Chorus of Dust

by Justin Paul Walters

  The clouds rolled lazily across the sky. One eventually eclipsed the sun, and its shadow crept across the fields before me. I shuddered, remembering the impossible dark shadow crawling across the same fields the previous night. Before this one could reach me, I moved away from the door and walked toward the other end of the house. I crossed the great room and exited through the front door, unsure of where I was going. Before I could decide, I looked across the yard and noticed someone sitting in the old tire swing that hung from the oak tree in front of the house.

  It was Sam. We’d barely spoken since the night before, only a few perfunctory words here and there to prepare for company that morning. I still didn’t want to talk to her. I briefly considered getting in my car and once again driving away, but something Lanston had said the night before stopped me.

  “Maybe ten years from now you can try again.”

  I’d missed so much already. I didn’t want to wait ten more years before I got another chance. With a deep breath, I started toward her. If she saw me coming, she didn’t show it. She only continued staring at the ground, fat curls of red hair hanging over her face. She drifted back and forth in her swing as the wind pushed her, swaying like an enormous pendulum. There was a picnic table a few yards away, and I took a seat on the side facing her.

  “Hey Sam,” I said. For what felt like an eternity, she said nothing. I wanted to leave so badly it hurt, but I somehow kept myself planted and waited.

  Finally she responded. “Hey.” She still didn’t look up at me.

  “How’d you sleep last night?”

  “Well enough. I didn’t hear you come in. You must have come back pretty late. You sleep okay?”

  “Yeah,” was all I said. It was a lie. After I came back and stumbled to my room, the song began once again, louder than ever. It stayed with me most of the night, and I honestly wasn’t sure that I’d slept at all. I couldn’t tell her, though. She would think I was insane. Hell, I was beginning to think I was insane.

  She finally looked up at me. “So, what now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sam, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “That Grandaddy left the farm to me instead of you. It’s not right. You were the one here taking care of him all these years. I don’t deserve it.”

  She laughed, her face twisted in disbelief. “You think that’s why I’m angry, Adem? You think this is about Grandaddy’s Will?”

  “I…guess I assumed...”

  “Well don’t!” she shouted. “I needed you last night Adem, and you left me alone. Just like you did last time.”

  “I needed to get away for a while, Sam. I didn’t want to spend half the night fighting with you.”

  “And how long is ‘a while’? How many days, how many years? God Adem, how could you just leave us like that? How could you leave him?”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Then explain it to me,” Sam said. I sighed and realized I’d been tapping my knuckles repeatedly on the picnic table. Two splinters poked out of the thin skin stretched across the bone at the base of the middle and ring fingers. I tried to remove them but realized it would be impossible without a needle and gave up. When I looked up, Sam was still staring at me, her eyebrows raised and her mouth turned down. A recognizable gesture that said, I’m waiting. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly through my nose.

  “I don’t know what all Grandaddy told you, but I’m sure you knew that we had been fighting over the farm for a while. He insisted that it was my duty to continue operating the farm some day. That’s not what I wanted. I made that clear when I went off to college, but he didn’t want to hear it. After I graduated and came back home, it got worse.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Sam said. “You were at each other’s throats all the time. I remember the night you left, you two were in the middle of a knock-down drag-out. I still don’t understand though, why was that enough for you to leave the way you did? Couldn’t you have talked with me first? Or if nothing else, you could have stayed in touch, right?”

  “It wasn’t about the farm, Sam. It was something much closer to Grandaddy’s heart. It was about God.”

  Sam looked at me, puzzled. “God? What do you mean?”

  I paused, considering how to explain it to her. “What if I told you that your husband Winston doesn’t exist? That he never existed, and you were deluding yourself into thinking otherwise?”

  “I’d feel sorry for you, because it would obviously mean you’d lost your mind.”

  “Okay, and after that, what if I continued with this claim, no matter what you said to try and convince me otherwise? Even if he was standing right in front of you.”

  “I guess I’d eventually get pretty angry. What are you saying, Adem?”

  “I’m saying Grandaddy felt the same way when I told him there was no God. That there never was, and that he was a bastard for ever telling us otherwise.”

  “Wait,” she said, “so, what…you’re telling me you’re an atheist? When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter? All I knew was that I couldn’t go on pretending anymore. Every time he would ask me to say grace, every Sunday when he dragged me to that awful fucking church, I felt a little bit more of myself slipping away. I couldn’t do it any more, I couldn’t be someone I wasn’t. I had to tell him the truth. Except, I knew it would kill him. He’d been taking us to church since we were little, since Mom and Dad died. Telling him I didn’t believe in God anymore was like telling him that cotton wasn’t white. I knew he would lose his shit over it. I was right. He kicked me out that very night, and I never spoke to him again. The last thing he ever said to me was that one day, I would find out the hard way.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Sam said. She stepped out of the tire swing and walked over. She took a seat at the picnic table across from me.

  “I didn’t either,” I said. “That’s why I never contacted you two. It was too hard. I knew that it would end up as a conversation about God and belief and how wrong I was, and I couldn’t do it.”

  “You don’t know that,” Sam said. “Grandaddy might have been mad for a while, but he would have come around eventually. You remember how angry he was the first time I brought Winston home? He was incensed that I would bring a black man into his house, much less that I’d been dating one.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a chuckle, “how could I forget? There’s still a dent in the kitchen wall where he threw his boot. Winston was lucky he got out of there with his head still attached.”

  “Yet, by the time Winston called him to ask his permission to marry me, Grandaddy had changed. He said he couldn’t imagine a better man for me to spend the rest of my life with. He wasn’t as stuck in his ways as you think. If you’d just given him some time, maybe he could have accepted you as well.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter now anyway. He’s gone.” My eyes filled, and when the tears fell I could do nothing to stop them. Sam leaned over the table and embraced me. “I’m scared, Sam.”

  “What are you scared of?” She returned to her seat, but she still held onto one of my hands. Her fingers traced the splinter in my knuckle.

  “I can’t explain it. I look at the dirt and earth surrounding us here, and I think to myself, that’s Grandaddy now. He is ended, there’s nothing left of him. And I know that one day, that’s going to be me. And you, and Winston, and even little Sid.”

  Sam squeezed my hand. “Death can be a frightening thing when you have nothing to believe in.”

  “I’m not scared of dying, Sam. I’m scared of being dead.” (I wouldn’t mind the hangin’, but it’s bein’ gone so long.) “That concept of non-existence, of obliteration, it scares the shit out of me. Hell would be a relief. At least in hell there is some sort of existence, some sort of state of being. Even if that existence is never-ending pain and torment, it’s something. The truth is far worse. The truth is that w
hen you die, you don’t even know it. It’s like falling into a deep sleep. You don’t know the moment you cross over into unconsciousness, it just happens. Death is the same way, except that you never wake up. You aren’t resting, you aren’t peaceful, you simply cease to be. You are nothing. And worst of all, it’s inescapable. It is inevitable.”

  Sam said nothing, but I could feel her hands shaking.

  “I couldn’t come back,” I said. “I couldn’t bear to drag you all down into the same despair I’ve been living in. We all have to face it someday, but if Grandaddy was able to face it believing something better was waiting for him, then my absence was the right choice.”

  “Adem, I had no idea you felt this way.”

  “I never wanted you to know.”

  “It still doesn’t change anything. God loves you, and whether you believe in him or not, he’s still there.”

  I shook my head, my eyes closed. “No, he is not.”

  “Then do you believe I’m here?” I looked up, my face wet. “Because I still love you. Nothing is ever going to change that. Not even death.” She got up to walk around the table and sat next to me, and I buried my head in her embrace. I never thought she would forgive me for leaving her and Grandaddy, but I was wrong. She didn’t have to say it. I already knew.

  Both of us stared out into the fields and listened to the wind, just as we once did when we were younger. After a long time, she turned to me and asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  “About the farm?” She nodded. “I don’t know. I’m not a farmer, I never will be. As much as I love this place, it isn’t where I belong.”

  “Maybe you should sell it then,” she said.

  “Or maybe I could just give it to you.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped. “Adem no, I could never accept that! Grandaddy specifically said in his will that you alone were to take possession of the farm. He was adamant about it.”

  “He also said if anything were to happen to me, or if I were unable to care for it, that the farm would go to you and your family. I don’t see the point in waiting, do you?”

  She opened her mouth to object, but caught herself. “Listen, why don’t we talk about this another time. Maybe tonight or in the morning. I was planning on leaving tomorrow to go home, so let’s just enjoy our time together. And no more crazy songs waking you up in the middle of the night.” She smiled and punched me in the arm, and when I didn’t reciprocate, her face turned serious again. “You okay?”

  Her comment turned my thoughts to the song from the night before, then Eli’s bar and the professor. “When I left last night, I stopped at a bar in town for a while. There was an old man there who said he knew Grandaddy. Lanston Conroy.”

  Sam furrowed her brow and shook her head. “I don’t know that name.”

  “He said he was a professor at LSU, that he met Grandaddy a few years ago. He never mentioned the guy to you?”

  “No,” Sam said, “sorry, it doesn’t ring a bell.” She noticed my far-away gaze and put her hand on my shoulder. “Adem, what is it? Did he tell you something about Grandaddy?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “just ghost stories.”

  Sam chuckled. “Like what, the earth-demon?”

  I whipped my head around. “What the hell did you just say?” She jumped back from me, a startled look on her face.

  “Adem, calm down, it’s just an old legend!” She held her palms out in front of her and slowly walked back to me. “Every farm in the parish has a story about the earth-demon that haunts their fields. Don’t you remember? Grandaddy used to tell us that story when we went camping, when we were little.”

  “I guess I don’t remember that, no.” I fumbled around in my pocket for Lanston’s card. Maybe paying his bookstore a visit wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I found it and almost pulled it out when I felt two gentle hands squeezing my arms on each side. I sighed and slumped my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Sam, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Why don’t you go in and take a nap? You look like you need some sleep.” I could hear the slightest hint of a tremor in her voice.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” I rose from the picnic table and made my way back to the front door. Before going inside, I looked back one more time at Sam. She was watching me, her left hand crossed over her stomach and her right hand covering her mouth. Her face was pale.

  THE SHADOW

  Forsaken, I have come for you tonight.

  Awaken, look in my eyes

  And take my hand.

  Give yourself up to me.

  —Dream Theater

  A man drives down the freeway. He speeds up, faster and faster, as if the darkness will overtake him at any moment. He is crying. Wailing. Screams of agony pierce the night air, their intensity matched only by the roar of the car engine. A woman sits beside him. He reaches over and squeezes her hand, rubbing his thumb over the ring he gave her years before in a park by the river.

  She is dead. Her clothes hang off of her in tattered scraps, unable to conceal the lacerations running across the entire length of her body. There is so much blood. More than he thought was possible. She is covered in it, painted red and glistening. The man looks at her, and she is beautiful to him yet. He tells her he is sorry and kisses her cold, lifeless hand.

  The headlights turn off. The car swerves across the grassy median into oncoming traffic, and he releases the wheel. A horn blasts as the semi-truck barrels down on them. The man turns to his wife, and just as the car is about to smash into the truck head-on, obliterating it and anything inside, he sees her turn toward him. She is smiling.

  “No!”

  My entire body jerked under the cover as I ripped myself out of the dream. The last hint of an echo from my voice reverberated through the great room outside of the doorway. I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. It was soaked. When I put my hands behind me to steady myself, I felt that the sheets were also damp. I lied back down and thought about the dream. It was my parents in that car, there was no mistaking it. I couldn’t even remember what they looked like, but I was certain nonetheless. It had been years since I’d even thought about the accident. The police told us that Dad had fallen asleep behind the wheel one night when they were on their way back from visiting her sister in Shreveport. The official report said that the collision killed both of them instantly. It was an accident, nothing more. Still, the image of my mother, sliced open from head to toe, remained burned into my mind. What the hell was wrong with me?

  There was something else. Still shaking off the cobwebs of a deep sleep, I realized that I could hear a sound in the background. It was quiet, almost indistinguishable from the din of the pedestal fan by my bed, but it was unmistakable. The earth was singing again. And it was getting louder.

  I pulled the covers off and got up from the bed, dressed in nothing but my boxer-briefs. It was dark outside. I looked at the alarm clock and realized I’d slept the entire evening away. The smell of flowers still hung heavy in the air, now laced with the decay of those that had already begun to wilt. It seemed I could never escape that lingering scent of death. I reached over and clicked on the lamp next to my bed, and at the same time heard the distinct sound of the rear patio door slamming shut. My heart sped up and I stood perfectly still.

  “Sam?” I yelled out. “Is that you?” No one answered. I looked around the room for something to help defend myself and spotted an old pocketknife on top of the dresser. I grabbed it and swung the blade open on its rusty hinge until it clicked into place. It wasn’t much, but it was at least better than my bare fists. Slowly, I walked out into the great room, knife raised. The song intensified, the melodious voices clashing with an impenetrable clamor. I called out again with no reply and turned the overhead light on. When I could see there was no immediate danger, I went from room to room. Sam’s bedroom was first, and it was empty. Each bedroom, bathroom, and closet after it told the same story. Satisfied that the house was empty, I walked to the patio door. The music swelled with each
step. Outside, the moon was even brighter than the night before, a nearly perfect glowing orb hanging in the sky. The white sheets of cotton swaying in the field gave off a blue tint in the evening light, every detail illuminated in blinding clarity.

  There, at the edge of the yard where the grass met the field, stood Sam.

  She was facing away from me in her green pajamas, looking out over the field and standing perfectly still. I slid the glass door open. “Sam, what are you doing?” She didn’t react at all, like she couldn’t even hear me. I passed through the doorway and took two steps, then froze. Far off in the fields, a black shadow crept toward us. I looked up to see that the sky was clear, a dazzling display of stars adding their own radiance to the light of the moon. Even if it had been overcast, the shadow was too dark to have come from a simple cloud. It was impossibly dark, siphoning away the light as it advanced. The song crescendoed to a fever pitch, as if every voice in the world sang out at once. A single voice surged above all the others, a deep and ancient command that resonated to the depths of my soul.

  “COME!”

  I covered my ears and cried out. My eyes watered. It felt as if my head would explode. I forced my eyes to remain open, and as the shadow raced in our direction, Sam stepped into the field, immersing herself up to her waist in a sea of white. For a brief moment, an image flashed in front of me of my sister as a little girl wading out into an algae filled pond in flowing white robes. An older grey-haired man, also wearing a robe, embraced her. You are buried with Christ in baptism, he said, and raised to walk in a new way of life. He pushed her down into the water and held her there. I struggled against Grandaddy’s hands holding me back, sure that the man would drown her if I didn’t stop him.