Midsummer's Eve

by Kitty Margo

  Without speaking, I shook my head from side to side to let him know that I couldn’t work up the courage to go traipsing through the corn with him. My weak constitution simply wouldn’t allow it. And I can assure you that it was a constitution that was getting frailer by degrees with every passing second.

  What to do? Run! Could he read minds? Possibly, because before I could lift a foot toward the pedal he again motioned determinedly with his little finger.

  He must understand that he had the wrong person for the job here! Again I shook my head and then had a rare light bulb moment. “You come with me.” I croaked, given the fact that my saliva glands had ceased to produce even a drop of spittle. Then, in a determined effort to convince myself that the child was indeed human, I foolishly added, “Let’s go find your mommy.”

  At the mention of his mommy his face hardened to stone, his eyes filled with tears and he again motioned for me to follow him, but not just with his finger. Now his entire hand was gesturing toward the cornfield behind him with hard, jerky movements.

  “I can’t.” I licked my suddenly parched lips, while shaking my head vigorously from side to side. “I can’t follow you. Wait here and I’ll go find someone who will, okay?”

  When I said this his eyes took on a menacing, reddish glare and the cheerful smile that had brightened his face earlier was quickly replaced by a wicked frown. He began to tap one dirty little foot on the ground. This couldn’t be good.

  Trust me, red eyes erased all doubt from my mind. This child was not human.

  As I live and breathe he was a tanned version of Chucky!

  I took a second to look toward the sky as the gentle breeze that had been blowing suddenly picked up to forceful hot gusts that felt like they were blowing out of a furnace. I glanced back at the child and his eyes no longer had a reddish glare. They were blood red!

  The wind speed was leaping in volumes by the second. The cornstalks swirled and the dry leaves crackled as the wind began to scream around me. I glanced back at the child, but quickly averted my gaze from his menacing red glare and evil leer. Within seconds, the wind was pounding me with a gale force. Fearing that I would be sucked from my bicycle and into a funnel cloud at any second, I glanced around for the nearest ditch.

  Dad always said, “Get in a ditch if you are caught outside in a tornado.” But there were no ditches, only rows upon rows of corn. And as I glanced toward the sky in the growing twilight I was shocked to see that there wasn’t a cloud in sight! But it had to be a tornado. What else could produce wind this ferocious? My only thought was my survival as my hair whipped wildly around my face and the powerful blasts of wind seemed determined to rip the clothes from my trembling body. I tried to scream for help, but the powerful gusts blew the words away before they left my lips.

  The stalks of corn twisted and jerked, doing a violent dance in the relentless wind. I heard a popping noise and glancing sideways saw corn… actually popping off the cob. On both sides of the road the ground was as white as snow. Oh Lord, get me out of here! Then the wind became even fiercer and I covered my face with my hands to keep the sand and dirt that felt like needles jabbing into my skin, out of my eyes. Sand, dirt and cornstalk debris swirled around me in a stifling cloud of dust making it difficult to breathe. I covered my face with my shirt and gasped for air.

  I was absolutely terrified that at any moment I would be blown into the cornfield where he had wanted me to begin with. I could feel the cornstalks brushing against me as they bent almost to the ground and the roar of the vicious wind was deafening. I cried out in pain when the bicycle, with me on it, was blown to the ground.

  I had never been so utterly terrified in my life! I knew the corn, even as flimsy at it was, was better than no cover at all so I crawled toward it. I had to find shelter from the funnel that I expected to drop from the sky at any minute.

  Then as suddenly as it had started, the wind stopped blowing. The corn stopped rustling and dancing. All was calm. It wasn’t a gradual dying down of the wind either, it was a complete dead calm. Not a single breeze stirred the cornstalks. I heard frogs croaking in the pond, crickets chirping and bumblebees lazily buzzing around me.

  Strange, I thought, lowering my shirt and pulling deep gulps of sweet air into my deprived lungs. You would think the frogs would be hiding underwater and the crickets and bumblebees would have been blown into the next county. Then I thought about Dad and my son. In a boat! In a tornado! I immediately dialed his cell phone.

  “Are you okay?” I cried as soon as JoJo answered, relief washing over me at the sound of his voice.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding puzzled. “We’re good. Why?”

  “I was worried that your boat might have turned over in all that wind.”

  “What wind?”

  “What wind?” I shrieked. “I was just in a tornado.”

  “A tornado? Where are you, Mom?” I could hear the worry in his voice.

  “Between the cornfields.”

  “Mom, the wind hasn’t been blowing at all where we are. The water is as still as glass. Are you all right?”

  What did he mean the wind hadn’t been blowing at all? He was less than a half-mile away. Surely, he had to have encountered a slight breeze. However, I couldn’t allow him to believe that I had taken to hallucinations now, along with my other countless issues. “I guess.”

  “A little breeze sounds like a lot of wind when those cornstalks get to rustling. Do you want me to come and get you?”

  “No, of course not. I’m fine. I can make it home.”

  “Are you sure? I can be there in thirty minutes.”

  “No, like you said, I just got a little spooked in the cornstalks. I’m fine now.”

  “Well, call me the minute you get home. And don’t forget. I won’t rest until I hear from you.”

  “I will.”

  I glanced nervously around at the towering rows of corn and got back on my bike, shaking worse than the leaves of corn had shaken in the punishing wind. I was mentally calculating the distance to the main road. At least five more minutes in the cornfields, then I would be on paved road and a few miles from home. I could make it. The wind was calm and thankfully the little boy had returned to the corn.

  I pedaled furiously, not looking in any direction other than straight ahead. After a few minutes, I could see the gate to the main road looming in the distance and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Thank God! I had almost made it out of the cornfields.

  Increasing my speed, I absently slapped at a mosquito that was painfully trying to suck his evening meal from my neck. Ouch! Hearing a steadily increasing humming sound behind me, I glanced over my shoulder hoping to see a vehicle approaching, but no vehicle was in sight. I screeched when one of the blood-sucking insects landed on my ear and the humming sound increased to a tremendous buzzing that filled me with terror. Then I felt what I assumed was a wasp or a bee sting me on the back of the neck. I screamed, slapping furiously at the stinging pest.

  I devoted every ounce of energy to pedaling the bike, but the relentless fog of insects was faster. Within seconds they had settled over me in a swarming cloud. I watched, horrified, as thousands quickly joined the others to cover my arms, legs, feet, head and face to bite or sting every inch of exposed skin. Almost immediately I felt sharp stingers piercing my body through my clothes! When I tried to breathe my throat clogged with bugs and I gagged. I was frantically slapping at them as they sank their needle sharp points into my skin. The buzzing increased in volume until I thought my head would split and my body was on fire with pain.

  I was in a swarm so thick I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me, let alone the road. And the buzzing noise the insects made sounded like a couple thousand of them had settled on my eardrums. I tried to open my eyes, but they covered my eyeballs. I began to feel a growing hysteria creep over me as I was slapping at the insects, trying desperately to keep the bike upright, and pedal all at the same time.

  “Keep it together, Eve!�
�� I warned. “The gate can’t be much further.” For some strange reason, I felt certain that if I could just make it out of the cornfields I would survive this nightmare and live to tell my grandchildren about it.

  Thankfully, I opened my eyes in time to see the gate looming directly in front of me or I would have plowed right into it, at a high rate of speed. Oh God! If I stopped to unlock the gate, I might not be able to get back on the bike. If they got me on the ground the bugs would kill me! I was certain they would suck every last ounce of blood from my body. That settled it.

  There was no way I was stopping the bike. I slowed down, jumped off and slid across the dirt road losing several layers of skin from my outer right thigh in the process, but at least I was still alive. On trembling hands and knees I crawled under the gate feeling sharp, jagged rocks slicing into my knees and palms at every move. Miraculously, when I crossed under the gate the insects were gone, just as I had expected. I looked back and didn’t even see one lone bug.

  Hallelujah!

  Thank God!

  I was alive!

  I glanced cautiously around to see if anything else was coming my way. A raging elephant? A roaring lion? A stampeding herd of buffalo perhaps? Who the hell knows? I took a quick peek in the corn. Nothing. Good. However I was covered in red itching welts, bug bites, and stings from head to toe and my knees, palms and right leg were raw and bleeding. Needless to say, I am now a firm believer in the presence of poltergeists.

  I sat down on the side of the road and had a good long cry, all the while wondering how I was going to get the bike to my side of the gate. It was full dark now and there was no way I would risk crawling back through the gates of hell to retrieve a bicycle. The kid could have it for all I cared.

  As I picked my bloody, bruised and aching carcass off the ground and began the long walk home, I heard a child’s playful laughter coming from the edge of the cornfield.

  Devious little shit!

  Fourteen

  I was soaking in a hot tub of water, which seemed to sooth the intense itching for the time being and using tweezers to pull out the numerous stingers that had pierced my skin when Teri called. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it, Eve?” she completely dumbfounded me by asking. “Did you fall asleep at the river and dream it perhaps? It sounds pretty far fetched you know, even to me and I’m a firm believer in the supernatural.”

  “Teri, how do you imagine a tornado and being attacked by a killer swarm of insects?”

  “Good thing they weren’t those killer bees that are supposed to be headed this way from somewhere in South America,” she snorted.

  No she wasn’t actually laughing at the ordeal I had just barely survived! “If you could see the bug bites and stings covering my entire body, you wouldn’t think it was my imagination and you damn sure wouldn’t think it was funny!” I snapped, finding it hard to control my rising anger. I mean, honestly, I could have easily died in the cornfield and she found that humorous?

  “Oh, chill out. It was just a ghost sighting. That’s practically an everyday occurrence. Why did you make him so mad anyway?”

  “Teri, have you been sniffing too many perm fumes?” I screeched incredulously. “What did you expect me to do? Follow him?”

  “Number one, I don’t do perms as you well know. And number two, I certainly would have.”

  I knew that she indeed would have. Teri is a strong believer in the occult. She consults her Ouija board regularly and, years ago, was a member of a Wiccan Witch Coven.

  “It’s glaringly obvious, even to a novice like yourself, that the child wanted to show you something.”

  “I didn’t want to see it.” I knew he wanted to show me something too. I wasn’t that dense. I mean he had kept motioning with his chubby little finger for me to follow him.

  “Oh, I just had an epiphany! I’ll come down this weekend and we can spend the night at the cabin and see what the child wants,” she announced, using one of her tones that I had tired of years ago. “I thought you knew that when you saw a ghost you were supposed to follow it. Oh boy! This will be the most fun I’ve had in ages!”

  “Forgive me, Teri. Unfortunately, I neglected to read What To Do When A Ghost Child Tries To Kill You!”

  “He didn’t try to kill you, Eve. For crying out loud, he just roughed you up a little to get your attention. He wants to show you something and we need to find out what.”

  “You can cease and desist with this ‘we’ nonsense right from the get go. You will go by yourself, because I can you assure that I’m not going back through those haunted cornfields. I probably already have a raging case of West Nile Virus from all the mosquitoes bites or whatever bugs they were.”

  “You don’t have anything of the sort. There you go again, Miss Dramatic. And besides, you have to go. It’s you he’s after. He probably won’t even appear if you aren’t there.”

  “Then, sorry, he just won’t be appearing.”

  “Come on, we’ll get Tammy and Mallory and have a girl’s night at the river. It’ll be fun. Don’t be such a killjoy.”

  Fun! Exactly what part of my tornado and kamikaze insect attack story had sounded like fun? But I had her and I knew it. Mallory scared easier than anybody I had ever known and the girl wasn’t about to go on a wild ghost chase. No way. No how. “If you get Mallory to go, then I will go.”

  “Do you swear?” she asked, taking no chance of my backing out.

  “I swear.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you right back.”

  Huh? That was a troublesome response. She had sounded awfully sure of herself for some disturbing reason. And why had I agreed to go if Mallory went? Knowing Teri as I do, her shrewd little mind had probably already come up with a scheme to make Mallory tag along. Teri could probably bribe her with extra highlights!

  I was rubbing cortisone cream into my bumpy, intensely inching skin when she called back. “It’s all set for Friday night.”

  I knew it! “How did you convince Mallory to go?”

  “I told her JoJo was going to be there. You know she has the hots for your son.”

  She was right about that. JoJo was definitely a white boy, but Mallory had often commented that she would love to make, yet another, exception in his case and teach him a few of the finer points of life.

  “Why on earth did you tell her that? He won’t be home until Thanksgiving and that’s three months away!” I shrieked. And anyway, there was no way I would ever allow my son to get involved with a man eater like Mallory and Teri damn well knew it.

  “Oh, what difference does it make if I was off by a few months. You know JoJo wouldn’t even give her old ass a second glance. Just let the girl dream.”

  “Huh! It’s her ass I’m worried about. You know how men salivate over it.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

  “Well, how about remembering it the next time you try to throw my son at her!”

  “I will. Anyway, I’ll see you Friday night. I can’t wait!” Teri said excitedly. “Ta ta for now.”

  I was trying to reach my back with cortisone cream when Tammy called. “Did you really the the thame little boy your dad thaw?”

  “Yes, I did. I don’t know for sure if it was the same little boy, but whether you believe me or not I saw him. And he tried to kill me.”

  Like Teri, she showed no concern whatsoever for the agony I had endured. What was wrong with these so-called friends of mine? Where was the love? How could they show more interest in my alleged ghost sighting, than in the pain and absolute terror I had suffered? Couldn’t they see that the evil little poltergeist had attempted to, if not kill me, at the very least send me into anaphylactic shock? You would think they would be a tad more sympathetic about my numerous injuries. I was thinking unkind thoughts about the lot of them as I clawed at my extremely itchy skin.

  “Do you really think he wanted to kill you?”

  “At first he wanted me to follow him. I wouldn’t, and that’s when he got really piss
ed.”

  “Are you going to follow him next time?”

  “Who knows? To be honest I haven’t a clue what I will do if it happens again, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t. Run like hell again, I suppose.” At least the next time I went into the cornfields I wouldn’t be alone. You can bet your bottom dollar on that!

  “I can’t believe I agreed to go camping down there with y’all. I have no dethire to the him at all. We muth all be crazy.”

  “No. Just Teri.”

  Mallory beeped in and we had a three-way conversation. “Traitor.” I accused her, after we had discussed the child’s apparent fascination with wind and bugs.

  “What?”

  “Don’t what me, Mallory! I agreed to go camping only if Teri could talk you into it, knowing full well that you wouldn’t even consider spending a night in those haunted woods. Why did you agree to go?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About the little boy.”

  “About whose little boy, Mallory?”

  “Well, I am anxious to see JoJo again. Has he changed much? Does he still look as good as he did last time I saw him?”

  “Better.” I wouldn’t spoil the surprise. I decided to let Teri inform her that she had been duped. I would just sit back and watch the fireworks.

  “Who knows, perhaps the rest of us will get a chance to see the little boy in the corn.”

  I knew by the way she said it that she didn’t believe a word of my story. We both knew the day Mallory saw the little boy would probably be the last day she ever drew breath. The only reason she was trailing along was in hopes of spending some quality time, alone, with my son. In a dark cabin! Huh! Over my dead body!

  I could only pray that the child in the corn had already made other plans for the weekend and wouldn’t make an appearance, even if it was my only hope of proving that I hadn’t imagined the entire episode. “We’ll see what happens.” Hopefully, nothing!

  I tried not to spend every waking moment dreading the weekend but, unfortunately, Friday arrived all too quickly. Right around dusk the girls arrived and we loaded our supplies into the back of Dad’s old river truck.