The Exorcism of Sara May Page 5

  Mr. Tandy led us to his barn and got us outfitted with Heely and his harness as well as several lengths of rope and a stout chain for pulling the stumps. He handed us each a razor-sharp, two-bitted axe before helping Sara May get Winnie, their white workhorse set up.

  “Next spring I’m planning on getting a tractor. Not that I don’t love you, girl,” Tandy said, patting the horse on the side, “but farming’s all about production and tractors are the wave of the future.”

  I was listening absently to him as Jones and I began to lead Heely out of the barn, but I was struck by how much Sara May was helping with the horse’s tack. For some reason I’d never pictured her in the fields working with her father. She caught me staring as Jones and I left the barn and my face heated up.

  The field we were working on was to the right behind the barn, about a quarter mile from the main yard. There were dozens of stumps sticking up from the rich soil, their tops sawed within a few feet of the ground. Rocks were also prevalent, some as big as a fist while others looked to weigh more than Jones and I combined.

  We started on the farthest stump we could find to the east of the clearing while Mr. Tandy led Winnie to the opposite side of the field. Sara carried a shovel and a five-gallon pail, which she started to fill with the rocks she could pry from the dirt.

  If you’ve never pulled a stump by hand beneath the flaming gaze of the sun, it’s not something you’d forget. It is hard, hard work. First the roots must be dug free and chopped as they’re exposed. Then whatever you’re using to pull the stumps has to be lashed to the trunk. Once the stump starts to move in the hole you’ve made, the best route is to try and cut the taproot. The taproot normally extends from the very bottom of the stump and not only holds the most, it’s the toughest to get at.

  Jones and I worked as hard or harder than Heely that afternoon. Sweat poured from us. Jones, being completely unselfconscious, pulled his shirt off and continued to work while I sweated through mine, very aware of Sara’s gaze whenever she would turn our way. I saw her look at Jones several times as we worked and a spike of jealousy ran through me. Jones was a farm boy, same as me, but his father worked him harder than my own did. Thus his muscles were slightly more defined than mine and I wondered if Sara May was comparing us. I was still brooding on this when we pulled the first stump free and Sara approached us with a pitcher of ice-cold water.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking a long drink from the tin pitcher.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, taking the water from me when I was done and handing it to Jones. She was smiling the whole time and I felt the jealousy rise again when her eyes traveled down Jones’s torso but had to choke off a laugh when her nose wrinkled slightly. Cow shit has a staying power that few can miss.

  The afternoon carried on that way and Jones and I managed to break another stump free as the sun was beginning to touch the tree line in the west. Sara was working on a particularly large rock, and even with the sweat that was dripping from me, my bladder had become painfully full from all the water we’d drank.

  “Be right back,” I said to Jones as he guided Heely toward the next stump in the line. He nodded and began shoveling as I walked toward the nearest tree to relieve myself.

  The forest beyond the clearing was quiet as I stood there looking at the dappled layer of dead leaves from the prior fall. My muscles ached but in a good way that told me I had gained strength since last winter. I finished relieving myself and was about to turn back to where Jones was waiting when I saw movement between the trees.

  My brother Danny walked through the forest, his blond hair ruffled by the breeze.

  I staggered back and bumped into the tree behind me. My jaw loosened and the strength went out of my legs.

  It couldn’t be Danny. It couldn’t. I was seeing things. My hands came to my eyes and I rubbed them, sure that I was suffering from heatstroke, but when I looked again he was still there, heading steadily on his little legs toward the side of the barn. He was wearing the overalls he had played in nearly every day when he was alive and his arms were held out in the way I remembered he walked.

  When he was nearly even with the rear of the barn he stopped and looked over his shoulder at me before continuing out of sight.

  I followed.

  As if in a dream I walked through dead grass that reached past my thighs and followed the path Danny had taken. This wasn’t happening. I assured myself that it couldn’t be. It was one thing to hear a dead goat speak and see something climb from a rain puddle, but it was quite another to watch your deceased younger brother stroll through the edge of a forest.

  I paused as I entered the yard, not seeing where he’d gone for a moment.

  There, around the back of the house, a glimpse of his small form. He was carrying something.

  I ran after him, his name pounding in my head, whispered between breaths. How? How could it be? I had attended his funeral, watched the grief nearly crush my mother and father like a giant stone, wept my own tears for the brother I would never see grow up.

  Somewhere far behind me Jones was calling my name, but I didn’t stop.

  When I rounded the side of the house, Danny was standing in the dead grass off the backyard. Its golden stems hid him to the waist and it was only when he raised his arm could I see what he’d been carrying.

  The gas can was a bright red with yellow letters painted on its side. The cap was off, I could see it plain as day in the late afternoon sunshine.

  Danny lifted the can up and dumped the gasoline over his head, drenching himself.

  “Danny! What are you doing?” I hobbled forward, terror and disbelief hamstringing my strides. He looked at me, dark eyes sad and maybe reproachful. He dropped the empty can at his feet and dug in his pocket, his little hand coming out holding a long stemmed matchstick.

  I ran then. Pelted forward with abandon. I could save him, save him this time as I couldn’t from the fever that took him before. This was a second chance.

  “I burned up, Lane,” he said then. “It was so hot.”

  “Danny stop!” I was a dozen steps away.

  He popped the matchstick alight with his thumbnail.

  I dove toward him, knowing it was too late.

  The impact was monumental. All air left my lungs and the rough, dead grass cut at my face and hands as I skidded through it, through the place where Danny had been. I came to a stop and sat up, sure that he would be an immolated pillar behind me, burning hotter than the fever that had killed him.

  Danny was gone.

  I sat, dumbfounded on the ground, head barely level with the grass tops. Alone. The breeze shifted the trees behind me. A chicken cackled somewhere in front of the house. Jones yelled my name.

  I climbed to my feet and a soft cracking came from below me, the spongy quality of the ground registering somewhere in my subconscious before Mr. Tandy’s words came back, sudden and clear.

  There’s a few old wells behind the barn and house from the old homestead. They’re covered up but keep an eye out for them.

  The rotted wood of the well cover gave way beneath me and I fell.

  7

  I’ve heard people say that if you’re going to die, your life flashes before your eyes and everything happens in slow motion.

  Time slows, not really the actual ticking of the clock, but our perception of it. Our minds speed up, synapses firing faster than light, images and thoughts there and gone in a fraction of a heartbeat. The brain can stretch time.

  But it didn’t happen that afternoon in May.

  I fell quickly and surely down. No time to think or ask questions. It was simply gravity doing its unending work.

  But just as fast as I fell, my hands were out in the quickness that youth holds for a while. They latched over the rim of the old well and I slammed into the side, all the air going out of me.

  Jones yelled my name again in the world outside, but I couldn’t answer him. All my strength was used in gripping my little handhold. My feet scra
bbled against the well’s wall, slick with condensation and decay. Somewhere below me there was a splash of some debris falling. Or maybe it was something moving down there in the dark. The latter possibility gave me new strength.

  With a heave, I yanked myself up and got my chest over the edge of the pit and didn’t stop straining and crawling until I was free of the well. I drew my feet out just as heavy footfalls approached from the direction of the field.

  Mr. Tandy was there, his strong hands beneath my armpits, dragging me back farther from the well. Jones stood in the yard, eyes wide, mouth open like a fish.

  And beside him was Sara. Beautiful Sara looking stricken and sick.

  Mr. Tandy stood me up and spun me around to face him. “What the hell you think you were doing, boy?”

  “I…I thought I saw something.”

  “Saw what?”

  “I don’t know. Something in the grass. I came to look and the cap broke.”

  “Damned fool. Didn’t I tell you that? Didn’t I tell you there were wells?” Mr. Tandy sighed and deflated a bit. He wasn’t really mad. Not really. He was scared. A child in danger is the worst kind of fear an adult can experience, and I’d done this to him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tandy. I shouldn’t have left the field.”

  He considered something for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s all right. I’ve been meaning to put heavier covers on these bastards for some time now. It’s my fault really.” He smacked me on the shoulder in a kind way and moved toward the well. I looked at Jones and Sara but really all I could see was Danny pouring the gasoline over his head and popping the match alight.

  “Are you okay, Lane?” Sara asked.

  “Fine,” I lied. “I’m fine.” Jones tried to meet my eyes but couldn’t. Sara searched for something else to say as her father grunted and lifted what remained of the well cover back into place. I wondered what I’d see then if I walked to the pit’s edge and looked down. Would there just be infinite darkness, as if the well went all the way through the earth? Or would I see Danny’s face down there looking back up at me.

  I shuddered and started across the yard. Sara turned as well and I caught a glimpse of her neck again since she’d tied her hair back with the heat. The dark mark I’d seen the day before was larger. She glanced at me and I lowered my eyes, not looking up again until we’d reached the stump we were working on. I picked up my shovel and began uncovering the roots and didn’t speak to anyone else again that afternoon.

  I didn’t even tell Jones about the spot on the back of Sara’s neck that looked like a hand.

  8

  The trouble with being a family is when something terrible is bothering one of its members, it’s liable to bother everyone else as well.

  Family is strong. One of the strongest things I can think of. But the weakness is the love that’s shared within it. We care so much sometimes that it can break us.

  So when I arrived home that first day after working in Sara May Tandy’s field, I didn’t breathe a word about seeing Danny to my father or mother. I couldn’t. Firstly, I didn’t want to see the stricken looks on their faces by saying his name, and secondly, I’d never worn a straightjacket, but didn’t think I’d fancy it either.

  So I kept my mouth shut.

  The turkey buzzard was in its customary tree that night when I stepped outside after helping clean supper up. I started to wonder if it had died and only rigor mortis was keeping it clamped in place. I hoped so.

  As I was staring it down, the screen door opened and shut and I heard the clink of a glass setting down.

  “You want to talk to me, son?”

  My father was sitting in his favorite rocker on the porch. A little glass of whiskey rested on the railing beside him, and I was glad to see he hadn’t brought the twelve gauge out as well.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About what’s bothering you. Your mom and I can see it from a mile away.”

  “I’m okay. Maybe a little tired.”

  “Natural to be tired, you worked hard today. I remember what a time we had pulling some of the bigger stumps with my dad for the north field. It was real hell I’ll tell you.” When I didn’t say anything he shifted in his chair and gazed out at the early dusk. “Still thinking about what happened yesterday?”

  I nodded even though I wasn’t really. Really it was a culmination of everything. How did you tell your father that you were afraid you might be going insane and absolutely terrified that you weren’t?

  “Strange things happen, son. It’s not uncommon to bump into them from time to time. And sometimes bad accompanies the strange. That’s what makes it scary. But you don’t need to worry. Most things are harmless.”

  “What if they aren’t?”

  He seemed to consider this. “Then we fight, son. We fight.”

  I felt the well cap give way beneath my feet again and finally asked myself the question that had been nagging me all evening. Did Danny try to kill me? Or Danny’s ghost, his energy, whatever you want to call it. Did he blame me somehow and had come back to make sure I got my comeuppance?

  Or was it something that just looked like Danny?

  Regardless, my father’s words were well-meaning but ultimately uncomforting. Whatever it was, either in my mind or tangible, it wanted to hurt me.

  We went to bed early that night and, even though my body ached and I was as tired as I’d ever been, sleep eluded me each time I closed my eyes. I had gotten the uncanny feeling that something had been behind Danny’s closed door in the hall when I’d gone to bed earlier, and that sensation was still strong, hanging in the air of my room like a cloistering gas.

  Each time I would begin to sink into sleep some noise would wake me. A creak or a crack that normally wouldn’t have registered at all was now a footfall, a turned doorknob. I held my breath so many times listening as the night wore on, my lungs began to hurt.

  I’m not sure when I fell asleep but I came awake shortly before dawn, the gray tinge of light barely tainting the dark. I was on my side, facing the door when my eyes snapped open and I realized that I could see the blanket on Danny’s bed across the hall.

  Not only was my door open but so was his.

  My skin crawled.

  Slowly I pivoted my head, forcing my eyes to focus in the dimness, forcing them to see. My fourteen-year-old mind told me that if I appeared to be still asleep, I’d be safe.

  As my eyes adjusted I saw there was something on the floor of my room. Many somethings. Little heaps of dirt spaced evenly apart.

  Small muddy footprints.

  And they led to the foot of my bed.

  I drew my feet up under me, knowing that at any second a cold hand would slide beneath the blanket and seize them. My breathing was heavy and erratic, there was no pretending I was still asleep. I had to look, had to know.

  With a quick movement I sat up and snapped on my bedside light.

  My floor was clean and clear, just as I’d left it the night before.

  The door was shut tight.

  Silence save for my breathing.

  I collapsed back on the bed, not sure if I was relieved or more frightened. Had I been dreaming? My sleep-addled eyes sending the wrong messages to my brain?

  I sniffed the air.

  A horrid stink had filled the room, the smell of meat rotting in an enclosed space.

  Like a coffin.

  Somewhere else in the house came the sound of quiet laughter. But it was loud enough to know I was meant to hear it.

  9

  My mother was distant at breakfast the next day.

  She answered my father’s questions slowly and with delay. He had also noticed her partial stupor and asked if she was feeling all right. She said she was, just hadn’t slept as well as she normally did.

  I wondered why her sleep had been disturbed. Had she heard something in the night? Seen something? Even the sunlight pouring into our kitchen that told of the bright day to come wasn’t enough to stave off
the cold pool of fear gathering in my belly.

  My father offered to drive me to school again that morning but I declined, assuring him I would be okay. As I think back on it now, he was most likely asking not only for my sake but for his own to boot. I think by then he had an inkling that something was wrong and all the time getting worse, like a cliff inevitably coming closer and closer to our family.

  The walk into town was uneventful, not to say that I didn’t keep flicking my gaze over my shoulder every few steps. The heat that had permeated the day before was gone, filled in with a coolness to the air that reminded me of fall more than spring, and I kept shrugging my shoulders to keep warm within my light jacket. When I reached the turnoff for the schoolhouse, a voice whispered from the nearby field and I froze, guts shriveling in on themselves until I realized I knew who had spoken.

  Jones poked his head up from behind an overgrown juniper bush that hadn’t greened out yet.

  “Over here,” he said again, and I glanced around before jumping down off the gravel road to join him.

  “The hell are you doing?”

  “Had to talk to you. We gotta skip school.”

  “What? Mrs. Shawler’ll skin us, not to mention our parents.”

  “They won’t find out. You can do your pa’s handwriting, right?”

  “Not perfect.”

  “You fooled Shawler last fall.”

  “Jones…”

  “I got moonshine.”

  “What?”

  “Got some of pa’s shine that he got offa Nimble back when they were runnin’.”

  Truth be told, I’d only had whiskey once. I’d snuck a glassful just as I had with the coffee and run it out behind our barn to drink. The taste had made me gag, but shortly thereafter I got a real light, warm feeling that flowed down to the tips of my toes and back. Thinking I’d found the best thing since Coke, I slugged the rest of it, sure the faster I drank it, the better the result would be.

  I’d been wrong.

  My parents hadn’t found out, at least my father hadn’t let on that he knew, but I had never been sicker than that long afternoon with the sky spinning above me, ground tilting beneath my back, and the smell of my vomit overwhelming in the grass beside my head.