The Influence

by Bentley Little

Unless this relationship was a result of that creature in the smokehouse.

  It occurred to him that he had not met Jill until after New Year’s, and his love life had been on a downward trajectory for the past half-decade before meeting her. If it was true, as everyone was saying, that the monster (he refused to think of it as an angel) had changed everyone’s luck, making the rich poor and the poor rich, the miserable content and the happy unhappy, then maybe it was responsible for whatever he had with Jill.

  The idea depressed him, but he could not dismiss it, and though he was not suspicious of her, he was suddenly suspicious of what they had, and, a little too abruptly, he told her he was tired and suggested they go to sleep.

  He dreamed, and it was a nightmare he had had before. Once again, he was on a flat featureless plain that stretched endlessly in all directions. There were monsters in the air, monsters on the ground, all of them after him, and he was running as fast as he could, trying desperately to stay alive in this hellish world.

  He had just flattened on the ground to avoid the clutches of a swooping vulture-like creature when he was awakened by Jill, pushing his shoulder and whispering frantically in his ear. “Wake up! Ross! Wake up!”

  Sitting quickly up in bed, he tried to open his eyes, which seemed stuck together. He pulled his eyelids apart. It was dark out, he saw, and he was aware of an odd whistling sound. “Huh?” he mumbled groggily.

  “Do you hear that? That whistling? That song?”

  He heard the fear in her voice, and that helped wake him up.

  “What is it?” she whispered, huddling close.

  There was indeed something eerie about the sound, which seemed to be coming not just from outside but through a specific window, the one on the east wall. Getting out of bed, he walked uneasily to the window, hesitating a moment before pulling the curtain aside.

  The chickens were lined up in the yard, and they were whistling.

  Dave had told him that he and Lita had a hundred chickens on the ranch, and most, if not all of them, were standing next to each other, wing to wing, in rows that stretched back dozens deep, staring at his window and whistling in unison. The sight was not merely unnatural but genuinely frightening, and, instantly, Ross let the curtain drop, his heart pounding.

  The whistling continued unabated. It was a tune he thought he’d heard before, though he couldn’t say where, and while thankfully he could not see through the curtains, the image of the perfectly aligned hens remained imprinted on his mind. He could still see their stiff and unmoving necks, their partially open beaks, their eyes glittering in the moonlight.

  “What are they doing?” Jill whispered in his ear. She was right behind him, and he could feel her trembling body against his own.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Should we call Dave and Lita?”

  He shook his head. “Let them sleep. The chickens aren’t actually doing anything, they’re—”

  “They’re whistling!”

  “But they’re not causing any harm…”

  “Ross, we don’t know what they’re doing. And you saw them. It’s creepy. I can’t get that tune out of my head, either.”

  His plan had been to ignore the birds, go back to sleep and hope they would be dispersed by morning. The windows were closed, the door was locked, and they were safe inside the shack. It might be hard to fall asleep again with all of the noise, but even if the chickens remained where they were, they would definitely seem a lot less scary in the light of day. Jill wasn’t about to let him do that, though. So, gathering his courage and casting about for something to throw at the birds, he made his way toward the front door. In the wastebasket, he found a broken surge protector that he’d thrown away two days ago, and he picked it up, letting it dangle by the cord. It wouldn’t do much damage, not to that many chickens, but it would startle them, and maybe that would be enough to get them to stop.

  Afraid of being heard, he soundlessly opened the wooden door, then carefully opened the screen and, in bare feet and underwear, stepped out into the chill night air. It was all he could do not to loudly suck in his breath as he encountered the sudden drop in temperature, but he remained quiet as he padded over to the corner of the shack and peeked around the side.

  The chickens were not looking at the window.

  They were looking at him.

  And they were still whistling.

  Holding the surge protector by the plug and swinging it once in a circle above his head, he threw the object, letting it fly. It landed in the middle of the flock, and, as though a spell had been broken, the hens scattered, flying up, clucking wildly. Ross breathed a sigh of relief and hurried back inside, closing and locking the door behind him. Jill was already at the window, peeking out, and he moved next to her.

  The moon must have gone behind a cloud, because the yard seemed darker, but even in the gloom he could tell that there was something off about many of the birds. Some were huge, some were peculiarly shaped, and some did not look like chickens at all. He knew Jill had to be seeing it, too, but neither of them said anything, and he pulled the curtains shut and walked over to the bed.

  “It’s over,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  ****

  Ross awoke in the morning to the smell of smoke. The windows in the shack were closed, but the burning odor was almost overpowering and made him cough when he breathed in too deeply. Leaping out of bed, his first thought that the Big House was on fire, but when he yanked aside the curtains and looked outside, he saw Lita and Dave standing before a pyre in the yard.

  A burning pile of dead chickens.

  His coughing and movement had awakened Jill, and, instantly alert, she asked what was going on as they both pulled on their pants.

  “Hurry up,” he said, and quickly slipped his sockless feet into a pair of tennis shoes, not bothering to tie them before hurrying outside.

  She was in a shirt and her own shoes, only seconds behind him.

  Dave was standing before the fire, leaning on a rake. His face was obscured by the thick black smoke given off by the burning bodies, but Lita, a few steps back and holding a gas can, could be seen clearly, and her expression was one of grim determination. There were dozens of chickens burning in the pile, but there were dozens more scattered about the yard, their bodies unmoving. Dave reached for one with his rake, pulled it across the dirt into the fire.

  “What happened?” Ross asked.

  Dave answered. “We found one in our bedroom when we woke up—”

  “In our bed!” Lita corrected him.

  “It was down by our feet, all dead and bloody, kind of a Godfather thing. I don’t know how it got into the house; the doors were locked and the windows were closed.”

  “You didn’t hear me scream?” Lita asked.

  Both Ross and Jill shook their heads.

  “I got a plastic bag, and picked it up and brought it outside,” Dave said, “And all these other ones were dead. Except for one weird big giant one I’d never seen before that was kind of walking around in circles making strange noises.”

  “I’ve seen that one,” Ross told him.

  “I got the rake and killed it, and then I scooped all of these into a pile, got out the gasoline, told Lita to get some matches, and…” He trailed off. “Honestly, you didn’t hear any of this?”

  “We were tired,” Ross said. “From last night.” Before they got the wrong impression, he added quickly, “The chickens woke us up around—” He looked over at Jill. “What time was it? I didn’t even notice.”

  “Two-thirty.”

  “Two-thirty. They were all lined up in rows, like some sort of military brigade, right outside my window there, and they were whistling. A song. You didn’t hear that?”

  Confused, both Lita and Dave shook their heads.

  Jill began humming the song the chickens had been whistling, and just hearing the tune again caused gooseflesh to ripple over Ross’ skin. “Yeah. That’s it.”

 
; Lita was frowning. “I think I might’ve heard that before. Somewhere.”

  Ross coughed, the smoke starting to get to him. He and Lita both moved around the pyre to the opposite side, closer to Dave and Lita. “Are all the hens dead?” Ross asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dave said. “This doesn’t look like all of them, but I don’t see any others around. Maybe they’re hiding. Or maybe they ran away.” He was silent for a moment, staring into the pile of burning bird bodies. “I’ll tell you one thing. If I do find any more of them—”

  “You’re going to…?”

  “Yeah.”

  No one objected, not even animal-loving Lita, and Ross found that he was relieved that there would be no more chickens on the ranch. They’d made him feel uneasy for some time, and though Lita and Dave were probably planning to buy more with their newfound money, at least these ones would be gone.

  They were all coughing now, as an erratic morning breeze pushed the smoke in first one direction then another. The stench was disgusting, and Jill, gagging, had to spit so she wouldn’t throw up.

  “You guys go back to the house,” Dave told them. “Get yourself some coffee or breakfast. I’ll take care of this.”

  Lita, carrying the gas can, started toward the Big House, motioning for Jill to come with her.

  “Do you need any help?” Ross asked Dave. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

  “No, I’ve got it. I’ll meet you guys back inside when this is done.”

  Ross followed the women into the house, where Lita kept the doors and windows closed to keep out the smoke and put on a pot of coffee. No one felt like eating, not with that horrible smell lingering in their nostrils, so they sat around the table, talking about what had happened, waiting for Dave to come inside.

  Ross looked out the window at the black smoke that had now chimneyed into a plume that rose straight and high into the air, and could probably be seen for miles. He thought of how grateful he’d been to Lita and Dave when he’d first arrived, how happy he had been, after months of stress and insecurity, to actually have security in his life and a place to live.

  Now it was all going to hell. And, as rational and unimaginative as he’d always considered himself to be, he knew that it was because of that thing rotting in Cameron Holt’s smokehouse.

  Something needed to be done about it.

  But though they continued to talk about it even after the fire was out and Dave was in the kitchen with them, none of them had any idea what that something was.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  The sun had only just come up, but Tad was already off to his new job with a roofing company in Benson, and Mariah was safely on the bus to school. Alone in the house, Cissy Heath knelt on the floor of the kitchen before the cross on the wall, praying. She prayed each morning, not for material success, not even for health or long life.

  For forgiveness.

  Even now, she wondered what sort of judgment would be passed on her. She’d been a cock jockey in her younger days, had ridden any pole she could fit in her hole, but she’d returned to the church in the 1990s and had led a blameless God-fearing life since then.

  Now, through His angel, she was in the direct service of the Lord. Which ought to count for something. Then again, Tad had been one of the men shooting off guns to celebrate New Year’s Eve, so it was also possible that any gains she’d made were balanced out and she was right back where she started.

  Finishing her prayer, she remained kneeling, eyes closed. She was trying for calmness, inner peace, but there was an old fragment of song lyric trapped in her head, going around and around, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of the tune or who had sung it. After the song segment that was tormenting her, there was a line about the “flat Sargasso Sea,” which made her think it might be “Rock Lobster” by The B-52s, but she knew that wasn’t it.

  The title was on the tip of her brain.

  Flat Sargasso Sea.

  It was…it was…

  “Mimi on the Beach.” By Jane Siberry.

  Yes.

  The entire song came flooding back to her—melody and lyrics—and while relief accompanied the knowledge, another emotion was stirred by the recollection: sadness. The song made her sad. She remembered when it had come out, remembered how young she’d been, how much future was still ahead of her, how many possibilities the world had held. Her life could have gone in a thousand different directions, and while she was proud of who she was today, the truth was that this was not where she would be—or who she would be—if she had her choice.

  She suddenly felt depressed. Where was Jane Siberry? she wondered. Was she still recording music? Where was Selina Choy, who’d been her freshman roommate back then? Was Selina still alive?

  Every path her thoughts took ran to darkness and Cissy opened her eyes and looked up at the cross on the wall, then around at the shabbiness of her small kitchen. She loved her husband and her daughter, and she truly did believe, but every so often she wondered what things would be like if she hadn’t gone back to the church. A nagging notion in the back of her mind told her that she might be happier.

  Which was why she needed to pray.

  She shouldn’t have such thoughts.

  Closing her eyes tightly, she offered up another prayer for forgiveness, finishing with three Hail Marys, and told herself that she felt better.

  Cissy had had breakfast with Tad and Mariah, but mouthing prayers had made her thirsty, and she stood, opening up the refrigerator and pouring herself another glass of orange juice. She set herself in front of the sink, drinking it, staring out at the vacant lot behind the grocery store.

  Last night, she’d dreamed again that she was in the smokehouse, only this time she had been alone with the angel and it had…unfurled.

  Its new form had been terrible, far worse than its original appearance. It was jet black rather than dark green, and its formerly thin wings were thick and spiky. Demonic. Just like its body, which now had clawed feet, two extra insectile arms and stood twice as tall as a man. But it was the look of insanity and hatred on its wild monstrous face that frightened her to the core of her being.

  The end was coming soon, she knew, very soon, and the angel would reward those who deserved it and punish those who didn’t. She was afraid of that judgment, and she wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just avoid it, to escape it, to opt out.

  To kill herself.

  Kill herself.

  The idea was somehow calming.

  The church had always taught her that suicide was a sin, but when she thought of the angel and the way it had looked when it revealed its new self—

  when it had unfurled

  —killing herself seemed like a viable option.

  Cissy had heard about the good fortune the angel had brought some people, the bad fortune that had befallen others, the luck that had changed, and she’d wondered why nothing like that had happened to her or her family. It occurred to her that that was what was happening now. For the truth was that she had been happy and satisfied until today, until this moment. Her past had been something she had been ashamed of and regretted. All of a sudden, it was something she missed, something she had lost, and she wondered if the change in her fortunes involved her happiness.

  Maybe, maybe not. The reasons didn’t matter. The fact was that the future was no longer something she had the confidence to face. She loved God, but she was afraid of His angel, and taking herself out of the equation seemed like the easiest and best solution to the problem.

  The only question was: what to do about Tad and Mariah? It would be wrong to leave them alone; there was no way she could do that. It would be better for all of them if she killed her husband and daughter first, then took her own life. That way, they would be together.

  She smiled to herself, feeling calm and reassured. Finishing her orange juice, she walked over to Tad’s gun case and chose a rifle. Mariah wouldn’t be home for another eight hours, Tad for ten, maybe twelve, bu
t it didn’t hurt to be prepared. She would load the rifle, set up a chair in front of the door and wait. She’d shoot Mariah when she walked through the doorway—in the face, so it would be quick—then she’d do the same to Tad when he returned, and then she would kill herself.

  Maybe, if she was lucky, the angel wouldn’t get them then.

  ****

  Jeri finished her route early, unnerved by the amount of mail that had remained uncollected in various boxes. It wasn’t her place to check up on people—her job was just to deliver the mail—but after seeing the letters, catalogs and bills she’d delivered yesterday and the day before piling up untouched, she had been sorely tempted to get out of the car and knock on doors to make sure everyone was all right.

  Only…

  Only she didn’t really want to. She was afraid to know the truth because she suspected that more than one of the mail recipients was not sick or on vacation or incapacitated but…

  Dead.

  Yes, dead. That was her fear, and she didn’t want it confirmed. So she forced packages and envelopes into overstuffed boxes with no room to hold them and forced the doors closed, wondering what she would do tomorrow if the mail was still not collected.

  She had stopped delivering to the ranches several days ago, but from various points on her route she could still see Cameron Holt’s scarecrows, and even at a distance those things freaked her out. She’d told Don about them, had even driven out with him to so he could see for himself, and he had indeed thought they were freaky. But he didn’t seem to feel the threat that she did, and she wasn’t sure he totally believed her story about the scarecrows looking at her, about one of them actually climbing off its pole. Like everyone else, he knew that a lot of weird things had been happening around Magdalena since New Year’s Eve. But he was one of those people who seemed to have been affected positively. She had been terrorized by those damn scarecrows, beset by complaints from postal customers, and now half of the people on her route weren’t even picking up their mail.

  Dead