by Pete Kahle
She had only half the field mowed and meant to stop for the day. Evening approached and the far sun was dying. Off in the glistening, icy air the Rockies rising behind her land were white with snow halfway up the crags. Soon the snow would swirl here and lock her indoors most every day with the wood stove.
But the fields needed mowing and now her ankle screamed like raging fire. She'd probably pulled a tendon. She didn't think it was broken, but she couldn't be sure of anything.
She glanced toward the cabin. Inside was her poor sister, Bonnie, and a nephew and niece, John and Teralouise. Bonnie had come to her for help when there was no help, when it was too late. Her mental illness was beyond Montgomery's scope of knowledge. Bonnie was off her meds and refused to go back on them. What could anyone do? It was 1949 and they wanted to give her shock treatment and keep her incarcerated, but Montgomery wouldn't allow it. “No,” she told the doctor, “definitely no, I'm taking her home with me.”
"She won't get better," he'd said.
"Well, she can't get worse the way she will if you shock her."
"You're wrong about that," he said, turning away. "She can get a lot worse."
Pain shot through her leg and she called for help. Could they see she'd fallen? She stared at the cabin door, willing it to open. To her surprise Johnny did open the door and stood there with a hand to his brow, looking her way. She yelled for help. He seemed to hesitate, but then came loping across the field to her. With his assistance she was able to rise to her good foot, lean on the boy, and hop to the cabin. Once inside, she asked Bonnie to get a cold pack. Bonnie sat at the wooden kitchen table staring ahead as if no one had spoken to her.
“Bonnie!”
This shook her loose from her thoughts and she looked at Montgomery. "What is it?" she asked.
"I've turned my ankle. I need a cold compress."
Bonnie slowly rose and moved as if through molasses to the sink. She pumped the hand pump and wet a cloth, squeezed it damp, and brought it over to the chair where Montgomery sat, a grimace on her face. "No good," Bonnie said.
"That's right, this is not good for us. I have too many things to do before the snow comes."
"No good cabin," Bonnie said, going back to the table to sit.
"What's wrong with the cabin?" Montgomery had bought it and the land from an old gold miner. It was perfectly sound, though for the four of them the one open room was crowded.
"Demons in the walls," Bonnie said, looking down at the table.
"Oh my god, let's not get on that again, Bonnie, you scare the kids."
Bonnie shrugged and lifting her right arm pointed to the front wall of the cabin. "There," she said. "And there and there and there." She pointed to each of the four walls in turn.
Montgomery looked over at the children and shook her head to let them know this wasn't true. It was their Mama talking crazy again. Johnny looked away from her and Teralouise stared out of big wide eyes, her body stiff. Montgomery hated how Bonnie scared them. It took her hours at night to settle them into sleep afterwards.
That evening the ankle swelled until it was thick and red. Bonnie couldn't be persuaded to make dinner so Johnny took over and fried up hard-rind bacon and heated beans from the day before. After dinner, night was full upon them and Johnny lit the kerosene lanterns. Bonnie hadn't moved, even to eat. He took away her untouched plate.
"Undress, wash up, and get in bed," Montgomery directed the children. Soundlessly they did as they were told. When Bonnie brought them here they'd been wordless, like mice in a small cage. As much as Montgomery hugged them and spoke to them softly, read to them from a book of children's tales, and spent time looking into their eyes, they still didn't open up.
That night, lying beside Bonnie in the bed, firelight from the woodstove dancing over the ceiling, Montgomery's hand was suddenly grabbed by her sister, nails digging in. "What?" she whispered, turning to look in the dark.
"Demons," Bonnie whispered, too terrified to point them out.
Montgomery looked but saw nothing, of course. Her sister was mad and nothing she said could be taken seriously.
Bonnie stiffened, then began to writhe, letting go of her sister's hand. Her scream rose from deep within her chest and shattered the night. The two children sat up in their bed, hollering too.
Montgomery sat up, feeling the quilt pull at her ankle, and that shot pain up her leg, but she had to stop this madness. "Bonnie! Stop it! There's nothing gonna harm you."
Just as she said that the quilt was ripped by invisible hands from the bed and thrown onto the floor. Bonnie's body spasmed with her abdomen rising up into the air and then her entire form rose, clearing the mattress. That's when Montgomery screamed.
Montgomery took the damp cloth from Johnny and patted Bonnie's face with it. She was limp now, sprawled on the bed as if she were a ragdoll thrown down. "Cover her feet," Montgomery told Johnny. As he did so, his mother didn't move. It was as if she were catatonic now, the experience thrusting her so deep into her mind she had been lost. She would neither speak nor move.
"I don't know what to do," Montgomery said, then wished she hadn't as her confession appeared to unhinge the children. Both Johnny and his little sister Teralouise ran around the small confines of the cabin wailing in grief.
She struggled from the bed, putting her bad foot down on the cold floor carefully. "No, no," she said softly. "Oh no, I didn't mean it. Your mama's gonna be fine, really. She just needs some sleep."
She knew it was a lie, but the children were terrified. She'd had them light the lanterns to dispel the darkness and that had helped. There were no demons present. Yet some force had attacked Bonnie and lifted her from the bed.
Therefore, the truth was that Montgomery really didn't know what to do. She couldn't let the children know that. Today she'd send them outdoors and try to resolve this. She wasn't religious and owned no Bible. She didn't even know who the pastor was in town thirty miles away. But she'd heard of possession and she now thought that was what plagued her sister. A demon, yes, though she couldn't see it. Something caused Bonnie to rise stiffly from the bed. She hadn't hallucinated that.
She had both Johnny and Teralouise in her arms, shushing them, covering their little faces with kisses. They both trembled and cried. She held them until they calmed, then told them to dress and go outdoors. They could stack the firewood. But they mustn't come inside unless she called them, did they understand?
Once they were gone, Montgomery hobbled to the bed and took hold of Bonnie's wrist. "Where is it? Did you bring it here, Bonnie? Has it been your companion for a while?"
Bonnie stared at the ceiling unblinking and didn't respond. Montgomery felt anger like a rod straighten her back and she let go of her sister's hand. "Come out and face me! I won't be such as easy target, will I? Come out, you cowardly bastard and tell me what you want."
The air grew electric and Montgomery's hair stood on end along her arms and the nape of her neck. She felt a presence. She shouted for it again to show itself.
A crackling rent the air, the sound like great logs burning. Montgomery held steady, her legs planted wide despite her turned ankle, her shoulders thrown back. "You go after the weak and the broken. Come after me and see what happens! I banish you back to Hell from whence you crawled!"
Her taunt was successful for the roof timbers shuddered, the air now sparkled with light and from the midst of it came what looked to be an angel, one with wings, but with a countenance so severe Montgomery had to look away. She was startled beyond comprehension and her mind felt addled. She had expected a horrible monster and here it was a majestic being of light and horror. The visage on the face alone was enough to shrivel a woman's soul.
Her voice broke, trembling in a lower register as she said, "What are you? What do you want?"
"I've come for your sister and... eventually you."
"Because we're godless heathens? God protects us nevertheless."
The angel laughed like thunder, shaking the cab
in, and Montgomery cowered, hunching her shoulders. She inched near the bed and took hold of her sister's hand. "You leave her alone. Her husband was killed on the railroad, leaving her penniless. She has two beautiful children who need her. Now let her go, she's suffered enough."
"You think suffering is my plan? That it's anyone's plan? Life is suffering, woman. You haven't learned that? Humanity is meant to suffer, suffer and die alone. I don't care about her suffering or yours. I don't care about children or the elderly or the crippled and despondent. She called for me and I've come. She wants to go and I'll take her. There's nothing to stop me."
He spoke truth. He pulled Bonnie's body from her grasp even as she tried to throw herself over her, and lifting her into the air, her eyes blinked finally, a single tear falling. She looked at Montgomery as if she were sorry, and then in a flash they were gone, the great beast of light and the frail human woman.
Montgomery fell to her knees at the bed and wept. She hadn't been strong enough; she hadn't been persistent and full of resolve. She'd lost her sister and it was all her fault, all her fault.
Lying again, Montgomery told the children their mother had left by the back, taking the old black mare to town where she could get treatment. They gave her quizzical looks, but what could they do? Their mother had disappeared.
After days, her ankle improved so she could stand on it and she returned to the fields for the mowing. If the grasses were allowed to stay tall and dry they presented danger from lightning strikes that would set the fields and then the cabin on fire. It was early November before she got the mowing done and she arranged for a school in town to take the children. They were too sad and alone on the ranch. They needed other children for companionship. It would cost her half her wheat crop next year, but at least Johnny and Teralouise would be safe and she'd pay anything for that.
She found herself obsessing over the disappearance of Bonnie and the creature she'd seen who had come to take her away.
She thought to see the pastor in town, then decided not to. How would he explain a demon that was an angel, a deathly, earth-and-man-hating angel? How could a heavenly angel bring death and destruction? She assumed he was a Fallen one, not one of God's emissaries, but a rogue in league with the Son of Morning, Lucifer.
How beautiful he'd been until she looked upon his face. Then all of Hell and every hatred ever felt looked back at her and she knew he was not what she thought he was.
Each night she prayed, and having never prayed before, she felt a fraud, yet still she did it. She was now convinced the world was not nearly as simple as it appeared and that dark things walked among men listening to thoughts, and sometimes acting on them. She could understand Bonnie wishing to die. She'd loved Michael, her young husband, and his violent passing had left her empty. She, like a lot of women, couldn't bear to live without her love.
“I won't let you have me,” Montgomery whispered as she straightened the cabin and swept the floors. “I'm not like Bonnie.”
Time passed as it will do and the years tumbled one upon the other. Johnny and Teralouise grew up and left the state, never saying goodbye to their Aunt Montgomery. Well, she had abandoned them in a way, hadn't she? She expected nothing from them.
Montgomery's hair grayed and the chores were harder to do. A man came in the summer of 1959 offering his labor in exchange for room in the barn. This man, Gary Burtolson, became first Montgomery's helpmate, then her lover, and finally her husband. She never told him about the angel and her sister's disappearance. They didn't talk much, but they spent hours together in bed, exploring one another's bodies. They built love like building a stellar lasso to hold back the earth from spiraling out of orbit. Love heaped upon love made them strong, resilient. It created a wall against whatever the world could throw at the couple.
In the third year of their marriage, when Gary was adding an addition to the cabin, he fell from the roof and hit his head on a stone. He died instantly. When Montgomery found him she knew she was about to lose her mind. She couldn't stop sobbing. She covered him and went to town for the coroner. She wept the entire trip and back again, a big black hearse following her up the mountain to the cabin.
That night she still wept, her heart feeling as if it had truly broken into pieces, and she would surely die from it by morning. She lay on her side in the empty bed, mourning, when light sparked all around the room and the huge, monster angel was back.
Not having seen him in years, she looked him in the face and thought she was blinded. She turned away, shutting her eyes, and his voice filled the cabin.
“I told you I'd take you too,” he said.
“I've done nothing wrong.”
“Neither did your sister. She just asked for an end to it.”
“I...I...”
“Now you've asked for the same and I'm here to take you. To the end.”
She didn't know if that was what she wanted or not. She might as well, she thought, since Gary was gone, she was old, and the place she loved so long was falling apart. What did she have now to live for?
“Will I see Bonnie? Will I be reunited with Gary?”
Silence spun out like a web and she sat up then stood from the bed to face her fate. “I said, will I see Bonnie and Gary?”
The angel spread his wings and bowed down low to look in her face. “In the end? Where you asked to go? Right to the end? Do you think anyone will be waiting?”
She trembled now and began again to weep. “I'll be... alone?”
“You won't be at all,” he said, sweeping her into his arms and winking her into the invisible paradise of nothingness.
Johnny returned to the cabin, summoned by authorities when his Aunt Montgomery disappeared from the homestead. He found her husband had died in an accident just before she vanished. Just as his mother had also vanished when his own father died and they'd come to stay in the mountain house. He didn't understand a thing about it. But here he was and he'd inherited the place, so he might as well get started trying to fix it up. The field needed mowing, the fences repaired, the roof still leaked, and the new addition wasn't finished. He hoped Cynthia would like it here once he got it in shape. They could live here nicely if he put in some of the modern conveniences.
He strode into the one big open room and looked around remembering the little bed shared with his sister near the wall and the larger bed here were he stood, the one his mother and aunt slept in. He'd never really blamed Aunt Montgomery for putting them in the town school. It had been for the best.
He sneezed at the accumulated dust and began to turn for the door where sunlight fell across the bare floorboards when there was a feeling of electricity in the air and from the corner of his eye he thought he'd detected sparks of light swirling just to the left and behind him.
He turned, but nothing was there.
He shook off the premonition and walked outdoors. He and Cynthia would love it here, and he'd grow wheat and corn, he'd raise goats, and they would have a family. They'd live a simple life the way they always wanted.
His sister Teralouise had told him not to come back, to sell the old place, but she was superstitious, always had been, and he ignored her warning. “There's no ghosts,” he told her. “There's no demons. Mother was just ill.”
He couldn't see an end to life. He was young, handsome, and in love. The world went on forever in his mind, forever and ever, nothing to hinder it, no suffering to stall it, and with this abundant land at his fingertips, Johnny began the chores so he could hurry and bring his Cynthia to her new home. Her new life. Johnny, like his Aunt Montgomery, was unafraid. The cabin, if haunted, wouldn't deter a modern man.
He didn't believe in the supernatural. He was fearless because there were no beasts or demons who could stop the future. Not one. Still... if he was wrong and there was something... Something Odd... he'd handle that too when it appeared. He had no other choice, did he?
He whistled as he worked, he dreamed of Cynthia, and the home they'd make here, and all the while
the ageless Rockies looked down on him without pity, for he was nothing more than a man.
Billie Sue MOSIMAN is the Edgar and Stoker nominated author of sixteen novels and more than two hundred short stories that were in various anthologies and magazines over the years. She is most well-known for her suspense novels, the latest of which is THE GREY MATTER, nominated for a Kindle Book Award.
She will be publishing an anthology with stories by women in February 2016 titled FRIGHT MARE- Women Write Horror.
PIETY
by John Bruni
Judah Crenshaw used to be the most pious man he knew. He went to church every day, sometimes more than once. He gave more to the collection plate than any other parishioner, and he sang hymns louder even than the preacher. Not a day passed without his fervent prayers.
All of this changed when he saw Reverend Jordan torn to pieces by a savage beast unlike any he’d ever seen before.
It happened late one cool and crisp night as autumn crept up on the world. Judah’s wife busied herself with cleaning dishes while his two sons knelt before their bed in the other room, whispering their prayers. The farm fell silent as it usually did at this hour. Only the crickets sang from the fields under the velvet, star-bedazzled blanket of night.
Judah sat by the fireplace, packing his pipe. It was the only vice he allowed himself, and anyway, he felt certain the Bible said nothing about smoking. Still, it bothered him, so instead of striking a match, he decided to visit the reverend and find out the good Lord’s take on tobacco.
He made his excuses to Rachael—who graciously understood her husband’s ways—and went out to the barn to saddle his horse.
The stirrups creaked as he stepped into them, hauling himself up into position. A tiny little throb of pain spoke up in his back, barely noticeable but there. At the age of forty, he figured this to be the beginning of his descent into decrepitude. Soon his sons would bear the brunt of the work around here, and that suited him fine.
