Eventide

by Sarah Goodman

  “Just watch,” Abel said. The calf swallowed, fluttered his long dark eyelashes in surprise, and took another gulp of milk. He flicked his ears in contentment, then began to drink with gusto.

  I took the bottle from Abel and, still keeping the calf pinned with my knees, watched him finish his meal. “We need to give him a name,” I said.

  “Any suggestions?” Abel asked, leaning against the stall door.

  I patted the small rusty spots that dotted the calf’s white forehead. “He reminds me of a freckle-faced boy who lived at the children’s home. I believe his name was Edward.”

  Abel propped his chin in his hand. “I’ve always thought that name sounds like a direction.… Backward, forward, westward. Edward.”

  I laughed. “Your mind works in unusual ways.”

  Abel shrugged in reply. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  The newly christened Edward sucked air from the empty bottle. “That’s all for now,” I said, looking up to find Abel perched on top of the stall gate. He held out a hand, and I scrambled up beside him.

  We balanced on the narrow edge and looked down at the little bull, who butted the wall to show his displeasure. “I guess there’s a reason stubborn people are called bullheaded,” I said. Edward mooed loudly, deeply offended.

  “Lilah would love Edward. I think they’re kindred spirits.” Unintended words tumbled out into the quiet, warm night air. “When our mama died, I became more a parent than a big sister. I worry about Lilah still, even though there’s no reason for it now.”

  Abel nodded slowly, staring out the double doors into the dark pasture. Shadows massed over the fields. “I know the feeling, except I’ve got plenty of reason to be concerned for my sister. I can’t imagine what’ll become of Clara, or her baby.”

  I hastily dropped my eyes from his handsome, tired face, only to note how our hands rested side by side on the rough wooden beam. “You’ll do what you can for Clara. Just like I will for Lilah. Then we’ll figure out a way to do even more. Because they’re family.” I had a sudden, fierce desire to place my hand over his. I banished it as best I could. Now that I knew he didn’t have another romantic entanglement, I wondered if he might return Della’s affections.

  A restless cloud wandered across the moon’s face. “It’s getting late,” I said, realizing how unwilling I was to leave the barn. “Morning comes early around here. I should go get some sleep.”

  “I think I know just what you need before you turn in for the evening,” Abel announced, sliding easily to the ground. I hopped down as he disappeared back up the ladder. He returned moments later, a book in his hand. “Now, don’t turn your nose up at a little make-believe,” he said. “Sometimes, you need to be someplace else for a while. Even if that someplace exists only in your head.”

  “My little sister is of the same opinion. You two would get along famously.” I sighed, taking the book. “All right, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  * * *

  The moon shone brightly as I trekked back to the farmhouse. Across the fields, the woods stood like dark, distant sentinels.

  The lamps had all been snuffed out in the house. Trying not to wake Big Tom and Hettie, I took off my heeled boots and crept up the stairs. Big Tom’s snore rumbled from the back bedroom, reminding me in a strangely affectionate way of the grunty sounds of sleeping pigs.

  At the door to my room, I paused to brace myself for the attic heat. It felt like each smothering day never truly ended, but rather bled into night-after-stifling-night. Time passed slowly here. Already it seemed ages ago I’d visited with Lilah and met her new guardian.

  I changed into my nightgown and, lighting a candle, sank down onto the hard desk chair and opened the book Abel had lent me. It was a battered copy of Old Country Fairy Tales. I leafed through the gilt-edged pages, smiling when I encountered stories my parents had read to me when I was little.

  I came to one I’d never heard before. Lifting the book closer to the candle flame, I examined the illustration of a witch beside a red-roofed cottage. The little house perched on barbed rooster’s feet. Under the drawing, a caption read, “The witch Baba Yaga lurks in the woods, waiting to prey on unsuspecting children.”

  Baba Yaga leered up at me, hair bristling white and wild under a kerchief, knobby hands reaching out. Wrinkled lips peeled back to reveal iron teeth, meant to eat children lost in the forest. Chills raced along the back of my neck. The image rose unbidden—a little girl thrashing, panicked, in the grip of gnarled hands tipped with cracked, blood-caked nails.

  I slammed the book shut, willing my mind away from the grotesque tale. But a creeping, cold sensation spread over my shoulders.

  Certainty surged through me, as sudden and sure as it had been in the woods.

  Someone was here.

  10

  “Abel?” I asked, going rigid in my chair.

  No reply.

  “Hettie, is that you?” With every muscle tensed, I turned to scan the empty room. My neatly made bed stood in the corner across from the door leading to the stairs. Beside it, the small wardrobe was closed tight.

  Heart hammering, I took the candlestick from the desk and rose from my chair. My bare feet slid across the gritty floor toward the wardrobe. With trembling fingers, I reached for the handle. I braced myself and flung open the door.

  There was nothing inside but my few dresses, now swaying gently, and my work boots. The sweat-stained straw hat I wore to the fields hung on a nail, looking sad and limp as ever.

  I lowered the candle and sighed.

  From behind came the barely perceptible shush of fabric moving: a curtain being drawn back.

  I whirled to face the intruder. My candle flickered and went out, leaving only the moon’s glow to show the figure of a man climbing through my window.

  The urge to run swarmed though my limbs. I beat it back, swallowing sour fear as I raised the candlestick. I rushed forward, aiming for the back of his head.

  A rough hand shot up and grabbed my wrist. I gave a cry of alarm, but the man was through the window now. He clamped his other hand firmly across my mouth. I jerked back, freeing my face from his grip, and sucked in a deep breath to scream for help.

  The scream died in my throat when I heard the familiar voice. “Hush, Very.” The candlestick fell from my fingers to roll in a slow arc near my feet.

  “Papa?”

  The shock of seeing him washed over me like plunging into icy water. My heartbeat faltered, then picked up a staccato pounding as he held out his arms to gather me into a hug. Stunned, I collapsed against him, resting my face against his coarse jacket.

  “Thank God you’re still safe,” he murmured into my hair.

  “How did you get here?” I asked. “Did the doctors say you could come?” A confused hope sprang up. Perhaps he’d gotten better. Maybe a miracle had occurred in the asylum, and through some perfect mixture of the right medications and treatments, he’d been cured. I looked hard into his shining eyes, willing it to be true.

  “You mustn’t leave your windows open. I’ve done my best, but I can’t promise my wards will be enough.” He stepped away, dragging a hand down his haggard face. “The malevolence is near.” His eyes darted toward the window. “It’s coming closer.” My fragile hope withered. The same delusions of wicked, unnatural threats remained. He was as unwell as ever.

  I retrieved the candle from the floor and fumbled in my desk drawer for matches. Questions rioted through my mind. “It was you who left the flowers on the Weatheringtons’ porch?” I knew Hettie hadn’t believed Big Tom scattered the flowers, but she could’ve never guessed the true identity of our mysterious benefactor.

  Papa nodded, sending a lock of greasy hair into his eye. “Are they working? Has anything sinister touched you?” His eyes continuously scanned the room for danger.

  “I’m fine. Nothing bad has happened.”

  “I’ll have to take some wards to wherever Lilah is staying, eventually. First, though, I’ll ne
ed to go away again for a while. I don’t want to leave, Verity, but I must, to throw them off my scent. If I stay on the run, it will confuse them.”

  I ignored the familiar, paranoid rant. There was no them—no pursuers, in this realm or any other, that wanted to harm my father. “How did you get here, Papa?” His commitment to the asylum had not been voluntary. By leaving, he had become a fugitive.

  “A nurse told me my girls were in new homes in a little town called Wheeler. As soon as I was left alone, I snuck away and came to find you.” Papa licked his cracked lips. “Verity, I know there’s a young man living here. I saw the two of you going into the barn. Don’t let yourself be led astray. Share a bed with that boy and it will spell disaster.” Papa fixed me with a level stare. His pupils dilated, the black swallowing all but the thinnest edge of color. “The wages of sin is death.”

  I felt a ferocious blush race up my neck. “Papa, you needn’t concern yourself about that.”

  He began pacing like a caged animal. “You never listen to my warnings about the evils unseen, and now you ignore me about the boy?”

  “I’m not ignoring you,” I said, trying to soothe him. I had to keep him quiet so he wouldn’t wake Big Tom and Hettie yet. I couldn’t present him to the Weatheringtons in his current mental state. “It’s just that Abel and I are—”

  “We were so young, then,” he burst out, his gaze growing distant. “So very young when we fell in love.” Papa went silent, and I had the notion his blank stare looked into a long-gone time and place.

  I held my breath, waiting to see if a moment of lucidity would rise to the surface. If a glimmer of reason showed itself, there might still be hope. Sometimes, I could latch on to a commonplace statement in his ramblings and use it to haul him back to the here and now. “I never thought she would die,” he whispered, lips trembling. “And the baby, too. What does a young man know of loss and sorrow and grief? All lifetimes ago, yet I feel it still.” He drew a shuddering breath. The candle flame shadowed his eyes, deepening the gaunt hollows beneath his cheekbones.

  I moved to sit on the bed, never taking my eyes off Papa. Mama’s passing was not something I wanted to dredge up. But at least his thoughts were bending toward the past as it truly was, and not to one of his fevered imaginings.

  “I know. I miss Mama still, too.” I fought against the memory of my mother, her skin grayish against the ivory satin inside her coffin, the tiny body of my baby brother resting in her lifeless arms.

  “My daughter,” Papa murmured. His gaze shifted aimlessly around the room. “My little girl.” His voice dropped to a gravelly whisper as he added, “Child of my indiscretion. I knew from the start I’d lose her.”

  “Papa, you’re confused again,” I said, a chill dancing over my skin. “I’m right here. And Lilah is safe at her new home.” I hesitated, unwilling to tell my father where to find Lilah. Miss Maeve might possibly be sympathetic to his condition, but I doubted Mr. Lybrand would understand. “Neither of us are lost.”

  Papa rushed forward and knelt before me. He rested his clasped hands on my knees, looking into my eyes with feverish intensity. “Two have been taken, and two left behind. It is right that I should pay for my iniquities, young though I was. I suffer for them daily. But I hope against all hope that you and Lilah might escape.” He bowed his head. “You’ll have to protect her for me, Verity. It’s too late for me. My day of reckoning will come soon.” He looked up at me, sad and small and lost.

  One of the few unbroken bits of my heart shattered.

  I swept the fragments aside, as I always did, and tried to think clearly. “Why don’t you lie down and try to get some rest?” I pulled him to his feet, turned to the bed, and fluffed the pillow. “You can have my bed for the night.”

  Once Papa fell asleep, I’d go down to wake Big Tom and Hettie. He seemed no worse than he had before he was committed, and for that I was grateful. He’d come only out of a delusional need to protect his children. The Weatheringtons could help me get him safely back to New York. I’d need an advance on my pay to buy a train ticket, and it would be best if Papa got on at the station in Argenta or another nearby town to avoid drawing attention.

  “No!” Papa’s shout broke into my planning. “The nightmares will come again if I sleep.” Before I could draw breath, he slipped out the window and ran nimbly across the roof.

  “Papa, wait!” I clambered out on hands and knees behind him, cursing my long gown for slowing me. The tin roof still held some of the day’s heat, and my feet burned as I hurried on shaky legs across the steep pitch. “Stop! You’re going to fall!”

  Papa rushed straight toward the edge of the roof. For a horrific second, I thought he meant to jump. Instead, he made for the spreading boughs of an overhanging oak tree. He was halfway down before I reached it.

  I wrapped my hands around a branch. Rough bark bit into my palms. Gripping the limb for all I was worth, I swung off the roof and looked down in time to see Papa’s feet hit the ground. He was off like a shot.

  Taking a deep breath, I let go.

  Hot pain lanced through my left ankle as I landed. I gritted my teeth and hobbled after my father. “Papa! You’ll be safe here, I promise.” My words came in gasps. “Don’t leave.”

  He was barely visible now, a shadowy form rushing into the black. I ran on, falling behind, watching Papa slip farther and farther away.

  I kept my eyes fixed on him until he became one with the night.

  At last I limped back to the farmhouse, my face wet with angry tears. I met the Weatheringtons coming out onto the front porch. Big Tom, shirt buttoned wrong and gray hair standing up like a rooster’s comb, peered into the dark. “What’s the matter?”

  “My father,” I said around the lump in my throat. “He managed to leave the asylum and make his way here.”

  “We’ll go after him,” Hettie said.

  “It’s no use.” I winced as I climbed onto the porch. “If he wants to stay hidden, he’ll be impossible to find. He’s had a lot of practice.”

  “What does he think he’s hiding from?” Big Tom asked.

  I shrugged wearily. “Everything. All of it imagined. He’s the one who put the flowers on your porch. He thinks they’re wards against evil.”

  Hettie chewed a thumbnail. “That’s a load off my mind. I couldn’t figure out who’d left them. What exactly is he warding against? That Miss Pimsler lady told us a little about his … problems, but not much, seeing as how we didn’t expect to ever meet him.”

  “He gets confused about what’s real and what’s not,” I said. “For several years he’s been convinced that Lilah and I are in danger from something wicked that he can’t quite explain. He came to warn me, so I’d stand guard against the … whatever it is he thinks is out there.” And also against Abel, although I wasn’t about to mention that part.

  “The sheriff could track him down, I bet,” Hettie said. “We should tell him. And let Miss Maeve and Mr. Lybrand know he’s about.”

  I imagined Sheriff Loftis’s distaste for me turning to suspicion when the inevitable question occurred to him: Was Dr. Pruitt’s condition hereditary? Would the madman’s daughter be next to lose her mind?

  “Could we keep this private? Please?” I couldn’t stand the thought of Papa being grist for the town gossip mill. And I didn’t like the idea of having to tell Miss Maeve, and especially the compassionless Mr. Lybrand, about my father’s presence. “He said he’s going away again, and I don’t think he’s figured out where Lilah lives, anyway. He gave his warning. Now he’ll keep moving, to lead the darkness away from us.” The weight of talking about my father’s condition in this much detail pressed down so hard I felt I might sink straight into the ground.

  “He’s your daddy. We’ll handle it however you want.” Big Tom’s deep voice was soft. “I’ll see if I can find any sign of him in the daylight, in case he didn’t really leave. If you think he’ll be all right, I reckon he will.”

  I closed my eyes and listene
d to the night song of a thousand frogs, peeping and chirping in their small, trouble-free world. Exhaustion swept over me. “Doesn’t it make you angry when you can’t fix things, but you still feel like it’s your place to try?”

  “It sure does,” Hettie said. “Makes me goldang furious.” The screen door complained as she swung it open and waved me toward the kitchen. “Now come on inside. I’ll warm some milk, to help get us back to sleep.”

  We circled wordlessly around the table, heads bent over our steaming cups. Big Tom and Hettie didn’t speak, but their solid, steady presence soothed my nerves. Against all odds, I began to relax. Quiet wrapped around the candlelit kitchen with the comfort of a well-worn quilt.

  I closed my eyes, and let it enfold me.

  The water was everywhere, driving spikes of pain through her ears and crushing her chest. She clawed her way through it, up from the slime-slicked stones at the bottom of the well. She dug herself out like a revenant from a grave, and all the while, she tried to forget. To push back the memory of empty skies and blackened trees. She swam harder, fighting away thoughts of a dark river, of blanketing fog and smothering loneliness.

  Her fingers shattered a thin sheet of ice as she surfaced in the center of the well. She moved to the stone wall, searching for any gaps in the rock large enough to offer a handhold. But the well circled her in its smooth embrace, and no matter where she grasped for purchase, none could be found. Her white gown billowed around her as she treaded the frigid water. She was trapped and alone, just as she’d been before she threw herself into the depths of the well.

  High above, a sound broke the morning quiet. The girl tilted her head back and peered into the circle of sky far above. She held her breath, listening to the telltale crunch of snow underfoot as someone walked through the woods.

  When she cried out, her voice rang hollow off the stones.

  The steps faltered. She called again, louder this time. The approaching footfalls resumed, with a hesitant shuffle. At last, the tail of a red woolen scarf swayed gently into the void of the well’s mouth, and a woman’s face leaned into view.