It Came from Anomaly Flats

by Clayton Smith

  “How can there be no money?” she asked softly. “You work every day, and so hard…”

  “There ain’t no money!” he screamed. He slammed his fist into the wall and left behind a smear of blood. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Not yet,” he added quietly.

  Lucy trembled beneath the blanket. “When do you think you’ll get paid?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “When do you think you’ll shut the hell up?” he snapped. Then he stormed out of the cabin without even bothering to make his coffee.

  •

  Jake’s work with Farmer Buchheit was just so stressful for him that, as sorry as Lucy was that he had to go out there and face it every day, it became a relief when the door latched behind him in the mornings. She felt guilty about that, but it was the truth, and though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, she could admit it to herself.

  She still didn’t know what the farmer made him do, or how he got the bruises, which were becoming more and more common. Jake hardly said a word to her now. And when he looked at her, there was meanness in his eyes, and sometimes fear. He was changing. Lucy felt helpless; she wanted to comfort him, to help him, to take him away from the farm, from Anomaly Flats, get them back on the road…but she didn’t know how. He was becoming a new person, a different person. She just hoped that the money would come in soon, and they could be on their way out west, where everything would be better.

  The bill was growing at the general store. If Jake didn’t get paid soon, they’d be in hock until winter.

  There wasn’t much to do at the old cabin aside from the chores, but Lucy didn’t mind. She passed the time by dreaming up what their life would be like under the California sunshine. There’d be swimming and celebrities and parties on patios that overlooked the beach. She’d get a job at a studio, as a secretary or something, just so she could help pay the rent until a casting director saw her, gasped, and said, “Darling girl, you would be just perfect for my new movie!” Jake would open up his own auto shop, and no one would give him a hard time at work, or send him home with bruises.

  It would be a perfect life. If only they could get there.

  •

  After Jake left one morning, Lucy was lying down on the floor in front of the cold fireplace, stretching and imagining that the log cabin’s ceiling was the bright, blue sky over the Pacific Ocean. Then there was a knock at the back door.

  She bolted upright and held her breath. In the three weeks they’d been living there, they hadn’t had a single visitor, and it was strange to have one now…and at the back door, no less. She sat quietly and listened, and then she heard it again: three short, sharp knocks on the door.

  She pushed herself up to her feet and crept across the room. There was a draft coming from somewhere in the house, and she shivered. Goose bumps prickled up all over her legs. She tiptoed up to the window next to the door and pushed the curtain aside with her fingers. She peeked outside.

  Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and tried not to scream.

  The woman at the door was a ghost.

  She was pale gray in color, and Lucy could see through her. She was like a precisely-shaped cloud of smoke that roiled and shifted within its perfectly-drawn lines. She was a small woman, about Lucy’s height, dressed in just jeans and a t-shirt, a strange, modern juxtaposition against her pale, translucent skin. She flickered, too, like static on the television, so Lucy couldn’t quite make out her features, but she thought the ghost looked young…too young, maybe, for the belly that curved out hugely from beneath her shirt, swelled almost to bursting with the late stages of a pregnancy.

  She must have seen the curtain move, or maybe she heard Lucy gasp, because the ghost turned her head slowly, rolling it on her neck, lolling her eyes over and looking straight at Lucy through the glass. There was a dark gray line running across her throat, a deep scar where it had been slit. The ghost opened her mouth, and the strain of it pulled the scar open; black blood began to dribble down her neck from the wound.

  Lucy screamed, tears streaming down her face, but even over the sound of her own shrieking, she heard the words of the ghost.

  “Ruuuuuuuuun.”

  •

  “It was real.”

  Lucy didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice, hissing and weak and deflating like a tire. She sat pressed against the corner of the cabin, her knees drawn tightly to her chin, her arms wrapped like vice grips around her knees. “She was there.”

  Jake snorted. “There ain’t no such thing as ghosts,” he said. He dropped his keys on the kitchen table and missed. He cursed as he bent down and fumbled for them on the floor.

  “It was real, Jake. It’s the second time.” Lucy hadn’t moved in hours. Her back was sore, and her muscles ached from their non-stop shivering.

  Jake threw his keys down, hitting the table this time, and he sighed. “All right. I’ll go look.”

  Lucy craned her neck so she could see the back door from across the room. Jake stomped over and yanked it open, then stuck his head out into the yard. Lucy clenched her fists. She almost whispered out for Jake to get back inside, but she wanted him to take a good look—needed him to, to tell her the ghost had gone away.

  “Nope. Nothing.” He pulled himself back in, shut the door, and laughed. “I don’t remember you ever bein’ this stupid before we got married.”

  “I’m not stupid!” Lucy stood up, holding the wall for support as her knees groaned. “She was there, Jake, and she was pregnant, and someone had cut her throat!”

  “Ghosts ain’t real!” he exploded. “You think I ain’t got enough shit on my plate, I gotta worry about you losin’ your fucking mind now, too?”

  “I don’t know what sort of shit you have on your plate!” she screamed back. Her fire knocked Jake back a step, and he raised an eyebrow at her, almost as if in approval. “You don’t tell me anything anymore! You come home mad and bruised up, and you hit the walls, and you won’t tell me nothin’, Jake!” She balled her hands into a fist and thumped him on the chest, hard. “Why don’t you tell me what you do all day? Why don’t you say?!”

  He grabbed her wrists and snarled down at her. “You wanna get rough?” he asked, leering down with a wolfish grin. He kissed her—hard—for the first time in weeks.

  Lucy pushed him away. “Have you been drinking?” she demanded.

  “So what if I have?”

  “Where’d you get the money for that?”

  “I found it!” he yelled. He kissed her again, and again, she pushed him back.

  “You found money? And you didn’t think we might need it to pay our bills?”

  “I found ten bucks on the sidewalk. Spent it down at the Dive Inn.” His teeth glinted behind his smile. “You gonna read me the Riot Act?” He kissed her a third time, and she wanted to tear herself away, but it felt good that he wanted her, so she gave in and kissed him back. She was ashamed of it, but she needed him, needed them to be them, so she let him scoop her up and carry her to the bedroom.

  •

  The next morning, Jake was already gone when she woke up.

  Her mouth tasted of his beer, and she made a sour face as she rolled over and opened her eyes.

  The ghost stood at the bedside, staring down at Lucy with her cold, flickering eyes. “It will come,” the ghost hissed. More blood poured down her neck, and the ghost placed a hand against the wound on her throat so she could speak.

  “Ruuuuuuuuun.”

  Lucy screamed and threw herself backward. She fell out of the bed and slammed her head on the wooden floor, hard. The world exploded with red and yellow fireworks, and she tried to pull herself away, but everything was tilting so hard, she thought she might go sliding across the room. She dug her fingertips into the floorboards as she cried, and when the spinning slowed a little
, she looked up at the ghost, but the woman was gone, disappeared into the air.

  Lucy sobbed. Her tears fell like drops of blood.

  “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  •

  “How long ago was that, now?” Trudy asked, refilling Lucy’s coffee with a frown.

  “About four months ago,” Lucy replied, warming her hands against the mug.

  “Hm. Right about the time you, uh...” She smiled and nodded down at Lucy’s stomach.

  “Yeah.” Lucy ran a hand over her swollen belly. “The morning after.”

  “Pretty specific.”

  “It was pretty much the only chance.”

  “Yeah, that’s the way it goes sometimes.” Trudy set the coffee urn down on the table and slid into the bench on the other side of the booth. “That child’s gonna bring you some new happiness,” she said, patting Lucy’s hand.

  “I hope so. Jake doesn’t...” She trailed off, and a tear welled up. She wiped it away with her sleeve.

  “Jake doesn’t what?”

  “He hardly even notices. He doesn’t even...I mean, he was angry for a while, you know? Punching the walls and stuff. But now it’s just like he’s nothin’. He doesn’t eat, I don’t think he sleeps. And he’s quiet, doesn’t say two words. It’s like I don’t exist. Or like he doesn’t.”

  Trudy tapped her teeth together, giving Lucy a hard look. Finally, she said, “Listen. Buchheit can be a mean old son of a bitch. Let me see if I can find some other work for Jake. All right?”

  But Lucy shook her head. “He doesn’t want any other work. I begged him to find another job, or just to let us pack up and get out of here. But he won’t have it. He says he can’t leave now.” Tears dropped freely from her eyes now, splattering across the Formica table. “He says we can’t ever leave now.”

  “Oh, hon.” Trudy squeezed her hand. “Anomaly Flats gets to people like that. It becomes home, you know? It can be a good place for you. We’ll figure something out.”

  Lucy nodded. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser and blew her nose. “I can’t live in that cabin anymore.”

  Trudy frowned. “You don’t still see the ghost?”

  “I do,” Lucy whispered. She lowered her eyes. “Most days.”

  “That often? Lucy!”

  “What am I supposed to do about it? Jake won’t hear of it. I tried to tell him again, and he got so mad, he slapped me.” She touched her cheek, remembering. “Not too hard or nothin’. And he felt bad about it after. Real bad. Cried and everything. But still, he won’t hear it. He don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Trudy wiped away a tear of her own.

  “Don’t tell anyone I told you,” Lucy said quickly, sniffling back the lump rising in her throat. “You can’t, Trudy. Okay? You’re my only friend here, just...don’t tell anyone. Okay?”

  Trudy sighed. “Okay.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, until another customer came into the diner. He ambled over and scooted into a booth across the way, then he held up his coffee mug and shook it impatiently in Trudy’s direction.

  “Yeah, Runner, I see ya.” She heaved herself out of the booth and picked up the urn of coffee. She looked down at Lucy and said, “The ghost...she say anything else?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. Just keeps saying it’s coming soon, and that I need to run.”

  Trudy’s eyes crept down to Lucy’s belly once more. “It’s coming soon,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Lucy patted her baby bump. “It’s coming soon…and run.”

  •

  Jake came home drunker than usual that night. Lucy had long given up asking him where he got the money for his liquor. It caused more problems than it solved. Besides, he’d taken to saying that one of the other farmhands made his own hooch, and he gave it around for free to the other workers, as a way of commiserating, and maybe it was true. Or maybe it wasn’t. Lucy didn’t really want to know.

  Some money had finally started filtering in from Farmer Buchheit, but it was never enough to put any away. It never even covered their bill at the general store, and they lived on the credit of old Mr. Bleckman, who ran the place. He didn’t seem to mind much, but it made Lucy sad. She didn’t want to be beholden to anyone. She wanted to be lying in the sand, with Jake, and their new little girl (or their new little boy), away from all of this, away from Anomaly Flats.

  Usually when Jake came home drunk—which was more often than not now—he came home mean. But that night, he was crying like a child when he walked through the door. Lucy had taken to hiding herself in the corner of the kitchen when she heard the truck tires crunch in the driveway gravel, but when she peeked around the wall and saw the state of him, her heart broke to pieces, and she went to him. He wrapped his arms around her, held her tightly, and wept into her hair, his shoulders heaving.

  “Jake, honey…what’s wrong?” she whispered, burying her face in his chest. He smelled like creosote and manure, and something else, something with a tang like iron.

  Jake worked to catch his breath, but his chest was so wracked with sobs, it took several long moments to get himself under control. Finally, he said, “Our baby’s going to hate me.”

  Lucy pulled back and took his face in her hands. “No, Jake,” she said, trying to hold his gaze, but he kept looking down, ashamed. “No. Why would you say that?”

  He grabbed her wrists gently and nuzzled his cheek into her palm. “Because of the things I do,” he whispered, looking anywhere but into her eyes.

  “What? Jake, what are the things you do?”

  He tried to pull away, but she held his face tightly, and he didn’t have the will to push her off. Instead, he broke into more tears and sank to his knees there in front of the couch. “He makes me hurt people,” he said quietly. “He makes me hurt them real bad.”

  Lucy’s heart skipped. She felt the wind evaporate from her lungs. “What do you mean, he makes you hurt people? Jake?” She knelt down beside him and pressed her forehead against his. “Who does he make you hurt?”

  “Anyone who gets in the way,” he whispered. He began sobbing again, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head. His breath smelled of stale beer, and his clothes reeked of cigarette smoke from the Dive Inn. “I…I hit them with shovels. Their heads split. Like melons. I drag them into the corn. He makes me. I don’t want to, but he makes me. He’ll feed me to the chickens if I don’t.”

  Lucy’s eyes were wide with fear. She took Jake’s hand and squeezed it tightly to keep her own hands from trembling. “Jake,” she said quietly, trying to keep her voice calm, “what are you talking about? Do you…do you kill people?”

  He exploded into sobs, crumpling down onto the floor and curling into a ball. “I don’t know!” he wailed. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! He’ll feed me to the chickens. He’ll kill you and feed us to the chickens.”

  “Jake, listen to me. Do you kill people for Farmer Buchheit?”

  “I don’t know!” he screeched. He pulled himself into an even tighter ball and began rocking on his side. “I hit them with shovels and spear them with hayforks and push them under cattle and run them down with the combine. I drag them into the cornfield, and there are voices, and they make me see things. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to hear the voices anymore. He makes me, Lucy. He makes me.”

  Lucy stood up and grabbed Jake by the elbow. “Come on,” she said, “get up. We’re leaving. Tonight. Right now.”

  But Jake pulled his arm away.

  “We can’t,” he whispered.

  “Why? Why can’t we, Jake?” Lucy felt a pain in her belly, and it was the baby kicking for the first time. She ran her hand along her stomach and felt the baby’s foot pressing against her flesh. “Let’s just go right n
ow. We’ll go back home. We can go back home.”

  “We can’t,” he said again, shaking his head. “Don’t you know? We can’t.”

  “Why not? Because of Farmer Buchheit? Jake, we can call the sheriff. And we can just leave.”

  “Not Farmer Buchheit,” Jake whimpered through the mucus building in his throat. “Not him. The town. The town won’t let us leave. Don’t you know? It won’t let anyone leave.”

  Lucy’s heart turned to ice, and her veins froze beneath her skin. “Jake, that doesn’t make any sense. Let’s just get in the car, and let’s go. Right now. Just you and me and the baby—we can get in the car and drive away. Come on.” She pulled at his elbow, but he didn’t move. “Come on!” she screamed.

  Jake just shook his head. “We can’t,” he said again. “Lucy, we can’t.” Then he picked himself up from the floor and stumbled into the bedroom. She heard the springs creak as he fell onto the mattress, and after just a few seconds, he was snoring.

  Lucy sat on the floor and cried. She was not surprised to look up and see the ghost woman standing in the corner, looking down on her with pity. The dead woman clasped her hands in front of her chest and shook her head sadly as she flickered in and out of sight. This time, she didn’t say a word. She just looked down at Lucy, then she turned and faded into nothing, leaving Lucy alone on the floor in the room.

  It’s almost here, Lucy thought. But she had no idea what that meant.

  •

  “I’m leaving tonight.”

  Trudy frowned. “What about Jake?”

  “Jake won’t come. I begged him to. Every night, I beg him to come away, but he won’t do it. So we’re leaving without him.” Lucy cradled her belly and gazed down sadly at the life growing inside her. “We have to. We’re not safe here.”