Along the far reaches, miles from the river swamped fields or the urban sprawl, where county roads fade to bands of scraped earth, and the farm houses look like standing remains of a settler’s suffocated ambitions. Such is the fate and the condition of the sterile western lands. Arid, and sparse farmland between many open veins of creek streams that dried up in the cold. The witchgrass grew taller than the fence posts and grew up over the rusted barbed wire. Dust clouds followed a rumble down the road. Black birds flocked to telephone lines and waited for the vehicle to rocket past. Then the flock lifted away in search of other road kill.
The county deputy’s car rocked over the potholes and dust filled trenches overgrown with bermuda grass and prickly sow thistles. The clouds gathered above, tiny pins of moisture kissed the windshield. The deputy didn’t turn on the wipers. He saw clearly, driving around fallen tree limbs, reminiscing as he the old estate came into view, “are these the same people that used to own land in every county across the state?”. The doorless gate he drove through rusted away, but the pale imprints of Saxe-Holenlowe Farms obsessed in the place of the fallen letters.
One plowable field stretched before a retired farm house. A three story home, but a wing short of a mansion. Remarkably distinct in its appreciated condition. The old farmers in their creaking chairs once told the deputy that the house looked as good as did in 1972- when Sr. Holenlowe died.
Bright, new coat of paint, siding still firmly attached, and a porch that sat even and steady. Shrubs protected the edges, and the weather vane atop the roof spun in the wind. The gutters and walls bore the markings of country abuse, but the last drop of the bloodline that the deputy knew of, Levi- mended the wounds suffered with sharp craftsmanship. The deputy doubted she did it herself. He only met her a few times. He knew no one other than city utilities that ventured to this corner of the county. Sr had no sons. The extended family became lost diary pages when he departed from the homeland long ago. Most of them died off as the new millennium dawned. A plane crash killed the last uncle. The only cousin he knew of used to run meth, and died by swallowing his supply to hide it from the police hounds. Many others wound up in prisons across the country with twenty five-to-life sentences, the murmurs in the hedges foretold.
An arrow of cranes flew north. A taste of Spring’s late invasion sweetened the air. March remained the coldest in years. The deputy wore woolly gloves and wore an extra garment beneath his uniform- The brown fatigue shirt and black tactical pants. The badge signifying his standing among other police smudged and chipped- he needed to get a new one.
The only cleared and plowed field looked hopeless. The dirt ashy and rocky. The deputy owed the family’s prominence to their ability to, at one time, cultivate this infertile soil, but now he figured the secret must be long gone.
The deputy pulled onto the bumpy driveway leading him to the Saxe-Holenlowe estate. The nearer he came, the more the family house glowed, a source of light coming from behind illustrated the blemishes and scars along the house’s ridges.
The deputy came to the door, knocked- but no one came. He peered inside, saw a clean house, but no people. He smelled smoke, so he went to the back of the house, where the barn and two sheds sat in a triangle. Between them a pyre of yard waste gathered from the plowed field burned. The fire devoured the offering, leaving a course of developed flames that seared with the smoke to take shape of a hellish portal. The deputy looked to the fluttering heat waves, his eyes drawn to the fire. Before the burning debris shivered Levi Saxe-Holenlowe. Her back hunched, hands rested on her hips. The deputy wondered why she continued to live here. When he came towards her, Levi pretended not to notice. She heard his steps in the grass, and the swaying of equipment on his belt. She hoped to send the visitor away, but assumed a neighbor complained about the smoke. She displayed the fire permit on a stick on which the paper flew like a flag. The deputy gave the permit a look over, took his gloves off and warmed his frigid fingers by the fire. The wind chilled his back, but facing forward, he felt like melting. He admitted to Levi that he came for a different reason.
“The thieves are going farm to farm. They are the most dynamic group we’ve seen in a long time. Horse tails, copper wiring, cars and tractor parts, even heavy equipment-just last week, we get a call from Abe Halle saying he saw them speeding down the highway with his neighbor’s new welder. Now they’ve started breaking into houses.”
“I have nothing to steal.”
“They’ll come for the copper in your barn, any steel parts you don’t have buried. These are not meth heads. Thought you ought you know that your property fits the profile of their targets.”
“If I see anything, I’ll call.”
“That being said, so many people are leaving. More and more each year. The town’s not deserted but it feels emptier, and most farmers have sold to cooperate by now. What’s keeping you here?”
“Did you come to fraternize?”
“No, ma'am. Just curious.”
“Tradition, one might say… too many memories.” she said looking above the fire, shaking her head with wide eyes, not trying to hide her own disillusion.
“All Alma county has is its tradition. Only the old folk stick around. Maybe they’ve been here all this time. Figure they’ll outlive us at this rate.” He smiled at his little joke.
“Yes. I’ve known them, or did at some time. They all hated my family… say we’re “wiley” folk.
“Well. I’m planning on staying put. I know how you feel. I’m a Kansas City boy, but this place feels like home…” he put his gloves back on. “How did your family do it? Get anything to grow here? If you don’t mind my prying.”
“Hardwork, sweat, blood.” Levis said again with the same widened, mocking eyes. “That’s what they always told me.”
The deputy wished for her to stay warm, and exited the warmth of the fire.
The pins of rain fell to the dirt and frosted. Levi watched the fire, warming herself after her morning of work. Her hands beaten, gloves torn, exposing raw calluses. Her boots soiled, buckles stripped away.
As the deputy left, he took a nervous shudder as a low moan emitted from within the trees at the end of the farm. A silo constructed from iron colored bricks rose above the trees. It endured such disrepair that it appeared to the deputy as a part of the forest. Such a mortal sound of static longing, like a horse with it’s head trapped in wire. The deputy went away from his car, down the field, his boots crushing rocks and ant hills. The moan echoed in the silo, like smoke rising from the chimney. That agonized sigh, not of pain-filled infirmaries, nor of tormented lunatics, but of the deprived.
The deputy ducked under branch’s budding leaves, and crept between saplings, his boots sinking into a soup of rotting debris. The forest floor thawed. Broken branches swayed by threads. Bird’s nests lay fallen and abandoned. The sighing ceased, and his ears felt raw and alert in the cold. The deputy approached the silo, for it was unlike any he saw before. Covered in growth and ivy with bricks crumbling, and gaps wide enough to fit a hand through. He saw no entry, and no chute through which to deposit grain. An archaic structure, but made with the same material as the county buildings constructed in the early 1900s. Perhaps they had money in that too, the deputy conjectured. Unlike any other silo, this one loomed forward, built upon a gated block, with the keyhole welded shut. The sigh came again, seeping from the cracks and gaps, but arising from the opening at the top. The deputy kicked the iron gate to find it solid shut. He looked into one of the gaps, but saw only darkness as the sigh receded. He focused, peering down, light infiltrated the gaps and cracks and lit up the opposite ends of the silo showing that no grain residue stuck to the walls. Tt the bottom a pool rippled, and this watery track lead to an earthly hutch. The deputy pushed away, and walked back to his vehicle, feeling guilty because he fell for gossip and rumor. The wind, he assured himself, passing through the silo.
Levi watched the flames, the family burial plot not twenty feet away against the house, below the kitchen window. The garden of fieldstone heads wound around the corner, the names and dates of birth worn away, unreadable unless one traces the letter and numerals with a fingertip. Levi met none of these people- for the tomb stones outside belonged to the many that died in infancy. A spider built a web between two tombs. No matter how bitter the wind blew, the web remained intact. By then the earnest little eater captured three moths and a bee, and kept them secure in cocoons. The queen arachnid clung to her web, undeposed by nature’s winds. Levi looked over her farmland. The olde way still worked, the family reminded her… and Levi revolted at the idea. She kicked at the graves. The spirits went into hiding long ago. The web broke and Levi cursed the dead lying beneath.
She longed to move away to any place but the estate, to leave the decomposed where they grieve, let the blasphemy in the silo have them. She tried to sell the property twice. Any prospective buyer crashed their car on the way to the farm. Several ended up in the hospital. One child died waiting for the ambulance. No one wanted the place after that.
Furthermore, she devoted herself to the farm since girlhood as a monk does a monastery- Not to grow feed for pigs, but to keep their secret in place. She looked to the silo peering from the crown of barren trees, and scowled at the horror within.
Levi spent the morning hours in the barn, as the ash from the heap blew across the property. She opened the barn door, and turned on the light. The filament flicked but the bulb came on and she tore the sheet away from the broken tractor. She sat inside, wind crying against the barn walls, studying the machine. The outdated parts, eroded pistons, and rusted bolts lay in a pile. Another heap contained replacement parts she already tried.
She spent her winter restoring the tractor. Her whole life it sat in the barn. At that time every inch of of it looked antique. She cursed the family again. They bought it - seventy years ago, Levi judged- and they never used it once. No dirt or earthly blemishes gummed the tractor, but it looked like the skeleton of a once great machine. Levi decided to make it her project. She called in the parts she needed, most no longer compatible with a tractor as old, but the woman understood the integrity of machines. She fixed her own truck whenever it broke down, and she fixed anything else around the house that needed a craftsman’s attention.
She looked at her work, made some more adjustments, feeling so close. She felt the engine wanting to come on, like a newborn learning to crawl. She tried the tractor after each tamper. Heat ran through the wheel. She wondered if she ought to just buy a new model, but at last, the engine came on, the mechanisms all aligned, the stutter of metal wings, and the winding of a rotary compressor made the statue of rust vibrate to life.
She stepped on the accelerator, and the tractor screeched like a train, slowly coming loose, no grease on earth enough to lubricate the grinding steel. The machine moved as a cart does up the peak of a slope. The engine popped. Sparks and smoke shot out from the exterior. It smelled worse than burning rubber. Black smoke puffed from the tailpipe. Fluids leaked behind it. The tractor cleared the barn door, chugging down, the tires sinking into dirt, the machine made it ten feet from the barn before a fatal sputter- and the undercarriage collapsed From under the tractor into the dirt. The tractor stopped, let out one last squeal and died.
Levi climbed down from the machine. In truth she didn’t care if anything grew or no. The land didn’t keep her, and she needed no extra money. Her reasons for staying remained in the silo. She went towards where it stood buried in the branches. She knew nothing about where it came from, or when, only that the family sealed it away. The only key hung on a necklace around her neck. She stepped into its shadow, water dripping inside, frost clinging to brown vines. Silence seeped in, its heavy blocks absorbing sound like a vacuum. She heard only the whistling of wind through the cracks and the snapping of branches, swooping limbs falling down within. She touched the silo with an open palm. Rough, numbing cold, a hollow rush of air circulating within. A low growl, and the pattern of intentionally quiet recession emerged from the depths. No terror came over her. She knew what to expect, but the growl served to remind her of the family’s cursed legacy. “Keep it forever closed, and forever secret.” They whispered under the cold currents of wind.
Levi peered back inside, the width of the blocks and the jagged angle of their corrosion obstructed much of her view. Anything untouched by the transient sunlight remained dimly starved of her attention . She only saw what the sunlight through the gaps and cracked revealed. Vines with green buds lifting towards the light. She stepped back. Residue from the bricks leaving bronze sediments pinched in her love lines….
Levi decided to kill it.
One night, when she was twelve years old, she awoke to the barrel of a .32 caliber revolver pointed down at her. Small, short, clack, cold iron, but the barrel went on forever. The wielder grabbed her by the the collar. She called out for help, but her shouts fell to the floor. She was home alone that night. He covered her mouth, demanded to see “it”. Crazy electricity sparked in his eyes. Missing teeth, and hairlipped. She knew him. Met him many times. The man used to be the local grocer , but ever since his daughter vanished from his life, even Levi knew the red vessels twitching in his eye, the degeneration of cells in his brain, the living decomposition peeling from his face, that he swam under the currents of obscure outer circles.
His daughter disappeared in the silo. She came over at Levi’s request and the two girls enjoyed eachothers company, shared some stolen cigarettes, ate food, played outside, until the grocer’s daughter heard something in the trees and wandered off to find it. Levi came out from her hiding place, the game going on for too long. She searched and searched. All she found was the girl’s shoe before the silo.
“I won’t hurt you- I won’t hurt you- Just show me where it lives.”
Levi took the former grocer to the trees, the endless barrel hovered inches from her head the whole walk. She pointed to where she found the shoe before the sound eating weight of the silo. He lost interest in her, climbed up, and over, splashing at the bottom. Levi walked home, and locked the doors and windows. Shaking, and afraid, she kept her uncle’s small .45 under her pillow. She slept without interruption, and felt healthy and renewed when she arose. She ate breakfast in her pajamas, stayed in, waiting with the curtains pulled. But chores needed done, and the family owned no servants. She peeked out every window, everything looked as normal does on the farm. The lawn green and cut, the garden between the sheds, the livestock roaming. She went to the front door. She reached up, unfastened the bolt, and unhooked the chain, keeping the .45 at her side. She opened the door millimeter by millimeter, and froze- mortified- once a gap wide enough to fit a pencil through opened. the door opened no further. The body of the grocer lay against it. His legs reduced to red stubs with the femurs exposed. A trail of blood lead back to the silo. The gun remained in his claws. She pried it way, breaking a few of his fingers in the process. She opened the cylinder, all six bullets fired, his hands caked in the residue of the blocks, his fingernails split. That was many years ago, but she still bore a fiendish resentment.
Levi went into the house, storming into the parlor, leaving dirt prints behind her. She took a dagger from the mantel, and turned it on the portraits of dead family, digging out the eyes, "why didn’t you kill it?" she interrogated each portrait.
She went around the sheds and barn. Nothing inside gave her inspiration. they owned no rockets, no nerve agents. Fire, perhaps smoke, but the water at the bottom would end that. Flooding, no flood yet killed it. Many bolts of lightning also struck the silo. They didn't know what it ate, or if it even slept.
Levi decided to try and poison it by dumping jugs of pesticide into the gaps. But the sigh continued. She emptied bags of salt to the water. The sigh continued. She tried to kill it everyday, but every night it’s sigh arose from the silo.
Seven thieves assembled at a interstate junction tavern. They conspired what action to take next. One suggested that they go for homes along the highway for precious metals. One thief disagreed, citing police activity along the highways. They agreed. They needed to move inland. The thieves liked this idea, because the leagues of country darkness provided them with ample hiding places. One dissenter pleaded with the boss, who sat with silent authority, that they had nothing to more to gain, and should move to the next state- but the boss asked his patrolman if he saw anything when the 8th thief came into the smokey chamber. What he told them, they refused to believe until he pulled out fists of gold from his pockets and left it on the middle of the table for them to sample. They listened to him, his eyes wrinkled with with terminal severity.
He followed a tower of smoke down a road of abandoned structures, to an almost deserted looking farm, that's where he saw a window that opened on its own as he gazed inside. A long, white hand beckoned him forth, so he climbed in, finding a clean, sealed off room of drywall and hardwood flooring, barren of furnishing. Once inside, he didn't have time to notice more enhanced details, because the room darkened. No lights hung from the ceiling. Slow, the sun rays slipped away. The thief spun around to see the window fade into wall just as the darkness swallowed the room.
The thief almost panicked, but kept his head on. He felt around the walls, walking delicately, feeling like a fly fighting to pull free from adhesive tape, hoping that any bump on the wall would lead him to freedom, though no matter where he looked- the window was gone. He went further down the wall, taking noiseless steps, finding the corners of the room, and even the rectangle belt of adhesive mortar where the door used to be. Then he stepped on a board that sunk and squeaked. The one besides it did too, and the next. The thief felt certain. He found the way out. He felt around the floor, following the cracks on the boards. he counted six boards, and he pulled them each away- this revealed a door, that by metal ring he pulled up. cold air rushed out, and a vent of wet, dirt reeking air flowed behind. He peered into the dark, lowering his feet- finding stone stairs under him. Narrow steps, only a heel wide, lead him down. More darkness at this point didn't bother him, but the feeling of sinking ate at the lining of his stomach. He kept both hands firmly on the walls, taking hold of the misaligned stonework, and taking slow, careful steps. Each step, he held his breath and eased down with his toes. Right when he was sure the stairs ended before nothing, his toe found the next step. The stairs winded around, leaving the steps shaped like elongated triangles. His heels easily slipped from the thin edges, but he didn't move until he felt secure on a thicker edge. Almost did he fall into what felt like a chasm, but he pressed against opposite ends of the walls, and held himself up, finding footwork again, and proceeding down this slime coated, light starved underway.
He counted Thirty six steps down. The spiral took him around three times, finally dropping him at on a flat lot of stone. Some light shimmered at the end. He approached, though he moved with no lack of caution, for the rows on either side of him were dark, he felt the eternal eyes of many different souls judging him. The glowing came from stacks of gold, coins, bars, ingots, rings, bowls, plates- The thief came nearer, and saw the treasure sitting atop stone blocks. He took some gold, and after finding that it was real, put it in his pocket, and then looked down at what held the gold. A stone casket. He looked around. In the glow he almost saw in the dark, several other stone caskets, with rows along the walls holding carpet rolls with the craniums and feet bones exposed. The thief took as much gold as his pockets held, and then looked for a way out. Some fresh air entered, but through where he dared to discover. He followed it through the catacomb, until he found a small chamber at the end.
The door fell off some time ago, and unlike the crypt, this room smelled of ash and cooked meat, but not the kind that made him hungry... it made him sick. The closer he came, the sicker the scent made his stomach. He came to the source- an oven big enough for a person. The ash, a crematorium. He stuck his head inside because he heard the flowing air coming through a pipe, and once inside he found the flow of air blowing ash into his face. He coughed as it went into his eyes, nostrils and lungs. Dusting himself off, he squinted to keep hanging particles from blinding him. He felt jagged pieces of bone bite into his palm as he climbed inside. He pushed through the ashy remains, pulling in his feet, shimmying with sweat dripping down his face, until he reached the back. He panicked for a second before finding the vent at the top- and it was big enough for a body, so he went on up, crawling like a rodent in a tube, coming out through a chute on the outside of one of the sheds.
One by one, the thieves realized the authenticity of the substance, and their eyes rose to the 8th man like a divine rain. "There's a city of it under that house."
The thieves went in pairs, leaving ten minutes after the the other. One always staying behind the band, watching out for police and rivals.
The teams arrived early morning. 4am. Mist still crawled over the fields. The thieves found no difficulty in hiding. The moonlight offered the sole source of illumination. Through the fog, the house stood asleep. The thieves left a getaway car in front of the driveway, and drove one truck up the driveway with the headlights off. The 8th man pointed to the shed. The chute still hung open.
"It's only big enough for one person at a time". he explained to them before they left "so I’ll take one of you with me. We'll shovel out the gold, the rest of you collect it."
He and the smallest thief among them slid down the chute. Some scratches, and grunts emerged, but they slipped into the dark, leaving the thieves to wait anxiously. The getaway driver watched the roads with night vision binoculars, but saw nothing for miles.
The man in the supply car nervously tapped the brake. The pump action shotgun on his lap. The only weapon they brought, and the truck driver felt a horrid sigh arose from the trees. His blood chilled, and the idea of failure infected his mind, but to him there was no idea- but plain fact- as the infection gnawed on his nerves, he became convinced his weapon needed to be ready, and his failure to trust his team enhanced his fear caused by the treeline sighs. He held onto the gun. Two thieves came, dropped a sack in the back of the truck. The cab lifted as the bed sank. They went to grab more. He stroked the shotgun, the trigger wanted to hammer the firing pin. He never had to shoot anyone-in this gang. They did fast, short, good work, yet no matter how he tried to mend pieces of his broken confidence, a sinister sensation of a ghostly hand on weighed his shoulder. Another bag of gold fell in. The shocks adjusted, and he guessed by the weight that what they stole was not gold, but instead a substance so dense, so rare...
The 8th man and his partner wrenched around the basement like soundless arachnids, in their masks and dark suits, they crouched and shifted across the floor, taking careful, acute movements. Not even the dust stirred beneath their feet. The house shifted above them. Wood screeched and sunk. Their utility lights clamped in their teeth cast blades of light that drew blue halos around the stacks of valuables.
They found the portraits of old men and old women each with their eyes cut out. The 8th man gestured for his partner to look, but the thief took greater concern with his operation and ignored the portraits, only interested in escaping with the desired storage. The amount they had to sample from made his mouth water. They could take half of the supply and still have plenty to share among the gang, yet with greed prodding his judgement, he started putting gold in his pockets when his partner looked away. For every ounce he bagged, he stowed some extra in his tactical pouches. The 8th man grabbed his arm as he dropped some gold into pocket. The thief cowered, figuring he just bought a trip down the river in several different sacks, but the 8th man looked like he stored extra in his pockets too. He pointed up, and whispered "we need to go".
He heard the snapping of a weapon. A Remmington, he knew by the way the clip echoed when inserted, but he kept quiet until he heard the grinding of dry wall. Something opened... and down the stone steps came Levi, flashlight in one hand, Remington at her hip. the gold nearly gone. Scuffling rummaged in the back of the catacombs. Levi hurried into the crematorium, where she saw a boot lift into the chute. Levi ran back up, and opened a parlor window. Such dark, heavy all consuming dark, collared with the mist oversaturated by moonlight. It’s ethereal glow concealed the shadows hurrying away. Red tail lights glowed like mystic orbs. she pointed the Remmington out the window, firing shots at the red glow. the vehicles roared, and then thieves clamored for each other to hurry as their silhouettes lept into the bed of the truck. Levi fired again, her bullet struck the car, and a tail light exploded. She kept firing at the lights, she saw them, but they didn't see her in the dark house.
The truck driver aimed his weapon out the truck window, and while the thieves demanded he speed away, he instead pointed the gun to where he saw the burst of sparks and smoke. He unloaded the weapon at the house, than they sped away into the night.
Levi lay on the floor, the window shattered, her weapon bent by the gun fire, and with pellets resting in her chest. At first she felt no pain, her body felt like a racing leopard, but once the blood soaked through her night clothes, she felt only the emerging presence of death, and its sythe hanging under her neck. The tremble of her organs, the air sucked from her lungs, cold nails driving up her nerves. but along the walls, though the many portraits she maimed and removed, their gazes peered down with shameful glares. Levi rolled over and crawled. Bleeding wounds pressed against the hard wood, her innards wanted to slop out, but contractions of muscle held them in place. She felt immense weakness, even to cross the room took what felt like hours across a blazing wasteland. She reached for the door knob, holding as much of her body inside as possible, her crimson coated palm took the handle and twisted it loose. The door fell open, and she took the first inch to get out of the house. The light and car engine still lingering in the night air.
She dug her nails into the dirt, everything tasted like copper. Blood trailed behind her, the tree line in sight, that harsh disgruntled sigh but this one rose like a streaming flare. she crawled nearer, her limbs slipping, getting colder and colder. blood trickled down her mouth. rocks gorged her as she dragged herself over them. She dropped a few times, and lay feeling the heat escaping her body like bees swarming from a fallen hive. the monstrous sigh rose- the creeping cry of a saint betrayed by his god.
She crawled further and further, deep in the fog. Her lungs failed to hold air, making her breaths short and insufficient. yet in these last gasps of energy, wringing every little drop life left out like water from a dishrag. She found herself under the silo's shadow. the structure looming like a knight in armour, on horse, his lance pointed to unarmed peasants in rags with pitchforks. the sign beckoned her, its voice imitating human speech, not calling her for, but asking her leave and stay gone. the dying Levi did not argue, but the monster assured her, that once set free, it would indict those guilty of inflicting this fate onto her. Levi crawled so close that branches absorbed by the silo stones devoured the sound and emitted it into the air like a flower's pollen.
The frosty bricks, the dripping and hanging growth, she took out the necklace, the key, and uncovered the secret keyhole, the entrance way shifted, and a way opened. The water within, she almost tasted it, the vines growing from it, the bottom rich with growth. The stones loosened, and the structure tilted further and further. Levi dipped her head into the water. The silo collapsed.
Levi lay under the bricks, something removed the weight, unconscious, but living, she was long into a cold pond, where she remained until sunrise. Alive, but beneath a layer in which the ghosts and spirits live, and in those layers she met and saw many faces and bodies that seemed to filter from a screen and then seep back into clouds of powder, but they looked so physical, and sounded so aged like wisemen, even the most deceitful criminal worse a nice suit, combed his hair, and acted cordially among the other dead. One of the further ghosts floated nearer and nearer, until it stood above her, and disapproved with a face ugly like a farm animal, but firm in reasoning. He pulled her out of the water, and left to dry on a tree branch hanging over the water.
She woke up, the sunrise failed to warm the land. Frost covered the trees and pond shore. Her blood remained in the water, diluted, fish swimming through it. She felt her chest with her hand. The metal pellets rolled under her skin. Her body restored but sore and scared. nearly naked, cold, hungry, and exhausted. Her wet night clothes and hair froze in the cold like stiff cardboard.
She looked out, and did not recognise where she found herself. she climbed down from the tree, the plains looked flat and gray, the fields like chocolate cake, the frost icing on top. Nothing else for miles under the opaque sky. No fence posts... Not a telephone pole... no black birds.
She looked back into the water, saw no faces, no effigies, just a shallow bottom. For the fish she reached out to touch, but it swam away before her fingers pierced the surface.
The deputy arrived two hours past sunrise. He got a report of gunshots the night before at the Saxe-Holenlowe estate, so he and a partner went out to inspect.
The farm looked bad, as if it aged a century since he last saw it. The deputy got out of his car. The siding fell off, the porch leaned away from the house, the roof drooped inward, the windows cracked and broken- the place not only neglected, but contained a great absence like no one been there in a generation. The deputy nervously zipped up his coat and told his partner to have his gun ready. The front door hung open. A train of blood led from the doorway. The police rushed in, their breathes white puffs, the cobwebs covered the parlor and dust, a pool of blood under a broken window. The police went back out following the blood trail to the trees, where it ended at the rubble where the silo stood before. The deputy and his partner hauled away the rubble, brick by brick, but found nothing underneath. They went back to the house, and searched every room. calling for ms. Saxe-Holenlowe. They found each room empty, completely drained of material, furniture, silverware. No footprints, no scratches on the hardwood.
At last they discovered the secret room, the stone stairs, and the smell of copper. The deputy drew his weapon, and they descended. At the bottom the deputy froze in horror- 8 bodies on the floor between the rows of tombs. The deputy inspected the corpses, -Highway patrol discovered their vehicles in a ditch. A horrid collision occurred, the tracks became tangled, and their loot taken from empty sacks found strewn down the road.
The deputy also issued searches for Levi. Search party after search party went into the forests, the fields, the creeks, but found nothing. the deputy led searches for her himself, though the search parties came apart after tornado season began. He still returned to the property, and took notice of the crumbling house. "Condemned", the sign warned. He always came back, something about the place tickled his curiosity.
One night he found a vagrant sleeping in the closet. When he frisked the man for drugs, he found no illicit substance, but he did find gold coins in his pocket. The deputy carted the vagabond back to town with a burglary charge, but when he opened the doors, the suspect was gone. The gold coins remained on the seat. He put them in his pocket, and when he returned to the estate, he left the coins on the mantel. Before he left, he looked back. They were gone.
The deputy walked to the silo, following the familiar sigh to the rubble where it sat, like a defeated icon, the creature remained perched, unstirred by the shaking deputy. The monster did not cry nor threaten, but gestured out to the field. Something grew in the desolate soil.
