Daughters Unto Devils

by Amy Lukavics

  His name sounds ridiculous on her tongue. I want to take a paring knife and cut it out like a growth, before the infection spreads, before it gets to her brain.

  “Has your pa ever delivered a baby?” I ask, partly because I genuinely want to know and partly because I want to remind Emily what sort of things can come from flirtations and coy smiles. Has she forgotten about me?

  “Don’t interrupt, sister,” Emily says playfully, even though I know just as well as she does that she’s trying to shove my question aside. Zeke lights up even more at the sound of her giggle. “You can ask the doctor yourself tomorrow.”

  “Well, I used to come every day,” Zeke says, ignoring me. “I liked the fresh air and exercise, truthfully. But now that there are people living here, I’ll increase my load so that I only have to come a few times per week. Although, if you’d like, maybe we can arrange for me to come and tell you all some spooky stories sometime.”

  “I see.” My sister is still smiling. “Well, I must admit that sounds like fun.”

  I think about the time a boy tried to win me over with a scary story, and all that came from it. My hand rests over my belly, and I give Zeke a dirty look. I must not allow him to hurt Emily.

  “Amanda, Emily,” Ma calls from the front of the cabin, and I am relieved. “I need you both now, please. Thank you for...introducing yourself, Zeke.” The children peer out to inspect the stranger from behind Ma’s skirts.

  You’re hiding something, I think as I watch the boy tip his hat to Emily with a wink. And I won’t forget it.

  “It was a pleasure, ma’am.”

  Zeke starts walking back toward the forest, his hand resting on the handle of the shotgun, and Emily and I go toward the front of the cabin to help Ma. At the last minute I decide to look back. Zeke has stopped walking and is staring at the cabin. When he sees me looking, he waves. I don’t return the gesture, and his hand freezes in the air.

  When I look again a few minutes later, he’s gone.

  Seeing Zeke with Emily, how he looked at her, how she liked it, floods my mind with memories of the post boy in the mountains, and how we started out.

  “You must have seen some interesting places in your travels,” I said to Henry after the third or fourth time we were together. We were sprawled over the blanket, naked still from our pleasure trip, and I rested my forehead lightly against the side of his shoulder. “Tell me what it’s like to be a post boy.”

  The forest seemed hyperactive that day. Birds chirped and squirrel feet scattered, as the creek trickled with an invigorating intensity somewhere behind us. Henry moved a piece of hair away from my face, and I decided that this was the way I wanted to view life forever, as a vibrant springtime earth that kept all of its darkness hidden in caves and expressed its spirit through colorful patches of flowers and fawns that wobbled determinately on their new legs.

  “I might know a few tales,” Henry said with a wicked grin, and curled the end of my hair with his finger. “I know a ghost story that just so happens to be real. Maybe I’ll tell you for a kiss.”

  I giggled, intoxicated by the sunshine and his love, and pressed my lips over his with eager execution.

  “That was lovely,” he said after we were through, and leaned back down to face the sky. “And most definitely earned itself a spooky story.”

  I used to tell Joanna and Charles scary tales about the mountain, of a cloaked woman who would lure settlers away into the trees only to harvest their eyeballs for her bird, who could see the future and would whisper it into her ear. That was before they were too nervous to play with me, or tell stories with me, or let anyone watch over them besides Ma or Emily. I missed them ever so, missed being close with them.

  The creature had taken that away from me.

  “Amanda?” Henry said, looking at me instead of the sky now. “Are you all right, my love?”

  I realized for the first time that my clenched hand was wrapped around the edge of the blanket, curled into a trembling half-fist. Dirt clung to my rigid fingertips, filled the space beneath my nails. I dropped the blanket.

  “Of course,” I said with a little laugh. The devil took your soul, I thought, it climbed inside of you, it’s never going away, it’s never going away...

  I frantically wiped the dirt from my hands, then lay back down beside Henry. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoy scary stories. Please, do tell.”

  “Well,” he started, and I was back in the embrace of springtime again. “During a recent travel run to a settlement very far away from here, an old man in the saloon told me that whenever the behavior of their children was getting out of hand, he’d tell them the legends of the local ghost.”

  “Is it a nasty ghost?” I smiled against the skin of his shoulder, not feeling afraid at all as his fingers moved around mine. “Those are the ones I like best. Those poor children, though. They shouldn’t have to be scared into acting good.”

  “Isn’t everybody, though?” Henry said. “I thought it was quite clever.”

  “Well, what did this ghost do to people? Or, I’m assuming, children, if that’s who the stories were for—”

  “I’ll tell you about it if you let me,” he laughed. “The ghost was the very nasty type, as it turns out. There were some tales of people going mad from it, all of which of course could be confirmed, according to the old man. One woman cut off the heads of her children and sewed them to the tops of scarecrows.”

  “Oh, my,” I whispered. “How very dreadful.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Even worse was the fact that the scarecrows came alive at night to comb the fields for food. Horses from nearby cabins went missing, and even a few children.”

  “Those don’t sound like any ghosts I have ever heard of before,” I said. “How perfectly terrifying.”

  “It wasn’t multiple ghosts doing it, exactly,” Henry explained. “It was the land itself. It had been soured by an infection of constant panic, hate and fear. The man said that in some places, the land can come out to play through the living. It can even make folks go mad.”

  “How hopeless,” I said, then yawned as I arched my back. “And how fortunate that you were able to make the post delivery without getting your head cut off.”

  “That’s the strangest part of all,” Henry said, his voice suddenly flat. “I had to camp out a few times on my way out of the area, and each time I could have sworn I heard children giggling in the night.”

  “You’re full of scut!” I proclaimed, nudging his leg with my knee. “No lying.”

  “It isn’t a lie!” Henry swore. “There was something funny about that place.”

  “Maybe there was something funny about your brain.”

  “Well, that would have fit the story, all right,” he said with a laugh. “Anyway, I got out of there real fast.”

  “No more talk of headless children.” I sat up and reached for my dress. “You may walk me home now, although you won’t be able to come too close, of course. If Emily sees you—”

  “Apologies, my angel.” Henry cut me off, his voice different than it was a few moments before. “But I don’t have the time to spare. I’ll be riding off once you’re dressed.”

  I knew immediately that it was a lie. When my hands were on his naked body, he had all the time in the world.

  “You didn’t mention a time restraint before,” I said softly, and slid the dress over my head.

  “No pouting,” Henry commanded. “I shall be back again when the month is half through, then again on the first of the next. Check for my signal.”

  “All right,” I agreed with a sigh. I stood up, buttoned my dress, and shook my hair out before rebraiding it to look as neat as a pin. “Farewell then, I suppose.”

  “You know I cannot wait,” Henry said as he hopped up, still naked, and pulled me toward him for mor
e kisses. “And I’ll be thinking about how sweet your lips taste until.”

  “Do you love me?” I asked, lacing my fingers together behind his back. “Like you said earlier?”

  “Of course I love you.” To hear him say it while I was clothed filled me with a profound sense of hope, an unexpected but welcomed result in addition to how much I enjoyed myself with him physically. Besides pleasure, Henry now also offered me hope for a future, and love, somewhere so far away from that cursed mountain. “What on earth could ever keep me away?”

  Pa still isn’t back by nightfall, and I become convinced that he is gone forever. I make myself sick with worry all through supper and cleanup, even though Ma doesn’t seem too worried herself. She sings hymns to us from the back of the wagon as Emily and Jo and I lie in the short cut grass around the fire, her voice light and sweet and Heaven to the ears. For the first time since we arrived, I am not afraid of the snakes.

  I can’t remember the last time she sang to us all. It’s as if her excitement about the doctor coming to inspect Hannah tomorrow has animated her back to life. What is she hoping to hear from him, exactly? While I do not know, I’m happy to have a little piece of my ma back, even if it will just be for the night.

  My sisters are asleep within two songs, but I am awake long after Ma’s voice fades into the night air, taking in the enormity of the starry sky while I wait for Pa’s return. I lie on my back, remembering the boy with the shotgun, remembering Henry, missing Emily, when there comes a sound from somewhere in the pitch dark behind me, lacing itself into the air along with the popping embers of the fire. At first I think I’m imagining it, but as my heart continues to pound, it only gets louder.

  It is the sound of an infant crying, and it is coming from inside the cabin.

  The sky goes from black to a blended purple-red in a single blink, and the sound of Rocky returning with Pa, pulling the loaded wooden cart behind them, jars me awake. I sit up, confused, and look to the cabin. I can’t hear the baby anymore.

  I must have been dreaming.

  Pa tells us that he hasn’t stopped for sleep since he left yesterday morning, and he talks about the settlement as he takes Rocky’s saddle off and rubs his legs down with remedy oil. The place is just where the map said it would be, Pa says, and although it was a little smaller than he imagined, the general store in town is well stocked and the owner has agreed to trade and buy homemade furniture from Pa, from wood he’ll gather in the forest.

  “No more furs,” he says while he eats a slab of salted pork and ground wheat bread. “It’ll be a nice change, steadier. Trees don’t exactly hide when they see you coming. I owe them quite a few pieces for getting the flooring materials up front, of course.” He takes a swig of water from his canteen. “They also told me that there was someone living in the forest.”

  “Yes,” Ma says eagerly, watching him eat. “A young man wandered onto the property yesterday to use the well pump. He said his father is a doctor.”

  “What do you mean he came to use our pump?” Pa brushes a few crumbs from his beard. “Why would he need to do that?”

  Ma explains how the Jacobsons have been keeping the well in working order, then tells him that the doctor is coming to inspect Hannah later today. Pa seems aggravated by the entire story.

  “We mustn’t start a fuss over sharing the well pump,” Ma insists. “If it weren’t for them, it’s possible we wouldn’t be able to use it by now at all. The boy said the cabin has been like this for as long as he can remember.”

  “I don’t care what the boy had to say,” Pa grumbles as he lies down on his blanket in the grass. “And having a doctor look at Hannah won’t change a thing, Susan.” He sets his hat over his face, ending the conversation.

  I think of how relaxed Ma was last night, how light and peaceful she seemed in her songs, but that’s all gone now, lost to Pa’s cruel tone and the sound of the baby screaming from the wagon. I offer to wash the breakfast dishes so I don’t have to bear witness to the pain in her face.

  In the late morning, after he’s had a chance to sleep off a little of his trip to the settlement, Pa opens the door to the cabin, untouched since our arrival, and begins walking back and forth from the well pump to splash soapy water over the blood-soaked log walls inside the cabin, to prepare them for the draw knife.

  Ma cleans the inside of the window to let the sun through and encourage the flies to disperse, which they eventually do for the most part. She smashes the spider nests in the corners of the cabin with a shovel, then whisks the webbing away with a broom.

  “Somebody killed an ox in there?” Charles pulls on my skirt while we watch from near the doorway. “That is disgusting!”

  I wonder if I’ll ever be able to erase the sight of all the blood from my mind, so much blood, more than I’ve ever seen in my life, even more than last winter. I take my brother’s hand, and we walk together to the wagon where Joanna and Emily are sitting in the shade. Somewhere in the bed, Hannah snores softly. Emily doesn’t acknowledge my presence.

  “Don’t worry.” I smile weakly at Charles. “Pa is getting it all nice and fixed up for us.”

  “I heard Ma murmuring something about it when she didn’t know I could hear her,” Joanna says matter-of-factly and straightens the dress on the corncob doll she received for her birthday. “She said the cabin was rotted.”

  “She’s just very stressed, Jo,” Emily assures her from the top of the wagon, where she sits chewing on dried apricots. “The house isn’t rotted. It was unclean, that’s all. Pa will finish the floor before we know it.” She pops another apricot into her mouth.

  “Don’t eat all of those!” Joanna whines, and reaches her little hands up to Emily. “I want some, too!”

  Emily rolls her eyes, but drops a small handful of the spongy orange discs into Jo’s hands anyway. “Share with Charles,” she commands when she spies Joanna stuffing them all into her pocket. “They’re for everybody.”

  She doesn’t offer any to me, and I don’t ask.

  “When is that doctor supposed to arrive?” Pa asks again while he pours a bucket of water from the pump over his sweating head. He presses a dry cloth over his dripping beard, replaces his hat and looks toward the forest line.

  “I told you already that the boy wasn’t specific,” Ma says. “He only said that he’d be back today with his father.”

  “There’s a doctor coming?” Charles pipes up from where he and Joanna sit on the half-broken fence, chewing on their apricots. “Why? Is Hannah sick?”

  “No, son.” Pa stretches his back and looks back at the cabin in exhaustion. “Your ma just can’t go on being happy with her life until a doctor tells her to, I suppose.”

  Shocked silence from everyone, including the children. Ma’s mouth is turned down as she beats at the weeds with the rake. Why does Pa have to make it so much harder for her, always? It’s as if he holds last winter against her, blames her for getting a fever and cooking away Hannah’s sight and sound in the womb. It’s as if he feels that she deserves to hurt over Hannah, forever.

  Again, I find myself wishing that my baby sister hadn’t lived through the delivery. The guilt blooms in my stomach, makes me sick, or maybe that’s just real sickness from my own baby. The Lord works in mysterious ways, all right. Wish a baby dead, get another one in return as punishment. This is my reckoning.

  Zeke arrives with his pa about an hour before the sun is to set, right around the time the massive sky is changing from blue to orange. They ride a fat horse with a gray body and black mane.

  Ma sees him coming from the distance and begins to ready some water for them all to drink. I can see in her movements that she is still upset about Pa’s words. I feel her anger in my pit and wonder if it is affecting the baby in any way. Does the little soul know that I don’t want it? Can it tell?

  When the Jacobsons near the
cabin, Joanna and Charles scurry into the back of the wagon out of last-minute shyness. I can’t help but smile at the sight of their small heads poking up from the sides to get a better look at our neighbors.

  “Hello, Verners!” The man who I assume to be Doctor Jacobson calls with a friendly wave, then hops from his horse to gratefully accept a cold drink of water from Ma. He is tall and bald, with no facial hair, and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles sits on his nose. “Thank you, my dear. It is much too hot for my taste today.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Ma says and fixes a misplaced curl on Hannah’s forehead. “Our mountain was so much cooler, even in the middle of summer.”

  “I can only fantasize,” the doctor says and shakes Pa’s hand with a smile. “Frederick Jacobson’s the name, sir, and this is my son, Ezekiel.”

  “Hello, Doctor,” Pa says. “I appreciate you coming over to introduce yourselves and, you know...appease my wife.” Beside him, Ma gazes unblinking into Hannah’s face. The corner of her mouth twitches. “She’s had a very hard time ever since last winter—”

  “I am aware of the circumstances,” Doctor Jacobson says curtly, his smile unwavering. “Zeke informed me upon his return yesterday. I am happy to inspect the child.”

  He steps boldly in front of Pa, causing him to take a step back. I look in surprise at Emily to gauge her reaction at the sight of our big, tough pa being intimidated by a bald man with glasses. But she isn’t even listening, for all Emily can look at is Zeke.

  She steps over to stand closer to the wagon, but really it’s to be closer to him, and when Zeke sees me notice, I could swear his eyes narrow ever-so-slightly. The doctor peers over Ma’s shoulder and at the baby.

  “And this must be little Hannah,” he says softly, his mouth just a few inches away from her ear. “What a gorgeous child she is!”

  “Thank you,” Ma says. Behind her, Zeke says something to Emily under his breath, and she laughs into her hand. “She seems to be fine some of the time, but other times she will scream and kick for hours. It has made me wonder if perhaps she’s in pain or needing something from me that I...don’t understand.”