Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (45 page)

the truck engine drained away in a plume of sallow dust.

It was then that I realized my ears were ringing. There was no

other sound. No crows. Not even the tinkle of the wind chimes on

our porch.

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I rushed into the house, with Sam and his mother behind me. I

skidded into the kitchen. The water was still running in the sink. It overflowed now, water dripping against the floor with the shattered glass.

My mother wasn’t there.

My fingers clenched. “She was just here . . . ” I whispered.

Sam’s mother gathered me to her, a reflex. She buried my head

in her shoulder. I felt Sam and his mother exchange heavy glances

over my head.

My mother was gone. And so were the crows

Sam went to search the parlor, calling for my mother.

I pulled myself free of his mother’s grasp, mumbling that I would

look upstairs. Deep down, I didn’t want the neighbors to see my

mother’s finery, squirrelled away from view. I hoped that she had

crawled off to her bed, that she had fainted. But the quilt covering her bed was as smooth as she’d made it this morning. The bathroom

was empty.

I saw Sam’s mother at the top of the stairs. I saw her looking at

me, then past me, at my mother’s silk drapes. I’m not sure what she thought, if she thought anything.

I opened my mouth to speak, not knowing what to say. I don’t

know if I meant to mumble some excuse about the drapes or to start crying.

But Sam shouted from below. “Come here! Come outside!”

I flew down the stairs, out into the yard. I circled around behind the house, to the swing in the cottonwood tree in the back yard. Sam was kneeling over a limp figure at the edge of the line of sunflowers.

I recognized my mother’s cotton dress. Her feet were bare.

I fell to my knees beside my mother. She lay sprawled upon the

grass, gazing up at the sky, unblinking. Her arms were covered in

fine red scratches, as if a murder of crows had tried to pick her up where she fell. In her left hand, she held a sunflower with all the seeds culled out of it.

A crow stood at her head, gently plucking at strands of her hair

in a worried fashion. It only flew away when Sam shook his hat at it.

But I could feel its eyes on us from deep within the field.

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The doctor said my mother was suffering from exhaustion and a weak heart. After spending many long minutes listening to her heart with a stethoscope, he sent her to bed. I was given a bottle of laudanum to administer to her at sunrise and sunset. Sam’s mother helped me dress my mother in a ruffled dressing gown—she owned no plain

ones—and tuck her in bed under her fine linens. Sam’s mother’s

rough hand lingered on the embroidered edges of the sheet.

The figure that lay there after everyone had left was not my

mother. She lay there, thin and cold and staring up at the ceiling.

When she slept and when she woke, she rambled on about the crows

and the flowers and storms and strange shadows. How the crows had

come to rescue her from her rattling heart and take her away to the sky. None of it made any sense. Her eyes were far distant, looking through me and through the thick plaster walls to the sky beyond.

She stayed that way for days, neither awake nor asleep. She was

between worlds. I bathed her as one would a child, daubed the

scratches with antiseptic, and pinned her hair up. I saw streaks of grey in it now that had never been there before. The neighbors came by to bring casseroles and to offer any assistance they could.

I thanked them and asked for them to get word to Mr. Mauer

that the harvest was ready to be taken in. It was almost Halloween, and my mother had always been insistent that this task be done by

then. I did not let anyone see her. I did not want them to gawk at her in this oddly unanchored state.

I slept beside her at night, listening to her shallow breathing.

I was afraid that she would somehow stop and slip away if I quit

observing. I laid my hand to her breastbone and felt it rise and fall, all through the night, night after night. I would finally fall asleep near dawn, exhausted, when the rays of sun filtered in through the silk drapes. I spiraled into strange dreams that I hadn’t had since I was a little girl. Dreams of flying, of seeing the land from far up above, with our house a postage-stamp-sized speck in the fields.

One morning, I awoke to the sounds of machinery. I pressed my

head into the pillow, wanting to drain a few precious moments’ more of sleep from the sunny day. My mother was sleeping quietly. I pulled

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the quilt up over my shoulders, my muzzy thinking circling around

whether I would prepare eggs or biscuits for breakfast with bacon.

But my mother lurched bold upright in bed, eyes wide open, and

shrieked.

I clasped her arms, pressing her back to the bed. “Mother, it’s all right!”

Her skin was glossed with sweat, and her eyes were wide and

unseeing. “Don’t let him take the sunflowers!”

I smoothed a dark curl from my mother’s face. “Mr. Mauer is doing

as he always does. He’s harvesting the seeds. Today is Halloween.

Remember?”

My mother shook her head hard and balled her hands into fists.

“No. He must leave some for the crows.” Her fists became claws,

tearing at my arms. I cried out as her nails drew blood.

I extricated myself, peeling her hands away and pushing her back

to the bed. I felt her fear pressing against me, like humidity. It felt like a shimmering, tangible thing.

I backpedaled out of the room, dove down the stairs and out the

door, into yard. Above, the sky was a sickly yellow. I could see the combine making its last orbit, near the house.

I ran after it, shouting at Mr. Mauer to stop. He couldn’t hear me above the noise of the machine; his sunburned neck didn’t even turn.

The machine plowed down the sunflowers near the house, chewing

them up like some terrible locust. Dust roiled in his wake. There was nothing I could do.

The combine turned left, left in its orbit back around the field.

It left me standing among the splintered, stubbly stalks piercing the earth.

I heard the solitary call of a crow. I turned, seeing a crow perched on the gutter of the house. He watched me with dark eyes, cold in an almost human wrath.

Something had changed. I could feel it.

I tried to placate my mother. I drew the drapes and lied to her,

telling her the sunflowers were safe. I told her that when she felt better that we could carve our pumpkins. I knew full well that our LAURA BICKLE [343]

neglected pumpkins had caved in on themselves on the porch and

had the musty scent of rot about them. I placed a cool cloth on her head and gave her laudanum to help her sleep. She still tossed fitfully.

It was as if she could sense the nudity of the earth.

I could sense it, too, the way the wind rose that night and scraped through the remnants of the field. The wind howled so hard that it leaked around the panes of the bedroom window and moved the

drapes like ghosts. Once or twice, I went to the window and tried to peer through it. But the glass was covered with dust and bits of frass and brown petals from the ruined sunflowers.

I had never felt afraid in my own house before. I had never felt

compelled to make certain that all the windows were latched and

that the doors were locked. Maybe it was the way the glass rattled in the sashes and the way that the wind sucked down the fireplace, but it sounded like a breath over a bottle. Hollow. Alive.

Something scratched at the front door. My breath congealed in

my throat. It was not the rhythmic digging of a dog coming home.

This was a thin, prolonged scratching, as if someone drew a rake

over the door.

I hoped it was a broken tree branch shoved by the wind, that it

would simply stop. But the scraping continued, deliberate, rhythmic.

Perhaps it was a Halloween prank perpetrated by the older kids from town . . .

I turned my head to gaze at my mother. I don’t know if I expected

her to protect me, as she always had, from bees and taunts to fevers.

But she was beyond that, now. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and

sweat glossed her face. The drug and the fever had finally brought her into silence.

My hands chewed at the blanket. Deep in my chest, I knew that I

would have to protect her.

I fought the urge to pull the blankets over my bed. I drew the

covers back and forced my bare feet to the floor. I reached underneath the bed for the loaded rifle my mother kept there.

With quaking hands, I clutched the gun to my chest. I crept

toward the door, past it, out into the hallway.

I stared down the stairs, at the back door. The scratching was

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clearer now, drawing down the wood. Through the stained-glass

panels at the top, a shadow moved, shadows against shadows. I heard no giggling and whispering of children.

My heart pounded as I descended the steps. I lifted the stock of

the rifle to my shoulder. My hands shook and my skin was slick with sweat.

“Who’s there?” I demanded. I meant it to come out as a fearsome

roar, but it came out as a whisper.

Whatever was out there heard me.

The scratching halted, and I sucked in my breath.

A great fluttering sounded behind me, like thousands of bird

wings. I pivoted toward the fireplace. Wings hammered against

the chimney and against the flue. In an explosion of black wings

and yellow dust, birds exploded from the fireplace. Hundreds and

hundreds of black-winged birds.

I screamed. I screamed and crouched down, clutching the gun.

Claws and feathers tore past me, churning darkness.

And the door imploded. It ripped back on its hinges, slamming

against the wall and breaking out the glass. Wind and dust and

debris tore into the house. I curled my hand over my tearing eyes, as I struggled to see . . .

. . . struggled to see the silhouette framed in the doorway.

At first, I thought it was a man. But it seethed and moved with

black feathers. It walked across the scarred floorboards toward me with the clawed feet of a bird, the claws leaving terrible scars in the wood.

I clutched the gun, ratcheting back the slide. The shadow swept

over me, yanking the gun from my grip. I sprawled before it, my

hands balling into fists.

It loomed over me. I was given the impression of a cloak of

feathers, but the creature wore the face of a man. His face was pale and angular, hair long and black.

And the eyes were what stopped me. The eyes looked familiar.

Dark as tea leaves, like mine.

The bird-man regarded me with an inscrutable expression,

cocking his head.

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“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I’m sorry for the sunflowers.”

He spoke to me then. He spoke to me in a voice like gravel, the

hoarse voice of the crows. “Every boon demands a sacrifice.”

“Don’t hurt my mother.”

“Your mother . . . ”

He reached toward me with a pale, clawed hand. I screwed my

eyes shut, certain that he intended to rip my throat out.

I felt pressure around my neck. The chain on the diamond

pendant snapped. I gasped, my eyes snapping open.

The crow-man held the yellow diamond in the palm of his hand,

head cocked, staring at it. He reminded me of one of the crows

looking at a bottle cap, entranced by the shininess.

He reached forward then, pushing a tendril of hair behind my ear.

I was reminded of the crow standing in the yard over my mother’s

hair. It was an oddly tender gesture that rattled my teeth with its familiarity.

He stood. Without another word, he turned and swept out of the

doorway that howled with dust and wings.

My mother died the next morning. All Souls Day. She died without

ever waking up. I found her with her face pressed to the pillow, her jaw slack like a small child’s. She was pale and gaunt as a skeleton of a bird as I washed her and dressed her one last time.

I knew that the crows had taken her from me. As a sacrifice.

I sanded and painted the scratches in the door and the floor. I

swept the dust from the parlor and gathered each feather from the

house. I found them for a long time afterward, jammed in lampshades, drawers, and even between cushions.

The work kept me busy. I opened the windows to air the smell

of death from the house. But it only brought in the scent of fresh-turned earth from the hole dug for my mother’s grave underneath

the cottonwood trees. She would lie beside her mother and all the

women who had come before, under a simple stone marker.

I had occasion to think about things, about all the mysterious

material things we had. I used to think that we had them because we deserved them.

[346] FROM DUST

No, we had traded for them. And I had violated our end of the

bargain.

The dust storms came in after that, stripping all the seeds from the earth. It chewed the paint from the side of our house and ruined the neighbors’ crops.

It was as if something unholy and hot descended upon the land,

like a desert. Walking to meet Sam, I would lose track of the dust-covered road, my head wrapped in a scarf to keep from tasting the

dead earth.

“We’re moving away,” Sam said when spring brought the worst

storms yet. “West. To California. Where there’s work.” He reached

out to take my hand. “Come with us. Come with me.”

I shook my head. “I can’t leave my home.”