by Kitty Margo
“I brought the fixings for Dirty Martini’s,” Teri said. “I can get drunk off my ass, and not have to worry about making a fool of myself or getting pissed off by one of Lawrence’s stern lectures on the dangers of alcohol abuse, at the river. That man expects me to be as stodgy as he is and never have any fun.”
“Do I detect a hint of trouble in paradise,” I asked.
“Nope, he has way too much money for me to even think of hinting at trouble.”
“Good point. I brought the ingredients for Bloody Marys. I thought I might need some liquid backbone tonight. We all might.”
“I brought Corona and limes,” Mallory said. “If what you said is true, Eve, and I see that kid, I will have to get intoxicated!”
We looked expectantly at Tammy.
“Y’all will juth have to thare.”
I stopped at the gate and Mallory hopped out to open it, her eyes darting back and forth through the rustling cornstalks. “Where did you see him, Eve?”
“Hop in and I’ll show you.” I drove about a half mile down the road and stopped the truck. “The bugs started right about here.” As I was talking a mosquito landed on my arm and I jumped so hard I almost vaulted out the window. “Ouch!” I screeched slapping at it. Jerking the truck door open, I jumped out and listened for the humming sound of an impending swarm. Thankfully the only noise was crickets chirping.
“Take it easy, Eve,” Teri said with a worried frown wrinkling her arched brow. “It was just one bug. Come on, let’s go.”
I drove a little further and stopped. “The wind started right about here.” I pointed into the cornfield. “The little boy was right there.”
I remembered the child’s blood red eyes vividly. I stared into the corn almost expecting him to materialize and motion for me to follow him and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when nothing happened. I had to fight the powerful urge to slam the truck into reverse and go home. Could someone please tell me why was I here, again?
“Okay, keep going,” Mallory said nervously. “We are surrounded by corn on all sides. I don’t like this, I feel trapped.” Her face was turning an unsightly shade of blue and she seemed to be struggling to get air into her lungs. “In fact… I’m having… difficulty… breathing.”
“Mallory, take a deep breath and chill out,” Teri said. “Why must you get so worked up about every little thing? Eve, start driving so she can feel a breeze before she blacks out.”
“Just wait.” I laughed, a sound that lacked even a trace of humor, when I saw that Mallory’s breathing had returned to normal. “You think you’re having difficulty breathing now? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” I drove to the river and parked beside the cabin.
“Oh, I’d forgotten what a lush, tropical paradise this is!” Teri grabbed a baby wipe from her bag after climbing out of Dad's dirty old river truck and daintily scrubbed her hands.
I still didn’t know how the diva was going to survive a night at the river without a single luxury, although the cabin was comfortable. It had two sets of bunk beds with regular size mattresses and a tiny kitchen. The one room house on stilts had all the amenities, except a bathroom. You still had to go to the outhouse for that. I couldn’t wait to see her face after her first trip to the latrine.
“Let’s walk to the Almond House and the graveyard before dark,” Teri said after we had unloaded the supplies. “He is, or was, a little black boy so I assume his parents were slaves on the Almond Plantation. Right? Wouldn’t you think that’s probably where he hangs out?” She clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait to see him. I’ve only seen one ghost.”
“You did? When?” Tammy asked, while at the same time looking like she wasn’t really anxious to hear the answer.
“Oh, it was during my drug days. I was high on coke, so I can’t swear what it was that we saw. But the fellow members of the witch coven and I were having a séance and a dark figure was looming, well, actually floating, in the corner. I don’t remember him carrying a sickle though. However that was the night I overdosed, so it was probably the Grim Reaper just waiting to swoop me to the fiery pits.”
“Oh, thit!”
“That’s exactly what I said, well… almost,” Teri said with a shudder. “I haven’t touched an illegal substance since that night.”
I could tell Mallory and Tammy were fast rethinking their hasty decision to tag along. I was having serious second thoughts myself.
“Why do you want to go to a graveyard?” Mallory’s voice was taking on that whining note that none of us particularly cared for. “And what’s so special about the Almond House anyway?”
I didn’t exactly know why, but everyone in the area would agree that there was something sinister about the old plantation house. It just felt haunted. “You’ll see.”
The Almond House was once a thriving cotton plantation. During research at the library, I had discovered that in its heyday the plantation had produced more cotton than any other plantation in the area and the Almond’s owned practically the entire town. The family graveyard was in the woods situated across from the plantation house and the slave graveyard was behind it. The house was about a half mile from the river. I was wondering if we could walk there and back before sundown or if I should drive the truck.
“Come on, Eve.” Teri joked, sensing my hesitation. “I’ll protect you from the wicked witch and her winged monkeys… I mean the little boy and his evil bugs.”
Teri made my decision with that comment. I could have chosen to drive the truck or walk up the road. But, nope! Let’s take Miss Fashion Icon through the woods and a couple of wild, red bug infested blackberry patches! Trust me, you won’t understand the true meaning of the word itch until an entire community of chiggers relocates under your skin. I was definitely going to take her on a walk to remember. “And who is going to protect you?” I asked, falling in step beside her.
Tammy and Mallory hesitantly walked behind us as we parted dense vegetation and headed through the forest. Teri quickly lost her holier than thou attitude and complained every step of the way.
“My shoes will be ruined!”
“Probably.” I agreed, perhaps a bit to cheerfully.
“Oh! I just know I’ll have permanent scars from all these briar scratches.”
“Most likely.”
”Ouch! Oh, shit!” she cried, slapping at a mosquito. “Didn’t you bring any insect repellent?”
“Yes, I sprayed.” I said innocently. “Didn’t I offer you the can of bug spray before we left the cabin?”
“No! You didn’t, you twit! As a matter of fact you failed to mention that you even brought any.”
“Watch out! That’s poison ivy!” I warned, pointing to several vines snaking through the forest.
“Oh, dear Lord!” Teri squawked. “How do I know which green thing is poison oak?”
“Be wary of anything with five leaves.”
“Thit!” Tammy fretted, eyeing the many five leaved plants.
I actually saw sweat glistening on Teri’s brow. She was nervous. Good! At one point we had to crawl on our hands and knees through a tangle of thorny briar bushes. You can just imagine how thrilled Teri was with that indignity. Teri? On her knees? Without a single man in sight? Please.
“Oh, now this is simply absurd! You didn’t tell me we were going to have to walk through a briar patch. I feel like Brier Fucking Rabbit.”
“You didn’t ask.” I was stilled pissed at her, so I grabbed a small tree limb as I walked. When she got right behind me I let it go.
“Ouch! Watch what you’re doing, Eve. You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Girl, don’t make me put a hurting on your narrow ass.”
“Of course not.” I fibbed as we finally emerged from the woods. “Oh my God! Would you look at that?” My anger dissolved immediately as I witnessed the breathtaking panorama before me.
We all stopped dead in our tracks and gaped at the magnificent spectacle.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Teri crie
d. “This has to be a mass hallucination.”
“Have you ever theen anything tho beautiful?”
“No, I haven’t!” Mallory whispered nervously. “This has to be some supernatural shit! Eve, I want to go home now.”
It was unbelievable. Actually, it resembled a landscape painting more than real life.
The decaying remains of the Almond House stood in the midst of a fluffy sea of creamy yellow on all sides. A magnificent array of buttercups in full bloom as far as the eye could see. It was like the poppy field in the Wizard of Oz, only with buttercups.
Most people call them daffodils, but I grew up hearing them called buttercups by my mom, and they look like cups of butter, so I have always referred to them as buttercups instead. Sure, over the years, teachers, friends, neighbors, boyfriends and even my children have insisted I call them daffodils, but to me they will always be buttercups. I don’t really know why.
They jutted up against the edge of the cornfield, all the way to the porch of the deteriorating house. The flowers spilled from stumps, over fallen trees and obliterated the driveway that had once been on the property. The lawn was about two acres and there wasn’t one square inch of earth without a gorgeous, yellow buttercup sprouting from it. It was a plethora of color the likes of which none of us had ever seen.
“Breathtaking!” Teri marveled as we waded through the knee-deep flora.
I had been coming here to pick blackberries for almost forty years and had never seen more than a few flowers scattered randomly among the waist high pasture grass, wild blackberry bushes, and cow patties.
Tammy bent down to smell a flower and then she plucked the stem. She would forever attribute that simple act as being the single worst mistake of her life!
Suffice it to say all hell broke loose!
As soon as she snapped the stem on the exquisite flower an unnatural clanging seemed to fall from the sky. It was loud, rattling and deafening and I can only compare it to the sound of thousands of tin cans falling to the ground around us and beating against each other at once. The sound was horrifying beyond belief!
Why, why, why did I come back here?
Even the air around us seemed to buzz with a static current of electricity. Mallory was on her knees with her hands over her ears screaming hysterically, and nonstop. Tammy stood, paralyzed with fear, as every ounce of blood seemed to drain from her pale face. She threw the flower from her hand like it was a venomous snake and clutching her chest started backing away from the flower with a look of stunned disbelief. The instant she dropped the flower the deafening noise stopped and all was quiet. Still. Calm. Deadly quiet. Not even a butterfly fluttered or a bee buzzed over the fragrant flowers.
“What in the hell was that?” Teri cried.
“I told you,” I said, shaking violently, but feeling somewhat vindicated. “Maybe you will believe me next time! The kid’s got a mean streak a mile wide.”
“But why did he do it?”
She wanted answers that I couldn’t give. “You tell me.” I shuddered as I put a steadying hand on Mallory’s trembling shoulder.
She jumped, screamed louder and then realizing that the unearthly noise had stopped, looked up at me. “He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?” She whimpered with tears of absolute terror streaming down her face. “That was a warning, wasn’t it? He intends to kill us!”
“Of course not.” I forced myself to smile, trying to calm her down. “Come on, let’s get out of the flowers. I don’t think he wants us bothering his buttercups.”
“They’re daffodils, Eve.”
Then I looked at Tammy. Her eyes were wide as saucers and she looked like she was having difficulty breathing. “Tammy, are you okay?”
“No,” she said with a tremulous voice, seeming to choke on the word. “Hell no, I’m not okay. What wath that?”
Even Teri appeared to be slightly rattled, but she didn’t want to show it. “Maybe it was an airplane breaking the sound barrier or something.”
“That was no freaking airplane!” Mallory jumped up flailing her arms and screaming. “And you know it!”
“She’s right, Teri,” I agreed. “That was not an airplane.”
“I know it wasn’t. Damn, Eve, I was trying to calm them down before they go into cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, sorry.”
We turned and walked carefully out of the field of flowers placing our feet strategically among the clusters and trying desperately not to crush one, but it was impossible since they were everywhere. I glanced over my shoulder at Teri.
She was deep in thought trying to get her mind around what had just happened. And like a dog with a bone she couldn’t let it go. She squatted to her knees and all you could see were her shoulders and head surrounded by an ocean of velvety yellow.
“Don’t!” Tammy and Mallory cried simultaneously when they saw her reach for a flower.
The supreme dumb ass picked one anyway.
Fifteen
Immediately the sky behind the house began to darken. We watched, speechless, as the blackest clouds I had ever seen began to roll toward us from behind the house, obliterating the sun. Within seconds the angry cauldron was boiling directly overhead and it was almost as dark as night. A gentle breeze whipped our hair around our faces and caused the flowers to dip and sway in an undulating pattern.
“It will get worse!” I shouted just as a fierce howling wind descended upon us, causing the rotting shutters to bang loudly against the house. “Much worse!”
The wind sent dead tree limbs crashing down around us, and a chunk of roofing sailed from the top of the house just barely missing Tammy. A flash of lightening lit the darkness and I saw an airborne limb slap Mallory in the face.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked, going back to her knees to cover her head and wail.
I was about to say we needed to seek shelter when a bolt of lightening forked through the dark sky and struck the ground. We felt the electricity from it singeing our skin as the current passed through our bodies and a loud boom of thunder shook the earth under our feet. Teri, Tammy and I looked at each other. Mallory was still howling and beseeching the heavens.
For several seconds we were caught in the most intense electrical storm that any of us had ever witnessed. Popping, snapping, currents of electricity seemed to form an invisible barrier around us.
“He’s going to kill us!” Mallory howled in between great claps of thunder as she bowed her head and clasped her hands beneath her chin. She glanced up and shouted, “Y’all better ask for forgiveness of your sins before it’s too late!” Then she recited the first verse of The Lord’s Prayer, but stopped short as the first fat drops of rain began to slap her in the face. Ignoring the rain, she bowed her head and hastily finished her recitation.
I looked to the sky, but lowered my head quickly when I saw what looked like golf balls zooming toward me at a high rate of speed. And they felt like golf balls when they began bouncing off my head!
“Ouch! Oh, thit!” I heard Tammy squeal above the noise of the wind and thunder. “Eve, do thomething! Make him thop!”
“Oh, okay,” I shouted incredulously. “Just hold on while I get my magic carpet and fly us out of here.” I didn’t pick the damn flower anyway, Teri did!
Then all other sound was drowned out by the noise the hail made hitting the tin roof of the house. It produced a horrible racket, like several sledgehammers going at full throttle on the roof. I tried to shield my head as pieces of ice dug into my face and arms and legs, and especially my head. The ice was hitting hard enough to cause skull fractures.
I kept one hand over my face, covering it so the hail wouldn’t strike me in the eye and blind me. I turned to check on the others and saw a stream of blood trailing down Mallory’s injured cheek. She was still squalling with her hands over her ears, so I wasn’t sure if her injury had been caused by the tree limb or hail.
“Get in the house!” I yelled, but they couldn’t hear me. Large chunks of hail steadily pounding
the tin roof drowned out all other sound. I motioned for them to follow me, then grabbed Mallory’s arm and jerked her to her feet praying that she could get herself together enough to follow me. She did, squealing every step of the way.
Inside the safety of the house we stood huddled in a tight knot as the fury intensified outside. Jagged forks of lightening constantly lit up the room and thunder shook the old house down to its foundation, causing bricks to crumble around the fireplace. The house creaked, groaned and swayed, but much to my surprise didn’t collapse around our heads. Nor did the hail break through the roof as it threatened to do.
When the wind finally calmed Mallory sat cowering in the corner covering her head and chanting Bible verses. Teri gazed solemnly out a broken window at the flattened flowers, trying desperately to make some sense out of what had just happened. Tammy was furiously pacing and glaring at Teri with a look of unconcealed fury.
“We told you not to pick another damn flower!” Tammy spat, enraged and glaring accusingly at Teri. “You knew he would get mad!”
“How could you be so stupid?” Mallory left her corner to stand in solidarity with Tammy. I thought for a second they might physically attack Teri.
All of us were holding our heads in our hands and feeling like we had been hit repeatedly with a combination of iron pipes and baseball bats and we were bleeding from head to toe.
“Are you hurt, Mallory? Did you get this cut on your face from hail or a tree limb?” I wiped the blood from her bruised and swollen face with the hem of my shirt.
“I honestly don’t remember.”
Each of us had several nasty cuts and numerous scrapes and abrasions. The hail had demanded a quota of skin from all of us.
“I have a splitting headache and I really, really want to go home, take some Tylenol and crawl in my bed and cover my head,” Mallory whimpered.
