by Hank Early
I stepped through, turning sideways to keep the sharp, dry husks from cutting me. Emerging on the other side, I saw that it was a perfect circle of corn, that the moonlight had illuminated everything in its thick and lazy shine. It would have been a fantasyland, straight out of a Disney princess movie if not for the hatch set into the bare ground exactly in the center of the clearing.
I swallowed and moved slowly toward it. All of my impatience had slipped away, replaced by a chilled panic, a looming dread about what I’d find when I opened that hatch.
Two more steps, and the symbol on the lid came clear. The axes that framed the skull seemed more ominous in the light of the moon. I knelt beside the hatch, my 9mm in one hand, the flashlight in the other. The handle was there. All I needed to do was turn it.
I put the flashlight down, aiming the light at the handle. I felt a surge of despair. I felt as if I was poised before a moment that could go either way. The evil might be inside or it might jump into me, or maybe there was no such thing as evil and grief was all there was in the world. Maybe it was the grief that set off the evil, or maybe it was the other way around.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to open the door. After all the struggle I’d been through, I didn’t want to open it. Perhaps it was the realization that my struggle, in the end, meant nothing. The seeds of evil and grief had been planted so long ago, and we spent our lives opening the ground, tending the soil, nursing them to full health.
This one could kill me. Not just physically. This one would kill anything resembling my soul, my interior life, my faith in this godforsaken world.
I might have stayed there longer, wasting time I didn’t have, putting off the inevitable, had I not seen the light flashing faraway, at what I guessed was the outskirts of the cornfield. Time was short now. They were almost here.
The handle was cold in my hand. I turned it hard and lifted the hatch.
51
Moments of joy—true ones, anyway—are the rarest things. I’m not talking about happiness. I’m talking about joy, true joy, the kind that aches as much as it lifts. The kind that makes you decide life might be worth it after all, even despite all the bad shit.
Maybe those moments seem more intense when they follow moments of despair. Despair is what I felt when I shined the flashlight inside the bunker and saw nothing but skulls so bright they seemed to glow. I eased down the ladder, gripping the metal rungs tightly, the sweat under my palms making each one slick.
At the bottom, I looked for a bare place to step and finally kicked one of the skulls out of the way with a hollow rattle. Once on solid ground, I smelled something horrible, something more pungent than old bones, and I immediately thought the worst. It was coming from my left, and I shined the light toward it and found … nothing. Well, not quite nothing. A closer look revealed what appeared to be human waste near the far wall of the bunker. Somehow, that gave me hope.
I turned the other way and that was when I saw her.
She was asleep, in the far corner of the bunker, which was a great deal larger than I’d anticipated. She was alive. She was breathing. She’d been fed.
And just like that I felt the joy.
It lasted only briefly, but it hardly mattered. When you feel it, real joy, you only need a shot. Mary’s eyes opened under the glare of the flashlight. For a moment, her expression was utter disbelief, and then she smiled. I went to her and kissed her, and only then did she seem to believe that I was real.
“Earl?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s not a dream.”
She sat up and hugged me so hard my hip hurt. I didn’t care. I hugged her back just as hard.
“They’re going to film me,” she said, and she was crying and hyperventilating all at once. I pushed her hair back, stroking her face.
“Take it easy,” I said. “I know all about it. Which is why we need to go. Right now.”
Mary nodded, and I helped her to her feet. I must have winced when I did because she leaned in and kissed my neck. “You’re hurt.”
“Got shot by Jeb Walsh and cut in the ass by Old Nathaniel.”
“Good Lord.”
“Yeah, it’s been one of those weeks.”
We moved to the ladder. I let her climb out first, and then I followed her.
“Where?” she said. She seemed to be in shock, still unsure if my visit was real or a dream.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings. The corn looked the same on all sides, and it wasn’t until I looked up and saw the moon that I understood which direction was which. Now I just needed to decide.
The dream always ended in the same place, the train trestle. The pervading sense I got from the dream upon waking was that Mary survived. I didn’t necessarily get the same sense about myself, but the goal was to save Mary. That had always been the goal.
“This way,” I said, pointing in the direction that I believed would lead us out of the cornfield and to the tracks.
* * *
Once inside the dense stalks again, another world revealed itself. It was a world of immense depth and layers. Complications upon complications, no sense or meaning other than plunging forward, looking behind to make sure Mary was still close. She’d become another dark shape among a million dark shapes, and I felt afraid of losing her again.
I lost track of time as we moved through the cornfield, and soon even my ability to read space seemed to suffer. Was the stalk far away or right in front of my face? Sometimes I couldn’t tell. And where was the straight spoke that we needed, the path that would take us out of here?
Mary grabbed my hand and pulled me close. I started to speak, but she put a hand to my mouth and nodded off to the right.
The stalks weren’t as dense here. It felt almost like a clearing, but there were still enough of them around to make it difficult to tell what was what.
One stalk in particular seemed different. The others glowed with pale fire, but not the one directly on our right. It stood crookedly and did not move when the breeze drifted down from the night sky.
I was transfixed. Was it an illusion or was that something more than a stalk, something closer to a scarecrow or a man? Mary squeezed my hand so tightly it caused my shoulder to hurt again.
“Who’s there?” I said.
The stalk or man or scarecrow still didn’t move.
Behind us I heard something crack dryly. A cornhusk breaking or a stalk snapping in two.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off the unmoving stalk, the way it stood so crooked, so defiant …
Mary screamed and jerked my shoulder so hard, the wound reopened. I spun around and saw him.
The Hide-Behind Man, Old Nathaniel. He was flying at us, and I had just enough time to remember the old adage about when you see him, it’s too—
“Don’t kill them,” a voice said. “Not yet.”
The Hide-Behind Man stopped short of Mary, falling away back into the stalks. I lost him again.
A light burned my face.
“Howdy, detective.”
It was Lane Jefferson. A cameraman and lighting crew stood behind him. They parted to allow a small man holding a flashlight to step into the little clearing. Tag Monroe. A man stood beside him, holding a rifle.
Tag nodded at me. “This is going to make for some great scenes. I want to thank you. Truly, Mr. Marcus, I couldn’t have written it better myself. I have to admit, you fooled me at my party last night. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so ballsy. But never mind. It’s all worked out for the best. Now we can do a dual scene at the Keep. We’ll make it a ritual sacrifice. My adoring racists will eat it up. Uppity negress gets her head cut off while her guilt-ridden white boyfriend watches.”
“I like it,” Lane said.
* * *
Once back at the “Keep,” Old Nathaniel appeared again. He had a knife and watched Mary and me like a hangman watches his victims. Tag spent some time talking to Lane as they discussed where to put us and h
ow to light the scene.
The whole time, a man I didn’t recognize held us at gunpoint. I squeezed Mary’s hand in a way I hoped would be reassuring. There was still hope was the sentiment I was trying to convey.
For Mary’s part, she looked defiant. She amazed me with her lack of fear. She didn’t shrink from any of the men. Not even Old Nathaniel when he came over and held the knife out for us to see. It was a long, curved weapon, spectacularly sharp, and it was clear it would cut through flesh with little effort.
“Okay,” Tag said finally. “It’s time.” He positioned Mary a few feet away from me and had her kneel. She refused, and several men came over and tried to force her to her knees. I was on my way over to help her when I heard it.
The rumbling.
I felt it too. Like an earthquake on the other side of the cornfield, whose ripples could be felt on the air, the wind, on the cornstalks, it moved closer, tumbling toward us, deepening.
“What the fuck is that?” Tag said.
I met Mary’s eyes as they widened with understanding.
When the big headlights, like predator’s eyes peering through the highest stalks, appeared, someone screamed. A monster was coming, leveling corn, shaking the very earth, and scattering men like leaves ahead of autumn’s first breath.
I grabbed Mary’s arm and pulled her out toward the corn as the monster crashed toward the clearing, growling again, a deep, sonorous, glorious thing that shook the very ground and, somehow, the sky.
Stalks fell over as a rippling wave shuddered through the field. Just behind the wave were the eyes, and I saw now that there were six of them. Two were lower to the ground and the other four were high and moved like spotlights. Somebody whooped, pure joy filtered through a rebel yell. I heard Mary scream, and realized I’d stopped moving, that I’d somehow become frozen in the great beast’s bright gaze. Mary pulled my arm, dragging me into the cover of the stalks.
Behind us the engine died. Men shouted. Shots were fired. Bullets pinged off the undercarriage of Ronnie’s truck.
We’d only plunged a short way through the corn before I recognized the moment, the feeling. Even the pain in my side and hip seemed familiar. My heart beat a familiar tattoo against the world. I was here. I was here, it seemed to say, but there was something implicit in it too, something unstated, like an echo …
Like a dream.
We crashed through the corn together. My shoulder burned, my hip began to bleed again, and I felt like I was running on a prop that wasn’t really connected to my body, and I couldn’t make the prop move fast enough, and I couldn’t make it stop hurting.
Time slowed down and sped up all at once. We were in the field forever, and then we were free of it, and I remembered turning around and seeing him behind us.
Him. How was it even possible?
What followed us now was a myth come to life, a nightmare realized.
We ran through the woods for a long time before I fell.
Mary came back for me.
“No,” I said. “Keep going.”
She ignored me and braced me on my injured side, easing the pressure on my leg as we moved. I looked behind us. Old Nathaniel was closer. The knife was a silver streak in his hand. He seemed in no hurry, as if he already knew how it would all play out.
“You came for me,” she said, and kissed my neck. “And I won’t ever leave you.”
“Yeah, but if you don’t let go, he’s going to catch us both.”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. He may have a knife, but there’s two of us.”
“I dreamed this,” I said. “We have to keep heading toward the train.” Even as I said it, I was aware of two implicit things in the dream, the two things that I’d always known: Mary lived. I died.
It might not be the only way to make sure she lived, but it was the only way I knew about, so that was what we’d do.
As if on cue, I heard the train whistle. We adjusted our route slightly, heading for the tracks.
Somewhere far behind us now, I heard police sirens. I wondered if somehow Ronnie had gotten through to 911 and somebody had roused a deputy or two from the rally.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Fine. Got all the energy in the world,” she said between deep gasps. “How about you?”
“Fine. Just need to keep moving,” I lied.
“We’re going to make it,” she said, and I believed she meant it. “What happens at the train tracks?”
“We turn left and head for the train trestle.”
“What about the train?”
“We’ll have to outrun it.” I didn’t want to tell her about jumping.
“You can’t outrun it.”
“You can.”
“I’m not leaving you. Remind me again why we need to go out on the bridge.”
“It’s the only way. It gives us an advantage.” I knew even as I said them that my words lacked logic.
“It’s not to our advantage to be foolish,” she said.
But she kept going anyway.
Mary was holding me up now because my right leg was essentially useless.
The river came into view. I looked over my shoulder. Old Nathaniel was maybe twenty yards behind us and gaining fast.
Up ahead, the train whistle blared again, and I could see the bright headlight bearing down on us.
“We can’t make it,” Mary said.
“You can. If you let go of me, you can make it easy. Leave me on the tracks to deal with him.”
“For the last time—I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to,” I hissed at her. “The dream—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the dream.”
She grabbed my hand and started across the trestle. She seemed determined to pull me across if she had to, but we were still going too slow. By the time we reached the middle of the trestle, two things were clear: Neither of us was going to make it to the other side before the train reached us and Nathaniel was going to catch us both before then anyway.
We stopped, and Mary turned to face Nathaniel.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to fight.”
“No,” I said. “We jump.”
Mary looked down at the black water and shook her head.
“It’s too far.”
“No,” I said. “We’ll make it.”
It was a lie. I felt like she’d make it. But beyond that, I had no idea what to expect.
Old Nathaniel was a few yards away from us now. Him slowing down had given the train even more time to get closer to us. Mary looked at it and realized the inevitable. Even if she were able to fend off Old Nathaniel, she’d still have to jump or be crushed by the train.
“Come on,” she said, and grabbed my hand. I struggled to my feet with her help. “We jump at the same time, okay?”
I nodded. She counted to three and jumped. I let go of her hand, seeing the surprise in her face just before I turned to face Old Nathaniel.
The moment stretched out, as all the big moments do, and I saw the moon on the flat side of the blade, heard someone call out from far away, felt a whoosh of wind and thought it was a mighty breeze blown up from the river, but quickly realized it wasn’t a breeze at all, but instead the uprising of air as Mary fell.
I waited as long as I dared, the train bleating at my back, Old Nathaniel coming hard at me from the front.
When I stepped off, I was in the dream again. Reality ceased. I was falling through sleep, in perfect silence, or I was floating, hanging in the air, and the water was actually rising up to meet me, to welcome me.
I spun as I fell and saw him above me, a dark-winged scarecrow who had infiltrated my very dreams, the way evil always infiltrates each one of us, sooner or later.
And then the black water of the river swallowed us up and I sank to the bottom, but my eyes never found the full moon, high above the world, flooding this dark river with its crazed light.
A dark shape, f
alling, blotted out the moon. I was coming up, the water rushing into my nose and ears, and as the dark shape sank, we collided.
I closed my eyes—because the light was gone anyway—and felt the prick of the knife somewhere in my gut.
Turning and twisting, I broke free of his grip and willed myself to the surface, my body broken and useless, but my eyes and lungs burning for the night air.
I broke through in a coughing fit, and Mary’s hands were around me. She dragged me toward the shore where I lay, gasping, trying to tell her he was in the river too, but no sounds could break the shuddering violence of the train assaulting the night as it rumbled past.
When I saw him rise from the river, still clutching the knife, I pointed.
Mary turned to face him and he charged her, splashing water ahead of him. She sidestepped at the last moment, but he stuck out an arm and clubbed her shoulder, slowing himself. He spun, raising the knife and bringing it down in a flash, but somehow she’d slithered away, dodging the cut.
I stood, feeling like a dead man who just hadn’t breathed his last yet, and lumbered over to Old Nathaniel. Because it really was him, wasn’t it? No one else could be so relentless, so determined. All the others had found evil along the way. And he was the thing they’d found.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw my weight into him. He stumbled and swatted at me with the knife, catching the flesh on my right arm. As much as it hurt, that cut may have saved my life, and Mary’s.
The knife got stuck in what the doctors would later tell me was a knotted tendon. As I pulled my arm away and fell to the ground in pain, the knife came with me.
He fell on top of me as I gripped the handle and tried to pull it free. He did not speak.
His hands went to my throat and gripped it powerfully. I could feel myself dying, the world growing dark, the very life being squeezed out of me until all that was left was a tiny glimmer, just the spark of a thing. He bore down again, and then the glimmer went out too.
