Deputy Burke waited
all night long for the phone to ring. He went ahead and dressed in
his uniform. At four am, only flashes of passing headlights disturbed
his dark home. Red and platinum beams cast long hurdles onto his
ceiling that wound to the wall. The phone sat still. He ran out of
coffee, eggs, bacon. He sat in the dark of his home watching the
night slip away. An hour and a half after he gave up trying to sleep,
he received a call from the Wilken’s residence. At first he sighed,
recalled all the domestic turbulence he’d been summoned to address
in the past. This time he dropped the phone and bolted out the door.
He drove past the coffee shack, and the fast food parlor despite his
urging hunger and shaking headaches caused by caffeine deficiency.
Morning rose over
the Wilken's farm. Frost of late February stiffened the dirt.
Curtains of mist swirled around the house. The Deputy came into the
Wilken’s kitchen. The dog chewed on a human mandible. Lilith
Wilken’s held her robe shut. The deputy didn’t ask about Pace’s
absence. Lilith didn’t need to say a word. He began his search. No
chickens occupied the coop. No machines idled in the barn. The
windmill stood tall, rusted in place. He thought for a moment that he
saw a caped figure watching him from between the blades. When he
shined a light towards the dilapidated rotors, a flock of dark birds
lifted away. The deputy zipped up his coat and made his way to the
field. He walked along the barb wire. Far off cattle bleated. A
school bus droned down the highway at the end of the property. The
deputy turned and walked along the drainage ditch. He shined his
light within. The sun rose and burned away the clouds and mist, but
the trench still stunk of dark mire. His foot kicked a glass capsule.
He looked down, sucked on his teeth and put his light back into his
belt. Several broken bottles lay scattered among a few last bottles
intact. In the middle of the broken glass rested half a pelvic bone,
the lower segment of a spinal chord, and some ribs peeking from the
dirt. The deputy sucked his teeth, and nudged the bottle he kicked
back to its gap in the dirt.
He called off the
search on his radio, and went inside. He watched Lilith sip steaming
coffee, and his lymph nodes stiffened. He swallowed dry spit, and
told her he found her husband.
“I worried it
would end this way,” he sighed to her, taking a seat before her.
“Ever since the first night I got called over to keep him from
swatting your head off...and the time after that...and the time after
that...”
The dog devoured
the mandible. A few teeth lay under his foaming tongue.
“This harvest, I
finally kicked him out. I boxed up his whiskey and wine, and I sent
him away.”
“I just want you
to know, that whatever happened, I don’t blame you. The report is
going to say exactly what you told me. He went out there, drank
himself to death. Animals got to his body. Not much is left now.”
The deputy stood up
and walked to the door. In his car, he called for a coroner. In the
middle of the driveway, under the shadow of dark clouds, stood the
hooded figure from the windmill. The deputy got out, and walked with
rapid strides, calling for the faceless stranger to reveal himself.
When he came to the
figure, he pulled away the hood, revealing canvas stitching with
worms squirming out of crude eye holes. Hay and fur fell out from
under its torso. The cape and straw blew away in the wind. The deputy
shielded his eyes from the hail of dust and hay. When he opened his
eyes, a heap of maggots devoured a heart at his boots.
Lilith Wilkens went
to check on her daughter. She carefully tapped on the door.
“Gwynth... please get up.” She whispered, then tapped again and
repeated herself louder than before. Lilith ripped knots from her
hair, and dropped blonde tangles to the floor. She worried- perhaps
Gwynth may fail to recognize her own mother. So much changed since
she killed Pace.
He lived up to his
tyrannical reputation before she married him, and it grew worse with
every year. He started fights with strangers as much as her. He broke
into an old woman’s home and urinated on her couch after her dog
scratched his truck. Every bar in the county banned him. No farmers
lent him any supply or equipment. Most intolerable to Lilith, he
swerved to hit animals in the road, living or dead. Each hunting
season, he hung up and gutted deer on the front lawn to rot for
everyone driving by to see.
After ten years of
mayhem, he crashed his car into the creek, and after spending weeks
in the hospitable swore never to touch substance again. Lilith
watched him transition into the nicest man she ever met. He went to
town meetings. Volunteered to clean up litter. He even made her a
stain glass window from his old liqueur bottles and placed it in the
barn.
One night he
received a phone call, and left without explaining where he was going
or why. When he returned, he didn’t say a word to anyone, and over
following nights he developed curious habits. He ate with his hands,
and thew up anything he ate. Lilith gave him stomach medicine, but he
tossed it out, telling her he didn’t want any pills.
His behavior only
grew more outlandish. Words of books and manuals no longer made sense
to him. He worked short hours, let the crops die, and watched as
pieces of the house crumbled. At last, a strange derangement
tormented his behavior.
Lilith awoke every
night in sweat and shivers. Pace stopped sleeping and lived the night
standing in the moonlight, glaring out the open window into the dark
leagues around the property lines. After a week of silently
observing, Lilith bothered to ask him, “what’s out there?”
“Can’t you hear
them?” he trembled to whisper. When he saw his wife’s confusion
he snapped back to the window, smacking both hands onto the pane.
“They’re coming, they’re closer...”
She climbed out
from the sheets and pulled him towards bed. He growled, and shoved
her to the floor. She covered her head with her fists. The nightstand
corner caught her by the eyebrow and both slid against the side of
the bed. Lilith rocked on the floor, the socket of her eye crunched
like a can. Blood dripped from between her fingers. She looked up at
Pace opening the window and sticking his head out. Only when the
blood tapped the floorboards did she take her quivering eyes from her
husband to see the blood on the nightstand, and the drops on her bare
legs. Vision faded and floated back. No pain alarmed her. She touched
the bleeding gash, ran her finger over the edge of a broken plate
above loose flakes, and scraped the red flap of flesh in the corner
of her eye with her fingernail before she realized what happened.
Pace’s breath escaped in white clouds. When he stepped away, Lilith
tried to crawl in his way, but he stepped over her. Glass broke, and
he returned with baring a bolt action Remington. His attention
remained on the window, his nostrils flaring, he stomped his heel
from the doorway. Lilith covered her wound as he planted a heel
between her forearm bones. Blinding flashes stripped the dark away
with each steaming round fired into the darkness. Pace slammed the
window shut, stepped into Lilith’s blood and tracked it down the
hall back to the cabinet. His daughter came from her bedroom, sleep
stolen eyes near closed, walking in the dark with short, shackled
steps, until she saw the blood print reflecting in the moonlight. Her
mother crawled from the bedroom, her eyes shined under unfurled
fringes of hair, moans tickled the back of her throat.
Gwynth pulled her
mother into the passenger seat of her car. Lilith spent time waiting
in the doctor’s office wondering what happened. The doctor took his
glasses off and asked about her husband.
“No, he quit
drinking years ago.”
They gave her pain
pills and sent her home with the top half of her head wrapped up.
She awoke at five
am with a love note and a flower from the garden. She robed herself,
and went down the stairs. As she cracked open eggs, she wiped the fog
from the window. Blue sun rays peeked over the distant bluffs.
Treeline shadows sharpened against the wet lawn. A shadow stood at
the chicken coup stabbing hay bails with a pitchfork. The roosters
called.
Pace Wilkens
impaled the hay bail. Wind blew lost strains against the wire fence.
He gasped at the paw print in the dirt. He got down to brush away the
loose hay, uncovering a trail leading to the chicken coup. He stole
the pitchfork. The scrap wood door grinded against the frame, bending
the screws as it pulled against the hinges. The hens bocked in their
nests like quivering warts. He stalked the isle, looking to the
corners, stabbing piles of hay, but finding nothing. Scratches fell
from the rafters above. Pace listened, and through cracks in the
ceiling he saw short fur. He left, came around the back, and climbed
up the stack of hay bails to the roof where he sighed in relief. A
fox curled up and looked at him with evolving concern, its nails
clicked on the roof as it bolted to its feet and darted to the
retreating fog over harvested fields. As he climbed down, the re
emergence of cold wind reminded him of the howl of coyotes. The barks
and yips strained the fabric of his neurons. He still remembered the
attack in the recesses of his earliest memories, when he awoke from
his fathers screams, and rushed to the window to watch a pack of
coyotes pull him apart in the front lawn.
Pace came inside,
wiped his boots on the rug and peeled his gloves off and shoved them
into a corner of his coat pockets. Dark fluid soaked into his facial
hair. Lilith asked nothing of it. Her stomach closed when she thought
of the days when Pace started fights with old men and crashed cars
into ATM machines.
“I have something
to tell you-” but the dog barked from the porch. He let the animal
inside the house. The dog’s nail clacked on the tiles. It braced
itself before the clock shaped like a lighthouse, with the dial
replacing the bulb- Pace made it himself and gave it as a gift to
Lilith after quitting alcohol and pain killers. The dog growled, and
prosecuted the clock with a chain of unleashed howls and barks.
Lilith stopped
scraping the pan with a spatula to pull the dog away.
“Leave the dog
be.,” he shut the stove off, “come to the basement with me.”
He lead her down
the steps. He pulled the chain and the light flooded the basement. He
took her to the drain in the floor. He removed the cover, reached
inside, and pulled out a heavy bottle of dark fluid. Red lather
filled the neck.
“Where does this
come from?” he asked. “Who is placing this around the house?”
Lilith shook her
head. Pace ripped out the cork and drank from the bottle. The
bittersweet reek of nightshade permeated from the fluid. He assembled
his tool box and left to fix the holes in the chicken coop.
Their daughter sat
down for breakfast. Pace repaired loose boards. Lilith book the
bottle, sniffed the fluid and her guts heaved. She took the opened
bottle outside and hurled it against the pavement once used to bath
cows on. Whispers escaped. The fluid ran down cracks and steamed
until it all soaked into the earth. When inside, the dog still barked
at the clock. she opened the bottom and retrieved a hidden bottle.
She poured its contents out into the grass. The grass turned yellow,
curled up and blew away in the wind. She put her ear to the bottle.
In the droning waves within, she heard coyote snarls and paws beating
nearer, the patter of bare feet fleeing- and the ripping of flesh.
Pace drove to
town. When he returned, he found another bottle under his brake. He
spent the daylight scratching at shadows on the wall, and boarding up
windows.
Prowling steps
awoke Lilith from dreams. She felt around and found her husband not
in bed. She panicked and put on slippers, rummaging through the
house, she found cold mist blowing in from the open back door.
Outside he heard a storm in the chicken coop. She recoiled when she
saw her husband emerging shirtless, on all fours with a hen bleeding
over his collars and down his chest, his teeth deep within its neck.
He sat before the musk of feathers and dust, tearing the chinking
into strips, swallowing its guts, and sucking the marrow from its
bones. Lilith ran barefoot through mud. The hen still kicked and
fluttered its wings. Pace growled at her with red teeth, his eyes
darker, pupils dense with bronze.
She ran back to the
house with his pouncing heels digging through the mud towards her.
His feet sank and he collapsed into the ground. Lilith slammed the
door behind her, and waited in the bedroom with the Remington,
watching the windows for Pace.
He stayed in the
chicken coop, devouring chickens until he vomited up a stomach full
of splintered bones and vermilion slush. He sat in the corner, his
sweat pants moist and coated in feathers. The sun rose, and he
simmered in a stew of sweat, blood, and goo leaking from his ears.
Putrid tubes and bladders rested on his shoulders. The cold wind
swept through and the fluids frosted on his body. An unfamiliar
engine revved. Pace rose to look out the window.
Headlights appeared
down the driveway and stopped at the tree line. His daughter waltzed
from the a gleaming Pontiac Firebird- he recognized, 1983 model, with
no license plate. She walked through the morning dark to the back
door where she slipped into the house like a sock behind a dryer. The
tail lights glowed in the morning mist and with a brief rev of the
engine it crunched gravel and disappeared down the far road.
Pace looked around
at the carnage he caused. He tore his hair out, trotted across the
yard. He stored all the bottles he found in a hole under the porch.
He dug them up, and drank them until his pupils returned to normal.
He walked upright
into the house, showered, clogged the drain with the flayed remains
of fowl. Unable to drain, the shower filled up with a pink soup. Pace
wandered around the house. The dog slept on the marital bed. Lilith’s
car still idled in the garage. He went to his daughters room, and
found her sleeping. Lilith stood over her with the gun leveled
towards him. Bags of name brand clothing peeked from under her mattress.
“You need to
leave.” She demanded of him.
“Lilith, it isn't
what it seems.” He stepped forward. The board creaked. His
daughter rolled her head, and from the window glare she saw a black
bar materialize into the weapon. Lilith’s shadow cut across the
room.
“Leave now. Take
all your possessions with you.”
“The gun isn’t
loaded. I spent all the bullets.”
Lilith noticed his
pupils returned to their natural shade.
“It’ s all a
bad dream. One that I can’t wake from.” He pleaded.
Cold air flushed
through the screen and brushed dust from the floor. Pace kicked dirty
clothes out of the way. His daughter held her breath at the sight of
her mother aiming the rifle.
“Come, let us be
a family once more...”
The daughter
lifted, and backed towards the screen.
“Gywnth,” her
mother pleaded. “Stay there.”
The girl listened
to nothing, she reached to unhook the latches. With a shove the
screen popped out. She stuck her head out, but her moth caught hold
of her foot with one hand. The muzzle dipped floorward. Pace pounced
for the gun. Lilith pulled the trigger, and pace collapsed to the
floor, pressing his ankle. Blood flowed to the floor. His howls
echoed down the hall, the stairs, and out the door. Gwynth’s
silence shattered and she screeched like a falling missile. Lilith
released her, and rushed to her husband rolling into the vanity
table. The mirror on top swayed. Pace watched his eye widen, his face
tipping nearer to him. Lilith tried to catch the mirror but she she
saw daughter slip out the window so she reached back, catching the
end of her gown as glass crashed.
Gywnth climbed down
the trellis, and jumped into the bushes. Once out she fled towards
the rusted windmill. Squawking crows watched from the blades. She
climbed up the ladder to the small seat, weary and fatigued, even
hung over from all the substance her suitor provided to her, she held
his invitation close to her chest- he promised her everything
bedreamt, if she came with him to the city. The barn door scraped.
She looked towards it. A hooded figure strolled out and approached
the windmill.
Lilith walked over
the broken glass to lift the mirror from Pace. Shards protruded from
his face and neck. She quivered, hiding her teeth behind her hand,
dropping the weapon, and pulling out the glass. With each fragment
her husband moaned a little more, until his fingers reanimated and
grasped her windpipe. His grasp constricted. Lilith’s tongue
swelled from her mouth as her lungs shriveled up. She reached for a
long piece of glass in his cheek. Holding it firmly, she guided it
across Pace’s neck.
Finally his last
breath escaped in a white puff. The open window chilled the room with
late autumn shivers. Lilith's flesh felt like marble. The dog barked
from outside, and jumped at the door.
Lilith rolled his
body onto a sheet, and dragged him to the stairs where she slipped
and the body tumbled down. Dust fell from the ceiling. She dragged a
wagon from the barn, hoisted her husband inside limb by limb and
plowed the wagon through the harvested field to the drainage ditch
where she rolled the body down. She took his clothes off, and burned
them in a barrel.
Gwynth remained on
the windmill. The hooded man walked with two crutches and braces on
his legs and spine. He stood beneath the windmill, filled his cheeks
with air, and when he expelled the breath purple clouds gathered and
sunk. A cyclone of dust speared the harvested fields. Sediment mist
filled the air as wind streams deafened the sounds of distant highway
travel and the grating of the wagon wheels. Gwynth held on, her hands
slipping, her legs fell from the seat, and she grabbed onto the
windmill blade. The crows lifted and fled. Her weight shifted the
blades. As she slid they sliced into her palms. She held on tighter,
but the blade bent, and broke away and fell down with her.
Lilith dropped her
wagon when she saw her daughter fall. She ran through the mud,
through the uncut weeds, to a sight that sucked the life from her.
The blade fell against her neck. Gwynth’s head rolled to the boots
of the hooded man.
“You did this,”
Lilith barked. “You’re behind all of it.”
“Yes. This may
be...” The dog ran and heeled at his side. The wind died and bursts
of light burned through the clouds behind the hooded stranger. He
staggered on his crutches, shifting his body like an adjusting track.
A grin stretched across the lightened half of his face. “...The
proudest moment in my life.”
He wiped away a
tear.
“I will offer you
what I offered Pace-” He produced a bottle of pulpy wine from his
sleeve. “I’ll leave this for you. Keep it. Don’t let anyone
else drink from it. And I will make this scene appear like suicide.
As for your daughter...”
The dog brought him
her head and dropped it at his feet. “… She can return to life
yet.”
“You're a liar.”
“No, no. To show
my good faith, I will give her back to you. All I ask is that you
keep this bottle. Go ahead, take it.”
Lilith reached, her
eyes latched onto the hallow horror, like a person sinking in
quicksand, expressed on the drooping flesh of her daughters face. She
took the bottle.
“Good. It’s all
that’s left of my family. You don’t remember, because it was so
long ago. Your husband threw me across the room, fractured my skull
and nearly tore my lumbar in half. While in the hospital my father
burned all his assets. My mother drove my Firebird into the river.
And I inherited nothing but this degenerative disease. So please,
take care of it. Go inside. Now. Hide it. And I will bring your
daughter to life. Then, I will see to it that Pace Wilken’s body is
never found.”
Lilith took the
bottle from him. The dog followed the stranger into the barn. The
door closed behind them.
Lilith spent the
remaining daylight scrubbing blood and sweeping broken glass. The
clocks stopped. The dog lay on the bed. The front door grinded open.
Footsteps went up the stairs. Lilith found something she missed
before. The bags of clothes from a store in the city- one she never
dared spend money. The tags on the clothes, the lowest price- fifty
dollar stockings. Nylon, lingerie- straps and belts, and a love note
at the bottom from “Daddy”. The hallway planks moaned. Lilith
tossed everything back inside the bags.
“Oh my god, mom-
what are you doing in my room?”
Lilith hugged her
daughter. Her neck felt soft like warm cheese, but the rest of her
felt as animate as the day she escaped from the womb.
Harvest season
cooled to winter, froze and frosted, then upon the thawing period,
Lilith cleaned the chicken coup and sold Pace’s tools and
belongings.
Even as the frozen
pastures melted to slush, she awoke before sunrise reaching over to
find spare room where she expected to find warm flesh. The dog barked
outside. Short, muffled, slobbering barks. She lit a cigarette and
watched the sunrise over the windmill. As the sun rays reached over
the distant bluffs, the windmill shadows stretched towards the house,
standing between the blades she thought she saw the hooded stranger’s
cape flutter in the screeching wind. The dog tore the screen with his
claws. Lilith idled down the stairs. She let her daughter sleep in,
and no longer made breakfast for her. She tried to remember the last
time she saw Gwynth, but her mind always swept to the red bottle in
the shelf of her fridge door. Every morning she poured it out. Every
morning, another bottle returned.
She let the dog in
as she poured the new bottle down the drain and tossed it in the bin
with the others. The dog growled at her. She turned to him to see
what at first looked like a piece of riveted lumber. She took hold of
it, but the dog tightened its grip. It broke in half, and only then
did Lilith see the teeth. She held a human mandible.
When Lilith entered
her daughters room to tell her what happened, she met a cold gust of
wind. The window wide open, the closet empty, the sheets and blankets
on the floor. The expensive clothes gone. A nylon stocking hung from
an open drawer. Week’s worth of dust coated the makeup table, the
mantle over her bed, and the floorboards.
Lilith went
downstairs. The dog entered the room with the bottle of red elixir.
She took the bottle from the dog's panting mouth. She uncorked the mouth, and
swallowed hard.
