by Tom Mohan
“Hi Paulie,” Ana said. “How are you today?”
“Right as rain,” Paulie said.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Ana motioned toward the window. “How do you know Darius, Paulie?”
The young man shrugged. He looked suddenly shy and stared down at the floor.
“It’s okay, Paulie,” Ana continued. “I was just wondering.”
“I see him in the dark sometimes. He’s in some of my dreams. I’m sorry.” Paulie continued to gaze at the floor, as though ashamed that he knew of the creature.
Fallon rubbed Paulie’s back. “Nothing to be sorry for, Paulie.” The young man blushed, but a smile lit his face.
Everyone in the room turned their attention back to the snake-thing in the window. “Can he see us?” Liza asked.
“Oh, yes, that’s why I keep the curtains closed. All kinds of vile creatures come to pay me a visit. This one is new, though.”
Darius stared in the window and swayed back and forth hypnotically. Liza found herself unable to look away. His eyes locked onto hers. His thin lips curled into a smile as his tongue darted in and out. The throbbing in her calf grew to a burn that moved up her leg, pulsing with the rapid beat of her heart. Then Darius performed a deep bow toward the house.
“Why would he bow to you, Brianna?” Cullen asked.
“He didn’t bow to Brianna,” Paulie said. “He bowed to her.” He pointed at Liza.
All eyes turned to Liza. She tore her gaze from the serpent outside. “What?”
Ana Finn gave her a quizzical look. “Why would one of the fae bow to you? Who are you, Liza McCarthy?”
The Finns are good people. You could do worse than be involved with them.” Ruth Yoder, self-proclaimed caretaker of the Family Finn, was making the bed in the guest room. Liza had offered to do it herself, but the woman would have none of that. Ruth was several inches shorter than Liza. Her body was solid and strong-looking, even if it had grown soft in the middle. Graying brown hair tied up in a ponytail hung down her back.
“You’ve worked for them a long time?” Liza asked.
Ruth grunted as she pulled the fitted sheet tight. “Forever, it seems. My family has served the Finns for generations. Lots of them. That’s what we do.”
“Your purpose. Seems I keep hearing that.”
“Everyone has a purpose. Most just don’t bother to find out what it is. Like I was saying, we’ve been around these parts for over a century, longer than most, but the Finns were here before us. Right here on this farm, they’ve been, and Brianna in that house on the edge of town.”
“You mean Brianna’s ancestors.”
The woman stopped what she was doing and gave Liza a look that was almost motherly. “Brianna’s been in that house a very long time. I remember playing with her in her living room when I was just a wee girl.”
Liza decided to let the impossibility of that comment go. Ruth’s son, Jacob, whom Liza had met earlier that day, was twenty-seven years old. She was sure that Brianna could not be much over thirty. The numbers weren’t adding up.
“So, you and Jacob have lived in Halden’s Mill your entire lives?”
Ruth nodded as she went back to making up the bed. “Haven’t hardly been anywhere else. Being Amish, we don’t travel far from where we’re born. And as far as work goes, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Like I said, the Finns are good people.”
“They seem like a very close family.” Liza again felt a tinge of jealousy.
“They are that.” Ruth finished with the sheets and picked up a blanket. “What about your family? Are they close?”
A dozen bitter responses crossed Liza’s mind. She shook her head. “No, we were never close.”
“That’s too bad. My parents are strict, even as the Amish go, but they love me and my brothers and sisters, and we love them. Family should be close. Close to one another, closer still to God. God is what holds it all together.”
“I guess I don’t know much about God. He wasn’t in our house.”
Ruth laughed. “Don’t let my granddaddy hear you say that. He’ll sit you down and give you the fire-and-brimstone treatment. Heavens, child, he’d scare you right into Jesus’s loving arms. Or right back to California.” Again, she laughed.
Liza hoped Ruth was exaggerating. “He sounds nice.”
“Ha! Tobias Yoder has been called many a thing in his life, but I doubt nice was ever one of them.” She sighed. “He’s a good man, though.”
Liza wished she could say the same of her stepdad or her mother. What would Tobias Yoder think of her parents?
“Tobias is a sweetheart. You just have to get to know him.” Ana Finn stood in the doorway. Her eyes still had a haunted look about them, but she appeared relaxed.
“Did he ever work on the farm?” Liza asked.
Ana shook her head as she stepped into the room. “No, only the women come here. The men have other tasks, and Tobias is an Old One, so he has his own purpose.”
“Wait,” Liza said. “If Tobias is an Old One, how can he be Ruth’s grandfather?”
Ruth laughed. “Well, I guess he’s my grandfather many times removed. When the Amish settled this land, he felt a special kinship toward them and, eventually, became one of them. I am a direct descendant of his, and since all the relatives between my pa and him are dead and gone, I think of him as my granddaddy. So does Jacob, though the two of them would likely kill one another if left together too long.”
Now that was a relationship Liza could identify with.
Ana sat on the edge of the bed. Ruth seemed to take that as her cue to leave and slipped out of the room.
“There is so much that mortal man does not understand about this world,” Ana said. “So much that has been forgotten. So much that even we have forgotten.” She patted the bed beside her. “Sit.”
Liza did, though the act made her uncomfortable. The intimacy of the situation was new to her and a bit frightening. What if this woman rejected her as her own mother had? Worse yet, what if she somehow blamed Liza for what was happening in town? She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Ana was about to say.
“You are tense. Do I make you nervous?”
“This whole thing makes me nervous. I still don’t know what any of this has to do with me or why I’m here. My only connection to you is through a brief relationship with Marcas. Where did he take off to, anyway? I haven’t seen him since we left Brianna’s.”
“He’s close,” Ana said. “I can feel him.”
“And his brother? Conall?”
Lines creased the woman’s forehead. She shook her head. “Him I cannot feel, yet Fallon swears it was him the two of you saw this morning. If he were so near, I should sense him, but it is as if he no longer exists.”
“I can’t even pretend to understand the things you do, but is any of this normal? I mean, should you be able to sense your children? I don’t know of anyone else who can do that.”
“Few can. Regardless of your doubts, you are involved. For some unknown reason, Marcas was drawn halfway across the country to find you. And Brianna called you. These are not coincidences.”
“Something else no one seems to be able to explain to me.”
Ana took Liza’s right hand in both of her own. “I doubt she knew who she was calling. She picked up the phone and found you at the other end. Just in time, it would seem.”
Liza was only getting more confused by the conversation. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Ana smiled but didn’t look surprised. “Of course.”
“How did you become part of this family?”
The woman chuckled. “Well, now, that’s a bit of a story and one we don’t have time for tonight. Let’s just say that in the Finn family, there’s always a mated pair specifically created for one another. I don’t mean in the romantic way in which people are always saying they have a soulmate. I’m talking about one man and one woman that creation made especially for one another.”
The whol
e idea sounded absurd, yet the idea took hold of Liza’s heart. For some reason, it was important to her that it be true. “You and Cullen?”
“Yes, dear. Oh, his parents about died when he came home with me. They spent months trying to prove us wrong for one another.”
Liza found that easy to believe. Ana’s skin color and slight accent made it obvious that she was not from Halden’s Mill. With the exception of Cullen Finn’s Irish accent, everyone she had met looked and sounded very Midwestern. She had seen none of the variety that she was accustomed to in Los Angeles. “Where are you from, originally?”
“South Africa.” She smiled. “I can speak just fine without the accent, but Cullen likes it, so I keep it. He and the Old Ones are very partial to their Irish heritage and have a thing for accents.”
“So, they didn’t think a dark-skinned woman was good enough for their son?”
“You think they rejected me because I’m black?” Ana laughed. “No, dear, they rejected me because I was not Irish. In all the centuries before, there has never been a non-Irish member of the Finn family.”
• • • • • • •
SLEEP ELUDED HER. The house was too quiet. Liza missed the sounds of the city, of traffic and sirens all through the night. Silence was new and unnerving. She tossed off the covers and climbed out of bed. The carpet was soft on her bare feet as she used her toes to feel for her slippers in the dark. Slipping into the slippers and a robe, Liza left her room and made her way down the hallway.
The Finns’ kitchen was a mix of contemporary and old, as though they only thought to replace anything when it was unfixable. The microwave, which was huge and at least fifteen years old, sat on a stand beside a modern stainless-steel refrigerator. A very nice stove contrasted with a wall-mount oven that looked like something out of a seventies sitcom. Even the ceiling looked newly painted with modern fixtures, while she guessed the sheet tile flooring to be the same age as the oven. All in all, it had a warm, comfortable feeling—like something a real family would use and enjoy.
Liza opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk and a plastic container of ham salad. She’d never even heard of ham salad before arriving but had found that she enjoyed it. She spread some of the salad on a single piece of bread and folded it over, using a paper towel as a plate. She was enjoying her first bite when the sound of the front door opening drew her attention. A moment later, Jacob Yoder entered the kitchen. He smiled when he saw her, and Liza realized that she’d frozen at his arrival and still had the ham salad in her mouth.
“Oh, hi there,” Jacob said. “I didn’t expect anyone to be up.”
Liza took a gulp of milk and swallowed the ham salad. “I didn’t intend to be. Couldn’t sleep, I guess.”
Jacob wore the white shirt Amish men were known for, but he wore it with jeans and there was no sign of the famous Amish hat. His dark hair and tanned skin made him appear more mature than his years. She guessed maturity came early in his culture and found the trait rather attractive.
“I see you found yourself a midnight snack.” He gestured toward the sandwich in her hand.
Liza nodded. “I hope it’s all right. It felt kind of weird digging through the fridge of people I hardly know.”
“Don’t worry about it. There are no strangers in the Finn house. All are welcome and invited to anything they might find in the refrigerator. Besides, you’re a guest. Help yourself to anything.”
“Thank you. You’re out late.” She paused.
“I couldn’t sleep, either. Sometimes I come out here and hole up in the downstairs guest room. I can watch TV without bothering anyone.”
“You don’t have a TV? I thought you had your own apartment?”
Jacob chuckled. “Grandfather all but disowned me when I moved into town. If he found out I had my own TV—and he would find out—he’d never speak to me again.” He looked down, the pain clear in his face. “Not that I would mind all that much, but I could never do that to Mom. She deserves better than me.”
Liza put a hand on his arm. “I’m sure she’s proud of you with or without a TV.” She realized how dumb her words sounded, but Jacob laughed.
“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all day. You really know how to cheer a guy up.” He glanced up at the ceiling, and a sheepish look crossed his face. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What say we go for a ride? It’s a beautiful night out, and we aren’t getting any sleep anyway.”
Liza knew sleep was far away, but the idea of going outside that time of night filled her with an unreasonable apprehension. Maybe it was what she’d seen outside Brianna’s house. She didn’t like the idea of going out in the dark.
“Um, it’s awfully late.” The words sounded lame even to her. “I mean, what if someone misses me?” That was even lamer.
“I’ll leave a note. Come on—get dressed, and we’ll drive some of the country roads. We won’t be gone long. Besides, riding in cars always puts babies to sleep. It might work for you, too.”
Liza glanced out the dark window and forced her fear aside. She couldn’t let this place spook her. “All right, give me a few minutes to change.”
Five minutes later, they were pulling away from the farm in Jacob’s old pickup truck. “Someday I’m getting myself a Mustang,” Jacob said. “No more beater pickup for me.”
“I bet your grandfather would love that.”
“He’d hate it. All the more reason to get one.”
“I didn’t know the Amish drove cars,” Liza said. “Not that I know much about the Amish.”
“Well, we’re the modern Amish. Driving is okay—we just can’t actually own a car. That would be worldly.”
“Ah, and this truck…?”
“Technically, I’m borrowing it from a friend.” She could hear the humor in his voice. “He just happened to charge me fifteen hundred dollars for the pleasure of borrowing it for as long as I wanted.”
Liza sighed and shook her head.
“What was that about?”
“I guess my image of all that is pure has been shattered now that I know even the Amish use loopholes to get around the rules.”
“Hey, we’re only human.”
Liza grew quiet as she gazed out the windshield. The world illuminated by the headlights was as foreign to her as that outside Brianna’s window. The gray-brown of the dirt road merged with the green of the overgrowth. Beyond that, everything faded into the darkness of the trees that crouched at the edge of the light.
Every now and then, a rabbit would run in front of them, or the glow of eyes revealed something hiding in the tall grass. She remembered Conall Finn darting across the road earlier that day. She felt exposed out here, even in the truck. It was so dark outside, and yet there was so much happening in that darkness.
She shivered, feeling small and insignificant.
Jacob turned into a narrow track that went deeper into the trees. “Where are we?” Liza asked.
“I wanted to take a look at something. Thought you might be interested.”
“And what might that be? I don’t really like it out here.” Liza mentally kicked herself for coming out at this time of night with a complete stranger. What was I thinking?
She could barely make out his smile in the dashboard lights. “You’ll see. It’s only a hundred feet or so further up.”
Liza was about to insist they turn around and head back when the truck passed from the cover of trees into a large clearing. The full moon shone down, a perfect reflection of itself gleaming back from the surface of a small pond. The sudden change from ominous forest to something off a postcard took her breath away. “It’s beautiful,” she said after a moment. And it was. The view almost made her forget what was going on outside this magical place.
“I knew you’d like it,” Jacob said. “I bet you don’t have anything like this back in the city.” He rolled down his window and inhaled. “Have you ever smelled anything so pure?”
The scent of the night was beyond
description. Liza had been in botanical gardens before, but never had she smelled anything so alive. It was as though she could smell the individual variations of life that filled and surrounded the glade. A hulking shadow off to one side drew her attention. It was covered in vines, but she thought it looked familiar. “A caboose? Is that a caboose?”
“Sure is.” Jacob took her hand and pulled her toward the old train car. “Mom used to bring me here when I was a kid. Back then, you could go inside and climb around on top, but I’d be worried about dry rot and poison ivy nowadays.”
Liza couldn’t get over the rustic beauty of the setting. The moon, lake, and train car all felt like something out of a fairy tale. She allowed Jacob to lead her around the vine-covered caboose and nearer to the water.
Across the pond, a frog jumped, and she watched as ripples stretched across the placid water. The ripples mesmerized her as they spread, growing larger as they crossed the pond. Liza felt herself pulled along with them, drifting in the cool night air.
Something moved along with the ripples, trailing behind as though a part of the water’s motion. As it glided over the water, it floated into the image of the moon on the surface, and Liza stiffened.
A snake.
The snake drifted to a halt in the center of the moon. Her hand tightened on Jacob’s, but she didn’t dare remove her gaze from the serpent in the water. Goosebumps spread down her arms and legs as a chill swept through her. She thought she heard Jacob say something, but he seemed little more than a distant comfort.
Liza could feel the snake looking at her, staring with a hunger she could not explain. Its head lifted, its tongue whipping at the night air. Liza’s pulse pounded in her temples. Her vision tunneled until all she saw was the serpent in the moon’s reflection, like an actor in a spotlight.
She wanted to scream, to turn and run as fast as her legs would take her, but her feet were rooted to the ground. In the water, the snake rose higher. The cut on her leg began to throb, then hurt as though something clawed at it. Still, she remained unable to move.
