Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  Jane rounded the far corner of the ring and passed a large mirror anchored to the side wall, for the benefit of riders wanting to check their positions on the horse: heels down, in line with the hip, back straight, hands poised gracefully over the withers, etcetera; at the same time remembering Lars’ advice about not being so frozen into that position that it interfered with her communication with the horse. She glanced in the mirror and was surprised at how different Charmante looked. He was executing a collected trot, high and round with lots of spring. With every bound his silken, silvery tail would ripple and swish, copied by her own blue-black tresses, hanging thick and luxurious to her waist. Jane suddenly felt like a goddess on a mythical horse.

  At Lars’s urging, she took Charmante through the school figures, performing figure-of-eights, voltes (small circles) change of rein (direction) in the corner, large circles and change of rein through the diagonal. Each maneuver was executed at a specified letter marked as a tangent on the walls and partitions. Jane marveled at the ease in which Charmante produced the school figures; unlike General, bless him, who had to work at everything. It was like trading in a Chevy for a Rolls. Jane began lateral work, moving forward and sideways at the same time on two tracks, so that the legs in movement crossed over those on the ground. She was careful to keep Charmante collected and balanced to cultivate his carriage and keep his joints supple and flexible. Her feeling for rhythm and cadence was impeccable, and she could see every footfall in her mind’s eye.

  Lars continued to watch Jane in quiet appreciation; until he had seen her mounted on a horse that was her equal in ability, he hadn’t fully realized her talent. And he noticed there was also a subtle change in Jane herself. He wondered if it was the horse, or something else had caused it, but she definitely had more sparkle. A new fire in her spirit that flashed out through her eyes. Jane was world class, he decided, and it was a shame she didn’t have money and backing to take her to international competition. He knew it was her dream, but thousands of talented girls and women had that dream and only a very few would realize it.

  In his position—locked into a contract with the Whitbecks—he was not free to actively promote the worthy one. The contract that he was now starting to regret, had seemed so promising when he was fresh off the plane from Europe. He would have been wiser, he mused, to take his time and let several stables woo him; but Springhill was impressive and the salary outstanding. Elliot and his estate had looked like a golden opportunity. And, he hated to admit, in a foreign country he had been insecure and anxious; too quick to go for the bird in the hand. Lars sighed. It was useless now to second-guess himself.

  Lars and Jane walked Charmante back towards his stall, deep in worried conversation.

  “You don’t think Lucinda stands a chance at tomorrow’s show?” Jane questioned Lars.

  Lars slapped at his boot with a Dressage whip. “Not unless the judges are so dazzled by Charmante that they fail to notice the terrible rider.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad!”

  Jane sighed heavily, “Elliot told me before he left for New York on Tuesday to make sure I give her a lot of support—in other words he’ll blame me if she doesn’t do well.”

  “And me. Elliot thinks if he spends a fortune on a horse and pays the best coaches then voila! She wins! But Lucinda has no empathy, no feeling for the horse, so there is no connection of the nervous system of two separate creatures.” Lars looked directly at Jane. “Not like there is with you and Charmante. The horse willingly turns his brain and body over to you and you work as one. That is beautiful to see. It is a kind of magic.”

  “Thank you, Lars.”

  “Ahhh...” he shook his head, “don’t thank me. It’s a God-given talent, so easy to point out. Lucinda—when she’s actually willing to work—tends to over-think and over-train. That kind of thing is rampant in the states. People here drill the life out of their mounts. If you grind the playfulness out of the animal you get nothing…”

  “That’s so true,” she responded.

  He studied her again. “The horse has about the same attention span as a kindergartener. Like your famous Walt Disney once said about children, you must first capture their attention before you can teach. I see a lot of bored horses with closed minds, just like there are a lot of bored students languishing in dull classrooms.”

  Jane smiled. “Yeah, I used to be one of them.”

  “Too bad,” he said, smiling also. Then he continued talking as they walked, waving his whip like a baton for emphasis. “The human side of the partnership is prone to drill and dissect and force and demand in his quest for perfection. They want to divide all the muscles and movements and work on them block by block; the neck, the back—but it’s a package deal. You as a rider do things correctly and all those little dissected over-thought parts take care of themselves. You get a gift of the natural carriage and beauty as long as the animal has no insurmountable conformation faults. I’ve seen people trying to train those away too—talk about shoveling against the tide...”

  He shook his head. “Dressage is more art than science, but today riders and coaches are turning it into just biomechanics. Instead of riding the horse correctly onto the bit and tapping into his natural balance and rhythm, they take shortcuts and the rest of the horse’s body is engaged in evasive maneuvers to try to relieve discomfort. From his tongue to his hoofs the horse will try to evade.”

  Lars waved his arms in the air in a helpless gesture. “Then the trainer decides he will isolate those incorrect maneuvers and drill the horse into the ground on each point.” He took a breath and smiled at Jane. “I know I’m preaching to the choir,” he joked.

  She laughed. “It needs to be said. Over and over until people really understand the nature of the creature they are sitting on. Stop seeing the horse as an animatronic robot and start looking for a connection to his mind and spirit.”

  Lars nodded in agreement as they made their way to the east wing, “Yes the mind of the horse and his spirit are so overlooked and yet it’s the key to everything. There is a little seed of magic under those fuzzy ears, but only the truly gifted and dedicated will find it.”

  Dylan was digging out Charmante’s stall and was surprised to see Jane return with Lars instead of Lucinda. He stopped digging and rested on the pitch fork. “Oh please tell me Charmante got fed up and dumped Lucinda on her head in the manure pile..?”

  “No such luck,” Jane said. “She’s doing backstrokes in the swimming pool not the manure pile.”

  Lars tsk-tsked their brashness, but Jane laughed and said: “Maybe if we’re lucky Lucinda just won’t ride tomorrow.”

  “Don’t count on it!” Lars admonished. “Elliot insists that she must go and she must show—he thinks she’s been procrastinating and that she’s suffering from stage fright. He’s forcing her to go and he won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Yeah, then he blows town,” Dylan criticized.

  “They’re both out of town,” Lars corrected.

  “Good planning.”

  “So, I guess the show’s on the road,” Jane said with far less enthusiasm than she should’ve had.

  “This ought to be a day at the beach,” Dylan muttered sarcastically, and Lars sighed deeply, removing his cap and scratching his silver hair roughly, as if to squelch nagging thoughts of Lucinda.

  “Well...” Jane announced, “I guess I’ll just leave you guys now and go prepare for Armageddon. See you bright and early!”

  “Jane!” Lars called her back sharply. “Don’t you even think about not making your best effort tomorrow.”

  She blinked in surprise. The thought was scurrying around in the back of her mind that to win big would make Lucinda look worse than ever. Lars saw the doubt instantly.

  “Do your best, and let the chips fall where they may. No pun intended.”

  Jane laughed, “okay Lars!”

  In her tiny barn apartment, later that evening, Jane laid out all her clothes so that
at four in the morning she wouldn’t be stumbling around groggily trying to find things. General was groomed to perfection and the big Dodge Ram pickup truck was gassed and hooked up to a six-horse, gooseneck trailer—a trailer that included the luxury of a tack room and dressing room. Owen and three other boarder-students, including Lucinda’s polished friend Ashley Parker, would be following in two cars; showing their horses with Charmante and General under the Springhill banner. The horses would be stabled at the host-barn for the weekend.

  The riders would spend Saturday night at a local Holiday Inn—except for Lucinda and Ashley—who planned to commute back and forth in Ashley’s Lincoln Navigator, as they were not involved in the down and dirty work involved with showing. Their presence outside of the actual show ring was not required, and definitely not offered.

  Jane set her radio alarm clock, then switched off her lamp and tried to force sleep. She lay in the dark and looked out her open dormer windows. The scruffy paper shades were rolled up to the top to prevent them from flapping and rattling. She listened to the warm southern wind whipping around the barn. The jet stream had carried remains of a tropical storm right up the coast and all that was left, when it reached New England at dinner time, was a shredded layer of leaden clouds and gusty winds. According to the latest weather updates the storm fragment would blow out to sea before morning. Show nerves tried to steal her sleep, but eventually, Jane plunged into a deep, sound slumber.

  A lonely whippoorwill sang soft, spooky notes.

  A gust of wind flailed branches against gutters.

  Many hours into the night, the Old-Man-In-The-Moon peeked in and out of a shroud of black lace clouds as the planet traveled over the barn. It illuminated the giant roof and monster trees in an eerie chalky glow; and then, as it disappeared into folds of clouds, the moonshadows melted into a solid blackness. After midnight, the moon began a decent into the western sky and cast its big chalky eye over the west wing of the barn, still playing a celestial game of hide and seek with black shreds of storm clouds.

  Sleep was as deep as thick tar around her brain. Jane was summoned to the surface by a part of the mind that stays watchful, and she was irritated at being catapulted into consciousness in the middle of night. Her room was in complete darkness, the moon at present lurking behind its curtain of black clouds. This high in the barn not even the stable lamps far below could penetrate the inky dark of night.

  She listened, feeling somehow it was important to listen. The crawl began to run up the skin on her arms and she brushed at them, but nothing was there. She thought she had heard a fluttery sound and the slight click of a door latch. Straining hard, she heard the whippoorwill, the occasional hum and moan of a dying wind and the prickling of branches against the gutters.

  Jane raised her head off the pillow; raised it into the darkness.

  Silence.

  She must be imagining things. But she sensed a quiet presence. A listening presence. Then a scratchy click and tick, very soft and very familiar. The adrenaline was boiling into her veins, so on some level her sleepy subconscious brain had identified the sound but was having trouble passing on the information. She slid up against the headboard, heart jump-started into high gear.

  The soft whisper of a sound came closer to the bed, along with the quiet click and tick, moving through the dark. Jane stared into the blackness of her room, seeing only the blacker squares of her open windows and the vague outlines of a desk, chairs and a bureau. The hidden moon was sliding around to her windows, trying to free its sorrowful mismatched eyes from the fabric of storm clouds.

  Again, a small click and a rustle. More stealthy sounds and now she detected slight movement near her bed. Whatever was there was coming closer. A scream began forming in her throat and she fumbled to reach for her lamp.

  The moon slowly wrested itself from a clot of black clouds and spilled its lambent glow piecemeal through her windows; first reflecting in a cascade of teddy bear eyes piled in a chair, and then reaching the glistening white feathers of the monster rooster as his giant claws tip-toed up to her bedside. Phosphorus planet light gave the bird’s feathers a ghostly supernatural glow and with his ugly red wattles and open beak he looked worse than any monster Hollywood could invent.

  The scream tore from Jane’s throat as she leaped to the far side of the small twin bed, fumbling at the same time to turn on her lamp and hold it up as a weapon. Her clock-radio overturned and crashed to the floor. The rooster closed in on the bed, neck stretched out aggressively, hackles up and beady eyes nailed on her. Pay-back time for the broom. Jane gulped hard. He seemed to be all claws and spurs and she was dressed in a thin oversized tee-shirt. Her boots were no help, sitting by the door. The door was shut tight.

  “S-So...you clever bird, you walk through closed doors!”

  The rooster spread his wings to fly over the bed at her and Jane backed against the wall. She ripped the lampshade off to expose the hot bulb, throwing her room into a weird panoply of bright light and black shadows, like a badly lit horror movie. The wingspan was enormous as the rooster launched himself at her, and for a fraction of a second the bloody gouges on Lucinda and Sam flashed through Jane’s mind. Reflexes took over and she actually stepped into the attack to give herself more swinging room. The heavy ceramic lamp connected, knocking the rooster aside and blowing the bulb with a pop and a fizzle. The cord whipped out of the wall, snapping the plug against her leg just as a claw scraped the back of her hand. She knew she was bleeding, but the room had been thrown back into complete darkness.

  “REGGIE!!” she screamed in full voice as she scrambled over the bed and dashed for her door. Her screams echoed through the barn. “REGGIE HELP ME!!” She heard the frenetic clicking of angry flesh-ripping claws running behind her as the bird gathered himself for another attack, but she got through the door with seconds to spare and slammed it in the face of a feathered furry.

  Vicious claws raked and ripped the wood on her door instead of the back of her legs.

  “REGGIE,” she screamed again. This time Reggie heard her, along with all the horses below, now whinnying and nickering nervously.

  “REGGIE—THE ROOSTER IS IN MY ROOM!”

  She heard him huffing and puffing and clomping up the circular staircase. “In there!” she gasped when he finally made it to the second floor. She pointed at her room, breathing in small squeaks.

  “How in hell...” he sputtered, adjusting a strap on his overalls and stomping down one cowboy boot that wasn’t quite on. He took a startled look at her. “Good God, he’ll rip you to shreds in that outfit. Get in one of those other apartments until I catch him,” he ordered, and she did as she was told, slipping into a dark empty apartment across from hers.

  She shivered as she stood there, gripping her arms and smelling the mustiness. The furniture was shrouded in old sheets, waiting quietly to be aired out for new tenants. A gust of wind bashed a broken tree branch against a black square of window and Jane jumped as if she’d been shot. She began to feel as unsafe in that dark empty room with its ghostly sheets as she had in her own room. She was glad when Reggie called to her, and she rushed away from the prickling sensation spreading over her back and arms.

  Reggie was holding the struggling bird by his thick yellow legs in one hand, and the berserk upside-down rooster was biting fruitlessly at tough, pinstripe overalls and trying to beat at Reggie with his wings. White feathers sifted down to the plank floor.

  “I don’t know h-how you d-do that,” Jane said between clattering teeth, keeping her distance.

  “He don’t raise any fear in me,” Reggie stated simply. “I just sidestep him and grab him by his neck when he comes at me, and ‘fore he knows it I have his feet. Just a matter of timing.” He held the rooster up for inspection, the beak frozen in wide-open position and one little black eye reflecting an overhead lightbulb. Jane could’ve sworn the eye was focused on her.

  “I thought h-he w-was s-shut in a pen?” Jane asked him, twitching and shaking wit
h fear.

  “He was. Locked up tight. Maybe someone was careless.” Reggie looked at her. “How do you suppose you two came to be roommates? Did your door get left open?”

  “No! It was s-s-shut t-tight, even when I woke up and found him in my room!” Jane was still wracked with shivers.

  The same wind that blew the clouds off the moon began playing the gutters like organ pipes, and the wailing moans made her skin prickle again. The moon was sliding past all windows of the upper floor now, but found nothing else of interest. Jane looked down at the blood dripping off her right hand onto the floor boards and experienced a strange premonition, as if this wouldn’t be the only blood spilled at Springhill. She shivered again spasmodically.

  “Amazing,” Reggie observed, “how clever this bird has become lately. You’d think he had hands.”

  “Maybe he d-does.”

  The wind keened again.

  Reggie looked at her sharply. “Whose?” he asked.

  “I...don’t know...” she answered, “I can’t imagine anyone doing such a thing. Deliberately.” She looked again at her hand.

  “I can’t either—not even Lucinda, although she does spring to mind. You better wash off that hand. Have you had a recent tetanus shot?”

  “Yes...last year—when I grabbed that old b-board with a nail in it,” she said absently. “Are you going to make sure he c-can’t get out again?”

  “I’m going to nail this sucker in his pen. He won’t harm you again. This rooster has done his last dirty deed.”

  Jane started to drift uncertainly back to her room, still slightly in shock.

  Reggie stopped her. “Have you got a bolt on that door?” he asked.

  “Yes...I do...but I n-never used it before.”

  “Use it now.”

  “Okay...”

  Reggie sat in a chair in his room, by an open window in the dark, smoking his pipe and looking through the screen into the night. He was faintly illuminated by a yard lamp spreading weak light over his knees. He was unable to sleep now, after yet another rooster incident. A still humid breeze puffed through the screen and feathered his white hair.