“Paul?” he heard.
He pushed himself into her—once, twice.
“Paul, help me.”
Three times.
She turned her right shoulder toward him, exposed her breast. Paul caught a glimpse of red on the sheet.
Six times.
“Paul, please help me.”
Nine times.
He saw that the red on the sheet was her blood, that it also rimmed her nipple, that it had clotted around her breast. Saw it, registered it.
“Oh, Paul, please, please—“
His climax was delicious.
Chapter Twenty-Six
November 20
It was early evening, cold. To the west, the forest was a low black swell on the land capped by a diffuse orange glow. From the window, Paul watched quietly, saw the glow weaken, and a star—Venus, he supposed—appear.
Rachel, in her wicker chair across the room, said, “Will you be long, Paul?”
“As long as it takes,” he answered.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
He needn’t have said anything, he realized—she’d asked the question a dozen times in the last half hour, and he had answered it in the way each time. She merely wanted to break the silence—the silence of the house, and in herself, the deadly stillness that had overcome her in the past week.
Paul, please, please help me. She had said those words gain and again. She knew, he realized, that only he could help her, that she was beyond helping herself.
He felt her hand on his shoulder, turned, put his arms around her, felt her arms go limp.
“Hug me back,” he said, trying in vain to sound playful.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Paul, what’s happening to me?”
He pushed her away gently, held her shoulders at arm’s length. Her head was lowered. He put his hand beneath her chin, coaxed her head up.
“Happening to you?” he said.
She closed her eyes briefly; when she opened them, he could see that they were moist. ‘Happening to you?” he repeated. She turned, hesitated, glanced back at him—Help me, Paul!—then crossed the room to her chair.
Lock all the doors, Rachel.
I’ll be back before you know it.
It’s got to be done. If we want to keep them out of the house, it’s got to be done.
Reassurance. It was so easy. Part of his role and, when he wanted, he played it well.
He shifted the burlap sack to his right hand, the kerosene lamp to his left. He glanced around at the house, saw smoke rising steadily from the chimney, saw Rachel looking out the window in his direction. He waved, though she probably couldn’t see him in the darkness.
Part of his role.
He caught the smell of raw venison and clutched the burlap sack tightly to shut the smell off.
A cold night, still and moonless.
Paul’s hands began to grow number, sooner than he thought they would.
He glanced around again. Rachel was still at the window. He hoped, briefly, that she had seen him wave; it would be good for her.
He stopped on the path, set the burlap sack and the kerosene lamp down, then put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a box of kitchen matches. He’d light the lamp. It would offer a little warmth, at least, and some much-needed light, which was why Rachel had insisted he bring it.
He lit one of the matches, stooped over, touched the match to the wick, put the globe back, stood with the lantern in hand. He held it out at arm’s length. It illuminated a small area of the path in front of him, cast the stones and ruts there in harsh relief. It was good enough, he decided. It would have to be.
He picked up the burlap sack. He walked slowly at first, then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, faster, until he was nearly running.
*****
Paul’s silhouette cast by the small glow of the lantern comforted Rachel. It was symbolic; his silhouette and the lantern he carried somehow signified his control and mastery of the darkness. And also his humanity. And, oddly, his vulnerability. It made him whole. Alive.
Rachel watched the glow recede. He was moving away from her, she realized. She turned from the window, unsettled by the thought that occurred to her.
She crossed the room, pulled her wicker chair over to the desk, sat and folded her hands in her lap.
Heaven? she wondered. Heaven?”
She opened the middle drawer of the des, took out a sheet of paper and a pen.
Heaven?
Paul, come home and take me back to what I know. The words came to her quickly. She grinned. Take her away from heaven?
“Dear Mother,” she wrote, and paused.
She looked bemusedly around the room. Heaven? She turned back to the desk. “Dear Mother,” she read aloud. “This,” she wrote, “will probably be the last letter you will receive from me.”
She sat back, laughed, glanced around the room again, with assurance, now.
Heaven!
Slowly, carefully, thoroughly, she crossed out what she’d written.
*****
Paul didn’t know why the tears had started. He sat on his heels, lantern on the ground before him, hands over his face, his breathing one great sob and another. The images that came to him held the reason, he knew, but, sobbing, he only watched:
The image of himself as he was at that moment—a man broken.
The image of Rachel—sweet, sensitive, vulnerable, delicious Rachel; the makeshift wooden dagger in hand, that pleading incredulity on her face as he explained they were going back to the house, that, without telling her in so many words, finding the little girl’s body had changed everything, he didn’t know how, but it had. Rachel, the vessel, the thing to take pleasure in.
The image of himself telling his new wife about the life they were going to live at the farmhouse, and his relief as her skepticism diminished.
The boy—beauty, perfection, reduced by them both to a loathsome, hideous thing—a thing that even death had not rid them of entirely.
Lumas, his old blue eyes set and deadly serious. The land, Paul. The land creates!
Rachel going on and on about giving the boy a name—she had been happy then, had loved each moment as if it were a gift, something precious.
Rachel sitting so quietly in her wicker chair and, in her eyes, a constant please—Help me, Paul. What’s happening to me. What’s happening to us?
And the children, who were mere ghosts on the land. Ghosts that had shared his wife with him.
A sharing he had known about for weeks.
A sharing he allowed.
“God help me,” he sobbed through his hands.
A sharing he enjoyed.
“Oh, my God, Jesus! What am I?
“What am I?” he heard.
He stopped sobbing, let his hands fall, opened his eyes.
They were just beyond the circle of lamplight. He could see the fronts of their feet, the suggestion of hands.
“Wh…why?” he stammered.
“Wh…why?” he heard.
Three pairs of feet.
“What have we done to you?” He waited. They were quiet. “What,” he screamed, “have we done to you, for Christ’s sake!” He lowered his head, sobbed again, felt a fluttering at his ear, heard something rustle, like cloth, to his right.
He looked. The burlap sack was gone. He raised his head, blinked once, twice, as if resetting his vision. He saw the rough circle of lamplight; it fluctuated wildly in a sudden breeze. And, beyond the light, where the children had been, only darkness.
*****
“We’ll keep them fed, Rachel. It’s what they want from us. It’s all they want from us.”
“You…saw them, Paul?”
“Yes. I saw something, anyway. It was them, I supposed. It was them.”
“And the winter?”
“The winter?”
“The winter will kill them, Paul?”
“Yes, it will kill them. God help
me, but the winter will kill them. It always has.”
“Always has?”
“Did I say that? I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just…grasping, hoping. I don’t know why I said it.”
“And in the meantime?”
“We’ll keep them fed, as I told you. We’ll keep them from going hungry.”
“And we’ll keep them out of the house?”
“Yes. We’ll keep them out.”
“For whose sake, Paul?”
“For your sake. It’s all for you, Rachel.”
“Yes, I know it is. It’s always been for me, hasn’t it?”
“Everything is for you, Rachel. Just remember, please…”
“Remember what?”
“That I love you.”
“I’m going to bed. Are you coming with me?”
“Yes. I’m coming with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
November 28
Rachel put another long on the fire, adjusted it with the fireplace poker.
“Can I got with you tonight?” she called.
Paul, in the kitchen, slipping his boots on, called back, “No, I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t think you’re up to it.”
She joined him in the kitchen. “I’m feeling better,” she said. “Much better, actually. I have to get out of the house.”
Paul looked up at her; it was such a simple request—I have to get out of the house. “No,” he said, and buckled his second boot. “I’m afraid you can’t. Don’t ask me why, please. But you can’t.”
Rachel sighed. “Tomorrow night, then? Or don’t you believe me?”
“Believe you about what?” He straightened.
“About feeling better.”
“Sure I believe you,” he said, and he ached to tell her why she was feeling better, that the cold nights and the cold days had numbed the children, had delivered to them an awful singles of purpose—to eat, to be fed, to huddle together for warmth.
“I still have the dreams,” Rachel said. “But not every night, anymore. Only a couple times a week. And they’re not nearly as bad as they were, really they aren’t. Say you’ll let me go with you tomorrow night.”
Brief pause. He shrugged. “Maybe. I hope so.” He picked up the kerosene lamp from the counter, a large plastic bag filled with beef and venison up from the floor. “You sure this will hold, Rachel? This plastic is pretty fucking thin.”
“I double-bagged it,” she said.
“Good thinking.” He smiled: Grasp the mundane. Hold tight to it. It’s what life is made of—what sanity is made of.
He went to the back door. Rachel followed, opened it for him. “Thanks,” he said, stepped onto the small square porch, and held the lantern out to illuminate the steep flight of wooden steps. “Lock this door,” he said, and nodded. “And the front door, too. And all the windows. I’ll be back before you know it.” He took the first step, turned his head to look pleadingly at her: “Whatever you do, Rachel, don’t go outside.”
“Yes,” she said. “Be careful.” She closed the door behind him.
She went into the living room, to the back window, pushed the curtain aside and watched as he crossed the backyard, made his way to the path north of the house, and started down it. He stopped, waved. She waved back, then let the curtain fall.
“Paul,” she whispered. It’s something I have to do. She went to the fireplace, made sure the grate was closed properly, went into the kitchen.
Something I have to do, Paul.
She got her brown wool coat off the clothes tree, put it on, switched the kitchen light off.
She opened the back door, stepped out onto the porch, paused until her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
She took the steps cautiously. At the bottom of the steps, she turned north.
*****
Paul set the lantern down behind him and stared into the dark mass of the forest just ahead. He was waiting. Each night since that first night it had been the same. He’d come here, to the end of the path and, almost immediately, he’d hear them coming. They moved very quietly, very quickly, their approach betrayed only by an occasional wisp of laughter—laughter slowed, made fluid, so it sounded almost like song, by the cold, and by their hunger.
Paul listened. From deep within the forest, he heard the faintly rasping hoot of an owl.
He set the plastic bag down, cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hello,” he called, and felt suddenly foolish for it, suddenly out of place.
He let his hands fall. He continued to wait.
After a time, he became aware that a light snowfall had begun. He watched the small, widely scattered flakes drift into the circle of lamplight. He watched dispassionately at first, as if the snow were telling him some necessary but often-repeated story. He listened, felt certain he could hear individual flakes settling onto the globe of the lamp and sizzling there, killed by its warmth.
He saw that among the small, nondescript flakes, larger flakes had begun to fall.
He gasped, adrenaline pushing through him.
He turned, ran.
Halfway home, he stopped.
“No,” he whispered. “No!” he screamed. He fell to his knees and gathered Rachel into his arms.
“Paul,” she moaned. “I’m sorry, I wanted…”
“I told you to stay at home, Rachel. I told you—“
“I’m so cold, Paul. My clothes. Where are my clothes?”
He glanced about, cursed himself for having left the lamp behind, saw, dimly, her coat at the other side of the path. He coaxed her to her feet; she stood unsteadily for a moment, then crumbled. He caught her, set her down gently. “I’ll get your coat, Rachel. You’ll be all right, don’t worry. You’ll be all right.” He got her coat, coaxed her to her feet again, draped the coat over her, took her into his arms and started for the house, the words “I’m sorry” tripping off his tongue all the way.
MORNING
The snowfall had lasted the night and now the only color on the land was the green of the pines, the brown and gray of the trunks and branches of deciduous trees.
Rachel moved away from the window, got back into bed, pulled the quilt up to her neck. Paul’s words of a half hour earlier were still fresh in her mind: “You’ll have nothing more to fear from them after today. I promise you that, Rachel. And when I get back…when I get back, we’ll make plans.”
“Plans?”
“To leave. We should never have come back, I know that now. We should never even have come here. I know that, too. This isn’t our land. It never was. It belongs to them.”
“I’m so tired, Paul. I just want to sleep.” She closed her eyes.
*****
Sandman, Paul thought. Sandman.
He glanced at the barrel of the rifle. He’d left Lumas’s shotgun at home. Its range was too limited, and it was too messy (he remember the raccoon; bile crept into his throat). The rifle was more of a long-distance weapon. It would also make a nice, neat hole.
Sandman. He grinned. He was a civilized man; it was his duty to enjoy what he had set out to do—avenge, make right, put behind him what had been done to his wife, the perversity he had sanctioned.
Someday, he vowed, he would tell her everything. He had to, for his own peace of mind. Even pledging now that, in time, he would tell her would make life—his knowledge of what had been done, what he had done—more bearable.
He heard the babblings of a flight of geese to the south. He looked. It was a large flock, consisting of close to a hundred birds, he guessed. Because of the distance, they were mere black specks against a backdrop of low gray clouds. He raised the rifle, aimed, squeezed the trigger. The hammer clicked. He lowered the rifle, pleased, a feeling of power coming over him.
He reached into his pocket, pulled a cartridge out, loaded the rifle. He was ready, now.
He walked quickly, slowed only a little by the snow and the cold air crawling over him.
“Sandman.” He was bringing sleep to the troubled, peace to the
frenzied. If they could, they would thank him.
He stepped across the stream, noted its edges had iced over, ascended the gentle slope, turned left and passed beneath the archway and into the forest.
He paused. It had been a long time, weeks, since he had been here. And years, decades, since he had seen it this way—the winter resting heavily and quietly on it.
He moved further into the forest, head moving, eyes scanning, ears alert all the while. The only sounds that came to him were the sounds his boots made on the new snow. His eyes showed him only the monotony of a gray sky crisscrossed by the bare branches of oaks and honey locusts, and sliced by evergreens.
An inexplicable sadness overcame him as he walked. It was the sadness of loss and hope gone. It was, he knew, the sadness of winter and the knowledge of his part in it.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, saw that a few of the larger bones were jutting above the snow—cream on white; death on sleep.
He wept hard and long.
And realized as he wept what his sadness was telling him. That the winter had done its work. That the children were sleeping at last.
The euphemism annoyed him. He sought to correct it mentally, but found that he couldn’t, that the proper word would not come to him.
He turned and started for home.
At the archway, he paused, turned, and threw the rifle hard into the forest. Before seeing where it had fallen, he turned again, toward home.
“Rachel, are you asleep?”
“I’m awake.”
“They’re…gone, Rachel.”
“Gone?”
“Yes.”
“For good?”
“For now. Until spring. I don’t know.. Until spring, yes.”
“And us?”
Us?”
“You said we’d talk. You said we’d make plans.”
“We’re going to leave, yes. Not right away. Not tomorrow. In a week or so. We have to be sure, you see. I have to be sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Then we not tomorrow? Why not right now, for Christ’s sake!”
“I’m sorry. I have to be sure.”
“You said you were sure, Paul.”
Strange Seed Page 17
