The Return

by Margaret Guthrie

The evening of the treasure hunt turned balmy and humid. Lydia found it hard to choose the appropriate outfit. She wanted something comfortable and cool, but a bit dressy. No shorts and top, even though the children would be in play clothes. She finally decided on the wrinkle-proof, made-in-India skirt from Penney’s. A short-sleeved dark blue knit blouse matched one of the colors in the skirt. Sandals and bare legs would keep her cool, she figured.

  Margie, downstairs already, yelled up urging her to hurry, but Lydia was in no mood to hurry. Anyway, it was Peter whom Margie really wanted for company, not her. She was probably just restless, as he hadn’t appeared yet to walk over with them—or at least to walk Margie over.

  For days, weeks, the girls had begged Lydia to teach them magic tricks which she had never gotten around to learning. She just couldn’t get excited about figuring out how to hide cards in a deck or scarves in her sleeve or even how to pull a nickel out from behind someone’s ear. Fortunately it hadn’t taken much to persuade Peter to give them a demonstration the night of the party. The girls looks of disappointment with her in this lax interest in the subject made her feel awful. They didn’t know this Peter, they whined. You’re supposed to know how to make things disappear, and appear, they reminded her. Yeah, right. Well, she hoped not too many things would appear on the moonlit grounds tonight that weren’t supposed to be there. That was her real concern.

  Whether from the high excitement in the children about the treasure hunt, or the fact that this was the thirtieth anniversary of her parents’ murders, there was an unusual energy in the air that made her feel responsible for keeping it in control. How, she had no idea, but somehow concentrating her mind on the children’s progress in the treasure hunt seemed necessary. And that meant staying alone and away from the refreshment committee working in the basement of the gym, the very place where the murders occurred. The committee was made up of the mothers mostly, and Pearl, and Margie. And Peter would hang out with them no doubt.

  School was basically out. On the following Monday the children would go back and pick up their report cards. Then summer would be upon them and the children would no longer be coming on their busses or walking past the house. It would present a strange quietness. Maybe that just emphasized the expectations for this night. Even though the ghostly emphasis had been diverted toward magic tricks, there was still an expectation of something going to happen.

  “Hey, Lydia, are you coming?” Margie yelled at her from downstairs. “Peter’s here.”

  “In a little bit. You and Peter go on,” she encouraged. It was 7:00 and cars began to pull into the parking lot next door to unload children and adults. Their voices carried on the stillness through the open window.

  “See you then,” Margie called back. “Don’t forget to grab those cookies when you come. Peter and I will go on.”

  “OK, Margie. I’ll be over soon.” Lydia sighed. What was pulling on her attention? She went to the bedroom where her parents once slept and looked out the window toward the gym and school house. The lowering sun spread its ruby-red rays over the landscape giving enough light for the children’s two teams to get their instructions from Pearl and Jake without the help of flashlights. The two boys who had planted the clues gave out the paper instructions to the team leaders.

  Pearl shouted out some instructions. “All right now, let’s pay attention. This is your party and you’re here to enjoy yourselves. However, as we all know sometimes we get carried away when we’re having a good time. So, I’m reminding you now of one rule—leave things as you found them. Don’t destroy anything. You won’t need to trample down bushes or dig holes or tear bark off trees. Jake here and Morgan and Cliff will be around to help if you get really stuck. So, I’m going to let you go and see you back in the gym!” She had to yell the last few words as the children started running toward the clue to their first hidden item.

  “North!” “North!” “Which way’s north?” “This way!” “That’s not the fifth tree!” “It is, too.” “You’re looking too low.” “Quit pushing!” “Let me see!” “Over here!” “Got it?” “Moron, you stepped on my toe.” “Big deal.” “Here it is.” “Don’t let them see.” A team huddled together around the one with the clue to the next treasure, reading. They separated and started running again.

  Lydia sighed. She went downstairs where Sid meowed plaintively to be let out. “Oh, yeah, you want to get in on the excitement, right?” She chuckled to herself. A black cat is surely what they need. But she knew he would stay out of their way. So she let him out and followed him to the gate, where he slipped on through. Then she remembered she’d forgotten to pick up the cookies so she went back to the kitchen. She stood there for a moment, feeling something tingle her skin. She shivered. Quickly, she picked up the tub of cookies and started out again. As she walked the short distance to the gym the children’s voices were quite distinct as if she were right with them, though surely they were out of earshot. They had gotten to the incinerator, a square cement structure, about six feet by six feet, with walls tall children could see over but never seemed to bother with, until now, when one of the clues had something to say about fire and brimstone. Now the children examined the cracks and crevices with great interest and Jake stood back watching, ready to warn any dare-devil wall climber to be careful. Hate to pull you out of the ashes, Lydia heard him say, noting a bemused chuckle in his voice.

  When the clue note was found another round of pushing and shoving occurred until the team leader took charge. “Put the note back, now.” Then he thrust his hand in the air and commanded his little group to charge forward. The second group scouted around the swings and slides area for their clue with as much noise and confusion as the other.

  By the time the children got to the school barn, the darkness inside made the children use their flashlights for the first time. Lydia stopped her slow walk to the gym and listened to the muffled voices. On the other side of the barn a double row of pine trees that served as a windbreak, seemed to be waiting with a kind of baited breath. If trees had breath. Lydia let herself imagine herself a tree, expecting its space to be invaded, its privacy interrupted. A tension ran through her arms and legs, rooted to the ground and below the ground, but extending up high, high where her limbs were supple and bendable. It was here that the whispering occurred. The murmuring. Beware. Be patient. Be strong. Perhaps it was the birds in their nests, too. The little ones barely out of their eggs. Birds calling to each other. Trees waiting, drawing protective rays about them like a cloak.

  Past the grove just a short way was Superintendent Stevenson’s house. Lydia noted, in her new intuitive vision, that the curtains were pulled but lights burned behind them. The evening light was almost gone now. The moon was about to take over. Lydia remembered what was said about Jake and his chainsaw clearing the lower limbs of the trees. Probably a good thing. Pine needles made a soft layer of the ground underneath. The children had moved out of the barn and some of them scraped their shoes in half circles in the duff, looking for the treasure that was supposed to be hidden there.

  Someone found the plastic egg that was hidden. Lydia heard groans and shouts of “Don’t break it!” “Cool!” “Twist it open!” “What’s the note say?” “Where to next?” Lydia felt the pine trees shiver and pull their energy tightly around them, remaining as still as possible.

  Soon the din of the children went on toward the open area of the ball fields and the trees relaxed, sighed, and breathed normally again. Lydia walked around to the back of the gym where she could follow at a distance the progress of the children and their flashlights. She sat on the cold cement steps at the door, still holding the cookie tub. The door had been propped open and she heard the adults inside working in the kitchen downstairs. This was the door, she thought, that her parents came through That Night when they came to investigate whatever it was they heard or thought they saw. Lights, perhaps. Or smells, of
marijuana. The door that led them to their deaths.

  The moon was now full overhead, as if watching the proceedings below. What a timeless symbol, Lydia thought. If it could talk, how many tales it could tell. What it could tell her of That Night, and many other nights that had occurred in this place that was once prairie, where Indians first roamed and the grasses grew tall and the trees spread their wide branches. Where deer and rabbit, wild turkeys and squirrels, raccoons, coyote, mice and groundhogs and other creatures lived and hunted and died before ever the plow began to change the landscape.

  Lydia closed her eyes and let herself feel the cooling night air, smell the slight perfume of lilacs, hear the late call of a robin off in the distance. And somewhere, the scent of woodsmoke. She inwardly saw a small campfire, figures around it. They seemed to be cooking something in a kettle over the fire, and the aroma of meat sizzling on the end of a skewer came to her. Then something disrupted the peaceful scene. A shout from a distance, the sound of horses neighing. Figures left the fire, ran toward the horses, jumped on them, and galloped off. The scene changed and Lydia saw horse and riders in all directions racing toward each other, shouting, clamoring, then charging with bows and arrows and she watched horrified as the scene became a battle of Indian against Indian, riders thrown from their horses, pierced with arrows, where they groaned on the ground dying.

  The scene shifted, and she saw a man behind a plow, the horse pulling it with head bent forward, strong flanks furrowing, the plow leaving dark curled earth behind it. Grandmother Earth was being torn up, pierced below its sacred top six inches, desecrated. The Great Spirit frowned. Suddenly a lightning bolt came down out of the sky, struck the steel blade of the plow and the man and horse fell to the ground. Lydia saw this as if standing in the grass taller than herself, looking through its sharp blades, as a child might, not wanting to be seen.

  She bolted upright, her eyes flew open. There was a shout from the open space of the school grounds, back of the ball diamond. An argument had erupted. Two boys were shoving each other. Then came the sound of cracking fists. Her heart raced, and she was about to run out to help when she heard Jake’s voice “Hey, what’s going on here?” and the two boys claiming the other of cheating, of pushing. “He started it!” “He didn’t have to hit!” Jake took the boys by the arms, one in each hand and told them to get up, they were getting behind the others. “Look,” he told them, “you’ve got to work together.” And he pointed them toward where flashlights were following some shiny articles on the ground, like a trail of crumbs leading to, well, wherever.

  “Follow the stars,” someone shouted. “There aren’t any,” replied another, and suddenly, it seemed a cloud came over the moon and darkened the sky. Now Lydia heard complaining voices of “I’m freezing.” “It’s gonna rain.” “I’m scared.” “It’s spooky.”

  But further on, she recognized some of the girls voices. “It’s true, isn’t it?” Robin asked. “On full moon nights dead people start to roam and sometimes they come around and try to grab you and take over your body.”

  “Shut up, Robin,” Tanya said. “You’re being totally dopey.”

  “This way,” shouted Jennifer, who seemed quite cool and collected. “The stars are on the ground. Fallen stars.” She had her flashlight on the metal markers that led toward a stand of bushes on the northwest edge of the school grounds. Those bushes surrounded a fenced off area where the school sewage was purified. Noxious gasses sometimes accumulated there, just bad enough to appeal to some children, but not too bad to drive them away. They didn’t realize its danger. Occasionally children found a way through the fence and walked the pipes laid out on the bottom, a dozen or so feet from the top. It seemed like a daring thing to do since adults thought it was something they shouldn’t do.

  Lydia watched the flashlights gather around that area. The voices seemed to have settled into normal excitement. After a while they moved on, toward the gym, along the field fence that separated the school grounds from the farm land in back of the Kinnen property. There were trees and bushes along that fence and the children moved cautiously.

  Suddenly an eerie cry went up, over the fence toward the Kinnen grave stones. A wailing, long and drawn out, like a baby crying, or a forlorn mother puling over her dead child. Then there was another, reaching into a high pitch, and the two voices carried into the night making her skin crawl. The children stopped, clutched each other, no one dared speak. The crying and howling went on for some time, until one of the girls screamed and they all dashed toward a flashlight held by Morgan, down by the gate between the two properties.

  Lydia stood there holding her breath when all of a sudden a streak of black slipped past her through the door and disappeared. She uttered a sigh of relief and silently laughed. Sid. What a serendipitous act! She couldn’t keep from smiling, glad no one could see her. It was time for her to go inside and get out of their way. Morgan and Cliff seemed to have things under control as the children gathered near them. The treasure hunt was almost over. The last clue she knew to be near where she was standing. It was supposed to lead inside, into the basement where there was a chest with gold candy coins waiting to be discovered. That would get the children into the area where the refreshments were to be given out while they watched Peter show off his magic tricks.

  Morgan had put out his light, and the shadows of trees and bushes engulfed the children. Then, a tinkle like a tiny bell caught her attention, followed by the scuffling of children gathering around it. “Shhhhhhh,” one of them said and the voices subsided momentarily. “Where’s ‘at?” a boy whispered. “Dunno,” came another. The tinkle came again and the children saw that Morgan had started walking toward the brick wall curving toward the back door.

  A memory of that dream on her first night here flashed through Lydia’s mind. The rough surface of the brick wall. The wall her mother felt That Night as she approached the back gym door where she met her death. Ohhhhh, ohhhhh, came the sound, and it was not Sid this time. It was coming from Lydia’s own mouth until she clamped her hand over it when she realized what she had done. She hoped the children hadn’t heard her.

  The tinkle came again, and she saw that Morgan clutched a string in his hand which no one saw because of the dark shadows. Cliff held the other end. But to the children who didn’t see that, the tinkle seemed to be moving, making the children follow the sound. From her position Lydia could tell that the boys manipulated the level of the string to make the little bell move back and forth.

  Lydia stepped aside as Morgan drew near, not wanting to interfere. She, in fact, was now on the other side of the steps, still holding the cookie tub. It reminded her of the pied piper, as children began to follow the sound of the bell. Cliff now had to follow, too, holding up his end so that the bell wouldn’t drag on the ground. Soon the children began rushing into the gym, then down the stairs and into the bright lights of the dining area. They looked relieved and excited, pushing, hugging, slapping hands, joyously squealing.

  Lydia followed, headed for the kitchen with the cookies, hoping she wasn’t too late.

  “About time,” Margie scolded in a hushed voice. “What’ve you been doing, anyway?”

  “Oh, just listening to the kids,” Lydia said. “I guess this is their last treasure?”

  Pearl stood over at a small table where a golden treasure chest waited. Morgan marched up to her and handed her the string and the bell, which she took and dangled over her, ringing the little thing as loud as it would go. Cliff came puffing up and stood there grinning. He and Morgan gave a high five, exclaiming that they’d gotten them through.

  As the children gathered around, Pearl asked if they were all there. She counted out the fifth graders, then the sixth graders, and nodded in satisfaction.

  Then Jake came lumbering in. “They‘re all accounted for,” he said. “Good job, boys,” he said to Cliff and Morgan. He had in his hands the various clues
the children had left, as they were supposed to. He had followed up and gathered them in a sack, leaving no litter on the grounds.

  So far so good, Lydia thought. A brief fight. A bit of fear felt. Enough excitement to make them all tired. Her as well. They wouldn’t care about the corner where the energies were accumulating under the red exit sign of the outside door, and around the steps coming down to the basement. She turned her back to those energies, used herself as a kind of barrier so they would not spill out into the room. Mother, she implored, behave yourself. You’ve come to see what answers I’ve got for you. But I really don’t have any. OK, so it was here that innocence was betrayed. Trust was betrayed. It was here that evil took a hand and played out a scene that shouldn’t have been allowed. But there are no drugs here tonight. No bitterness buried in the heart, beneath the skin, in the mind. Nothing for Evil to grab onto and pull into action. They’ve all moved on, Mother. These are children happy with mysteries, but not with ghosts. These are mothers happy with poems, and food offerings, and work in the fields beside husbands preparing the land, planting the land, harvesting, laying it by—creating, preserving, destroying; Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva; Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The cycles go on, Mother. You must go on, let this lifetime go, forgive. That’s the way.

  Chapter 22