Strange Seed

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  And what of the crowds here at the house? Crowds? The children? Lumas (who, though dead, still occupied the land)? The children did not constitute a crowd. That was silly They were…a part of this place, a part of this creature, just as New Yorkers were a part of the creature called New York. In New York, she was a trespasser. And here, too. But there was a difference. Numbers didn’t matter. Numbers only…

  Paul had stopped working.

  She sat bolt upright in the chair, listened. She heard, for the first time, the breeze moving over the house, but not that hideous scraping noise of the shovel.

  And, she knew, she hadn’t heard it for some time.

  She stood, ran to the bedroom window, pushed the curtain aside, looked out. She had been sure that was where he’d been-beyond this window, close to the house. The scrape of a shovel, like the noise of a rake on hard earth, is a very directional thing.

  She listened again. Maybe Paul had merely decided on some other spot, further away from the house. Maybe he knew that the noise his awful work produced was putting her on edge…

  She listened hard. Heard only the breeze buffeting the house, the cat tearing about in the upstairs hallway.

  And then a sharp, metallic, whumping sound—the car’s hood being slammed shut. As if in anger.

  She hesitated: perhaps the sound had not been that at all, perhaps it been something else. But she could think of nothing else that would approximate it.

  Before she reached the front porch she knew what Paul would tell her. And how she would react. How she had—as her role, or because there was always a question, a doubt, a chance—to react.

  He was coming down the lawn from the car when he saw her appear on the front steps.

  “Bad news,” he said, an embarrassed grin on his face.

  Rachel saw that he was holding something in his hand. He held it up. “It’s part of the fuel line,” he said. He was within a couple yards of her.

  She looked incredulously at the thick, short, black rubber hose. He bent it to expose a slit running at right angles to the length of the hose. “It’s worn all to hell,” he said.

  “Can you fix it, Paul?”

  He studied the hose a moment, shrugged, said, “I don’t know. Maybe. If I can find some plastic tape, it might work till we get to town. And it might not. I don’t know.” He shoved the hose into the right pocket of his denim jacket.

  “Can we…walk, Paul?”

  “Into town? Why should we? I’ll get the damned thing fixed tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Early. Weather permitting.” A pause. “You might as well get a fire started in there. It’s getting cold.” He nodded at the house.

  “So we’re going to stay.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Only long enough to get the car fixed, I promise, Rachel. No longer than that.” A pause. “I’m sorry. These things happen, I guess.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I guess they do.”

  He looked questioningly at her a second, then started around the side of the house. “I’ll be finished in an hour or so,” he called over his shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mundane things—pots, pans, silverware. Cream-colored plates with simple blue borders. Living things—things to live with, to store away in cupboards, to display, if they were attractive enough, if there was a place to display them. And, if so, they brightened a place up, if the place needed it, and if the colors were right.

  “I don’t know—it might be a few days, Rachel. There’s some bad weather coming and I’d hate to try that damned road…”

  A mundane thing—bad weather. And cozying up inside an old house to be away from it.

  “Why don’t you…” she began, but did not continue. Ferreting out a lie. A mundane thing. Simple ability.

  Living was a mundane thing.

  “That box in the car; I’ll bring it in. We’re going to have to eat, you know.”

  Cream-colored plates on end, all in a line. It made a house a home. And pots and pans, ugly as they were, hung again from ugly nails, so nicely utilitarian.

  “We’ll be calling this place home a little while longer, I’m afraid, Rachel. Not too long, I promise.”

  Promises.

  “Might as well bring the blankets in, too, I guess.”

  And the pillows.

  “And the pillows.”

  Warm beds and a warm fire and cream-colored plates all in a line.

  “I hate it, Rachel. Keeping you here like this. I really do. But it can’t be helped, can it?”

  “If you say so, Paul.”

  “Well, yes”—big apologetic smile—“I do. I’m sorry.”

  Ferreting out a lie. It was easy enough. Easier than building one. That was the balance of a lie.

  “How’s this, Paul?” Point smilingly at the cream-colored plates all in a line. Help him build the lie.

  “Looks nice. You should have done that before. It brightens the place up.”

  Love was a mundane thing. So was trust. Trust was very much like the cream-colored plates. Trust was simple and beautiful and…

  “Lock up, Rachel. I’ll probably be gone till after dark.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out there.” A nod to indicate the forest.

  “Why, Paul?”

  “Why? Well, you know why, now don’t you? I

  mean—“

  “Do what you think you have to do, Paul.”

  “Yes, I intend to.”

  Sweep the cream-colored plates to the floor. They spend a long time breaking. Whole minutes. Long, noisy, satisfying minutes.

  *****

  He’d prefer New York now to this. He hadn’t thought he would—ever. Long ago, he’d reflected that the winter might strand them at the house for days, weeks, but it would be preferable to an ugly New York City winter.

  He’d forgotten the rifle. To hell with it. What would he do with it, anyway? And he hadn’t actually forgotten it, only thought, at that moment, that he might need it, that he should have brought it along. But to hell with it.

  Rachel knew. Well, she thought she knew, she said she knew. He should have pressed her on it. But to what purpose? Let her know. It probably comforted her to think she saw through him.

  What drives you? Had he whispered the words? Impossible. He would have heard—

  This is torture for her. That was another voice; the voice of conscience. Let it speak. This will destroy her, destroy her for you, destroy your marriage. Let the voice play itself out.

  It was played out.

  “Goddamn!” He’d said that, he realized. It was okay. Curses were okay. (Had it been one of his uncles, a relative, anyway, who, after a stroke, could utter only curses? That was interesting. There was some primal truth in that. As pathetic and as laughable as it was. All primal truths were like that. Maybe all truths, by their nature as truths, were primal. He loved Rachel, for instance. But to the point of altruism? That much? Did anyone love anyone that much? He would willingly sacrifice his life for her. Because, it was obvious, there were some things more important to him than his life. But he would also sacrifice both their lives if something moved him strongly enough.

  What was he thinking? What did all that mean?

  He cursed again, deep in his throat. “Shit!” The word carried out to several seconds, a curse on his thoughts, something to make them vapid.

  The gun—he should have brought the goddamned gun.

  *****

  Maybe that poor dead girl, Rachel thought, had been the last of them, the last of the line, the last of…the family. She grinned, despite herself. The “family”—a family of children. It was less than ludicrous.

  The last of them, anyway. She’d been the fourth. Four. A good round number. Easily managed and easily imagined. She imagined four bright lights on the black backdrop of her consciousness. Easy enough. Five? A little harder. And six—two groupings of three, easier than five. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. It broke down at el
even, burred, required too much shifting, too much uncertainty. Ten was her limit. It was a good game.

  Perhaps she had better sweep up the broken plates before Paul returned. Or perhaps not. Those shards and pieces said a lot more than she could—more than she had the courage to say. He would listen to the broken plates. They spoke for her. He could not argue with, placate, reassure, humor or lie to the broken plates. Those shards and pieces would break through to him.

  Was she crying again? For God’s sake, what use was there in that? This was the time for strength.

  Maybe Paul was crying, too. Maybe he had left the house to cry. In private.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  October 20

  By first light, all traces of the late evening snowfall had vanished. It was a tentative snowfall—a snowfall testing itself; at its end, what it left on the land would have been barely distinguishable from a heavy, lingering frost. It lay very white and very wet on the roof of the farmhouse and the warmth from within the house, and in the air, transformed, killed it.

  But this was only the first battle, sand the snow always lost the first battle, because its allies, for now, were weak and unpredictable.

  But the change had begun.

  Only the creatures that lived on the land, and in it, were aware that it had begun too soon, and very much in earnest.

  *****

  Rachel smiled at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Didn’t she look pretty this morning, and wasn’t that quite a new thing—not that she looked pretty, but that she could take the time to think so. Her smile broadened. Nice, appealing. Paul should see it. Well, maybe she’d be in the same mood when he came back to the house. Hopefully soon. There was no reason he should be away long, had been no reason for two weeks, ever since their abortive attempt to leave.

  That was one cause for her mood this morning, she knew. The last two quiet weeks. Tense weeks, certainly. At least in the first few days, when she had expected…anything. Those had been bad days, terrible days. The worst of her life. But they had come and gone and had brought nothing but an awful anticipation of what might happen the following day. Today, that anticipation had, at last, vanished. And she was pretty once again, could take the time to think so once again. Pretty, and all that mundane word encompassed.

  Premonition, second sight, intuition—damn! Whatever it was, whatever it had been, it meant nothing. Happily nothing. The last two quiet weeks had proved that.

  *****

  She ran her comb slowly through her hair, encountering numerous snarls. She worked the comb firmly through them, grimacing now and then at the small pain they produced. Even such personal amenities as this, she thought, had been all-but forgotten in the last two weeks. Not forgotten entirely because Paul—damn him! God bless him!—had been there to remind her:

  “No. Nothing. Not a sign of them, Rachel.” And then a pause. “You look terrible. Can’t you do something”…”with your hair”…”with your nails”…et cetera, et cetera.

  Paul—tower of strength, hardly affected at all by what had happened, by what had not happened, by what could have happened. Definitely the stronger of the two of them, at least lately.

  Because, in retrospect, it was obvious that much of his strength had been false, had been a show, an act for her benefit.

  Like the first night. She was so quiet, seated for hours in her wicker chair, a book at her feet (she had given up, almost immediately, any pretense of reading it). And her one question, repeated every fifteen minutes or so, because his answers meant nothing to her: “Why, Paul?”

  He, smiling nervously each time, variously answering her question from his wing-backed chair, from the window that overlooked the fields, from the kitchen while he made coffee for them both, or while pacing the length of the living room (slowly, pointedly, as if in thought, not out of anxiety or apprehension).

  “Why? Because we’re running from…ghosts, aren’t we? We’re letting ghosts drive us away from something we’ve both wanted for a long time. Something that could be very, very good for us.”

  Why? “It’s so simple, Rachel. We’ve…over-reacted. Have they really done anything to us? Any harm, I mean. Physical harm. No. And how could they? They’re only children.”

  Why? “I believe it’s the best thing, that’s why. It will strengthen us.”

  I don’t know why, Rachel. I wish I did, but I don’t. Something is…pushing me, pushing me, and I’m frightened. But he never said that, only projected it, wore it so plainly on his face—his stiff, forced smile was part of it, and his gaze so desperately seeking hers was part of it, and his at-first-hesitant, then strong embrace—Stay with me, Rachel. Protect me, I’ll protect you, protect me!—when they finally went to bed that night.

  And then, the second day, his morning walks had begun. Her protests were easily overcome:

  “Listen, this is supposed to be a life we’re living here. This is supposed to be our home, for Christ’s sake! let’s not make it our prison.”

  That had been convincing, because she had been making it her prison. And not an assuredly second one, at that—all the evidence proved it. But there were walls here, and windows, rugs, chairs, cans of soup and cartons of butter in the kitchen, and electricity, however primitive, coursing through the house. Man had built the house and sustained it. The threat that existed here—if it indeed still did exist—was more of a threat outside it, beyond the walls and windows.

  Such thoughts had given her some comfort when Paul left her in the mornings. But, for the first week—when he had come back with “nothing”…”not a sign of them, Rachel”—had, progressively, given her less and less comfort. Because, she knew it, they were waiting! They were, she wanted to tell Paul, “Lulling us into a sense of complacency.” It had been an irrational fear which, she thought now, Paul had also succumbed to.

  Because there had been the secretive night walks as well. Up at one or two—when he felt certain she was asleep—over to the living room window for a few minutes, then out the back door until three or four in the morning.

  The night walks had ended in the middle of the second week. His exhaustion had stopped them—exhaustion couple, no doubt, with his failure to find anything to sustain his fear.

  Which had been when that subtly expressed fear had ended.

  Rachel smiled again, encountering a particularly nasty snarl at the same time. The smile remained—the pain registered in her eyes.

  “Damn!” she whispered through her smile. If only life involved no more pain than this.

  *****

  It had been like a high fever slowly weakening. Like waiting for bad news which refused to arrive; it was always easier, smarter, to believe that it was only late in coming. And, at last, there came a time when such negativity had—for the good of the organism—to reverse itself. If just temporarily. If only to allow a chance to breathe.

  That was today. It had been obvious on her face, in her eyes—the new, bright hope. so easy to read, even while she struggled from sleep.

  “Rachel,” Paul whispered. “Dear Rachel.” She had become, by slow degrees, so patient, so trusting, so adaptable. Really quite an amazing woman, so willing to be….his wife—to be protected by him, soothed by him, reassured by him. It had been difficult, almost impossible, at firsts, but would now be easier, would now be merely the way things were. The way things should have been from the beginning of their lives here.

  With his free hand, Paul unbuttoned his denim jacket. The morning’s unusual warmth had caused a sticky, uncomfortable sweat to form on his chest.

  Dear Rachel. She was that, wasn’t she? And more. She was so deliciously vulnerable.

  *****

  Rachel remembered one thought from two weeks earlier—that the house hadn’t changed, hadn’t metamorphosed. And, in the context that the thought had come to her, she reflected, it had been silly and hysterical.

  But there had indeed been changes, she realized. Slow and subtle changes, but so powerful. Changes in the house,
in herself, in Paul.

  This was, for one, no longer just a house, any house—a place to pass through, to spend a few nights in, to have a few meals in. A place, in spite of it, to make love—regardless of all the evidence to the contrary, an artificiality, something outside herself. Not something to live with, something to live in.

  It was no longer all that.

  It had changed, was changing, was becoming a part of her, an extension of herself.

  And that was the biggest change in her, she realized. She was becoming a part of the house and it was becoming a part of her. It was a good thing, a very comfortable and secure thing (and maybe it was one of the reasons Paul had brought them back. Because he’d felt this way from the beginning).

  It was a change which had occurred slowly, in direct proportion to the lessening of her anxiety.

  She stepped up to the window that overlooked the fields. She pushed the newly installed curtain aside.

  And today, this fine, warm morning, the change was nearly complete.

  “This is my home,” she whispered, half relishing the phrase, half testing it. Our home, she corrected. Our home. A place to love in. The place to love in.

  That had been the biggest change in Paul, hadn’t it? His lovemaking. No, his lovemaking had always been good. It was his attitude toward that had changed. Now, at last, they were making love together. Not she to him, nor he to her. Together. It was perfection. And it had only one goal (how provincial it sounded, but it was true), a goal which had somehow, damnably, eluded her in the last six months. Now, there was hope, that goal would be realized.

  “I love you, Paul,” she said. “I love you so much.” She frowned. This was a bit foolish, talking this way, as if the spirit of her words could somehow traverse the physical distance between them. But, hell, if anyone was entitled to such foolishness…

  She let the curtain fall, crossed to the bedroom and glanced at the alarm clock on the dresser. 11:45. He’d be home soon. He should have been home by 11:30. That, after all, had been his scheduled since they’d come back.