  Along the peninsula they could scarcely discern where the rain left off and the Gulf began, so heavy was the water that spilled from the black sky above. Big Barbara turned around in the front seat and changed her mind every five minutes whether it was better or worse for a pregnant woman to wear a safety belt, and they had reached Gasque without mishap before she ever fell into any permanent decision. India and Odessa stood talking behind one of the closed doors of the garage of the abandoned gas station, staring out through the grimy windows; Luker sat inside the Fairlane, looking intently at a magazine that lay open on the seat beside him.

  “Last week it was all heat,” said Big Barbara, “so I guess this week it’s gone be all rain.”

  “Don’t say that,” said India. “I’ve never seen rain like this. Will it turn into a hurr
icane?”

  “Not the season yet,” said Leigh. “It’ll let up any minute now.”

  And so it did, in a quarter of an hour, to the extent that they were able to move the luggage from the Fairlane and the Mercedes into the Scout and the jeep. They waited ten minutes more, in which time the storm—which oddly had been without either thunder or lightning—abated further.

  As they drove off in the two sand vehicles, India had the uneasy feeling that the curtain of water had drawn aside only momentarily, just long enough for them to get to Beldame. As soon as they crossed the channel she felt certain that the rain would begin again and they would be cut off entirely.

  Though it was low tide, the channel was filled with rainwater to some depth; the jeep and the Scout splashed through and wet everyone’s feet. This made little difference, however, since they were soaked anyway; when there was so much water in the atmosphere, metal roofs and raised windows could not insure dryness. As they neared the houses, India watched Odessa intently, hoping to discover by the black woman’s expression whether things in Beldame were all right.

  India proudly considered that she had developed a little intuition of her own. Before this summer she had never before admitted the possibility of anything existing that was paranormal, supernatural. Oh, of course there was ESP and psychokinesis, what they studied in Russia and North Carolina. These things she had known about since Weekly Reader days, but such things had nothing to do with Luker and India McCray and West Seventy-fourth Street in Manhattan. But Beldame was definitely out of kilter with the rest of the world. Something was at Beldame that ought not be there and India was sure that thing had never made an appearance at the laboratories in North Carolina and Russia. She had sensed it, she had heard it, seen it, even felt it—but still she did not entirely believe in it.