Lost

by Devon, Gary;

  Then, silence.

  Snow fell off the trees. Water in the creek below trickled on its way. The wind whined on the road and under the bridge it snored like sleep itself. Perched delicately atop the low girder, the old blue car groaned and tottered and fell, crashing into the snow. The quiet of the woods resumed.

  Still brushing the snow from their clothes, the children scurried to the bridge and down the bank. One by one they went to her, the three of them gathering to look down on the woman who had watched over them as they slept and saved them from the wreck. She was sprawled face up on the snowbank among some brush, her arms flung wide as if to greet the heavens. There was blood on her face. They stood as if spellbound. Then, bending down, Mamie reached out and touched the blood on Leona’s forehead. After a moment she drew away. Slowly she turned and beckoned the others to follow. And they left her lying there.

  Leaning into the wind, the three children set off down the moon-swept road that vanished in the waiting trees.

  PART THREE

  14

  Night branches swooped down at them; shadows darted across the phantom road in a crazy web, surrounding them, flickering over them. And the moon chased through the sky, appearing and disappearing in clouds. Once, Patsy cried out, “I can’t see. I can’t see nothing!” She groped for the other two children and fell silent, overcome with the immensity of their solitude.

  One by one, they sobbed for breath, shuddering from the cold and to keep from breaking down completely. Each child’s face was stricken, on the verge of crying out. They ran a few steps, then walked, huddled, then split apart, their shoes creaking through the snow.

  Slowly, Patsy and Walter began to whisper to each other; then more excitedly they debated what to do, their voices growing loud and edgy. “Let’s go back and wait till somebody comes,” Walter pleaded. “Who else’ll take care of us?” Hurrying along beside them, Mamie kept quiet, paying no attention to their argument. Walter craned his head back, then drew it down inside his coat collar like a turtle. “Please,” he said. “Come on. We gotta go back there.”

  “No,” Patsy said, her voice sharp, surprisingly vehement. “Let’s get outa here! There’s monsters out here! Can’t you hear ’em?”

  “I do,” Walter said. “I hear ’em. That’s why we gotta go back.”

  “I won’t go back. I have to go home. There was blood on her! I saw it. Didn’t you see it? Blood? I did.”

  “But we’ll get lost,” Walter said. “We’re all gonna get real lost. And freeze to death.”

  From the woods by the road came a wild thrashing of sticks and twigs, bushes stamped on, stones clattering. Terrified, the children wheeled toward the violent noise. “See?” Patsy exclaimed, “There is something out there! See? I toldja.” But the wind howled in their ears, drowning any recurrence of the sound. Together they moved backward, staring toward the dark place where the noise had been. No one spoke. They exchanged frightened looks, and Mamie turned, hurrying farther and farther away down the white winter road, and the other two children fell in behind her. “What was that?” Patsy asked quietly.

  “Don’t know,” Walter said, his voice strange. They crossed a bridge of snow-covered planks that bounced lightly under their feet. The wind blew from the trees; it was as if the storm had never stopped. “It’s that monster,” Patsy decided. “It’s watching us. It’s gonna get us. It’s gonna get us!” Uncontrollably she began to chant it, each word gasped and quivering, “It’s gonna get us! It’s gonna get us!”

  Suddenly behind them, on the far side of the bridge they had crossed, the snowy bushes combusted in a furious spasm. Like a wild engine of snow and wind, something swung out onto the road and raced at them. “Run!” Walter shouted. “Run! Run!” They scattered down the empty length of road but the whirlwind quickly engulfed them. Shrieking, they pitched into the snow-ditch weeds; then as the churned-up snow sifted down around them, the terrible presence materialized under the moonlight: a deer, ice-frocked and majestic, stood at the edge of the road. For a split second, the children thought they shouldn’t be afraid, but the deer was so big and domineering—the air around them shook with the snorted blasts from his black nostrils.

  Regal and towering, the buck loomed over them. The massive expanse of his chest twitched with packed energy. The sight of it drew away what little courage the children had left and held their eyes suspended in terrified wonder. Lifted very high and erect, the murderous points of its antlers gleamed yellow-tipped. In a rush of nervous muscle, its hooves stabbed the snow and the buck took an abrupt step forward, snorting white streams. Frightened beyond limits they could endure, the children whimpered and squirmed back from the animal. For something so large, the deer’s carriage was tipsy and delicate. The ponderous crown of killing bone tipped and nodded lightly, then grew still. His black liquid eyes studied the night above them. With a long slow droop of his mighty head, the buck peered at them and they saw the pure cruelty of his eyes. They moaned for breath. Immediately, without any noticeable gathering of power, the buck vaulted over them and thudded away into the night.

  The glittering silence returned to the road.

  Badly shaken, the children climbed from the ditch. As they dusted the snow from their clothes, Mamie finally spoke. She was every bit as frightened as they were, but what she told them that night changed the way they thought of her for a very long time. It was the night she told them about Sherman.

  The cold wind wailed in the trees like a continuous lament of voices. When it blew very hard, it nearly lifted the children, as if to push them on their way. In the dull moonlight, Mamie’s eyes looked smoke-colored. She was shivering, too, walking fast beside the others, but the small features of her face were determined and hard-set. She said they couldn’t get away by themselves, but that someone was coming after them, to take them away. She would tell them a secret, she said, if they would cross their hearts. They drew X’s on their coats. The cold, cutting wind blew; they turned their backs to it; their teeth chattered, yet they went on. Mamie told them what had happened that afternoon in the motel drive, that she had seen the Chinaman with her brother Sherman. She asked them if they had seen the dog, and they said they had. “The one that hurt her,” Walter said, and Mamie nodded. “That was the Chinaman,” she said, “and I used to give him sugar.” She cringed against the cold, her voice shaky. Hurriedly she told them about her house burning up, fire everywhere, and she got out of it and Sherman got out, but nobody else did, not her mommy or her daddy or Toddy—all killed in it. And how Sherman had come to get her in the hospital, but that woman, Leona, took her away instead.

  Their eyes were apprehensive, yet they were mesmerized by her sudden revelations. Then she told them her awful truth, the fearful thing she had kept swallowed up inside her these many weeks. “If you tell—if you say anything, people will think you’re crazy. That’s what the nurse told me. So don’t ever tell. They’ll put you in a room with other crazy people in it, without any doors or windows, and you can’t never get out. You can’t come home or go anyplace, cause they won’t letcha. Because people will think you’re crazy. If you tell …” She saw the terribleness of it strike them and sink through them, and afterward they looked about, almost incoherent with their imaginings.

  “Will we go to jail?” Walter asked finally, his face contorted with dread.

  “It’s like jail,” Mamie said, “only you can’t never get out.” Afraid of what she said, they scooted away from her and shuddered, drawing their coats tighter about them. They went over a hill that seemed large to them and down the other side of it. Then, deep in trees, they saw the lighted windows.

  “Remember,” Mamie said, “not to tell. If you do, they’ll call the police and take us away.”

  At the two mailboxes they turned down the snow-flattened lane. As they passed the barn, Patsy lagged behind. “I’m not goin’ over there,” she said, staring at the tall dark eaves of the house some distance away. “What if there’s witches in there? What if it’s
like that story? I don’t want to be changed into something.” They looked at each other, then across the lot strewn with chicken pens and stacks of firewood. It was snowing again, the air suddenly dense and white.

  “There’s no place else,” Walter said. “Look all around. There’s no place else but this one.”

  “Patsy, we can’t wait to go home out here,” Mamie said. “There’s not been any cars go by. Not even one.”

  “Yeah,” Walter said, “and we’re freezin’.”

  They passed the scatter of sheds and outbuildings and pens and came to the gate in the picket fence that surrounded the house. Their mittens and gloves closed on the wooden latch and turned it, and they crossed the flawless snow to the screen door. “What was that?” Patsy said, and ran back to the other side of the gate. Walter shrugged. “I didn’t hear nuthin’,” he said.

  The screen door led to a dark, screened-in porch cluttered with tools and washtubs, old harnesses and horse collars, a pump built into a box. When they knocked on the door, it clapped in the frame. “They can’t hear us,” Mamie said. Cupping their hands to the sides of their eyes, Mamie and Walter peeked through the screen and saw two other doors, one on either side of the enclosed entryway. “I’m not goin’ in there,” Patsy said, standing outside the gate. “You can’t make me.”

  “Me neither,” Walter said. “It’s scary in there.”

  “Somebody has to,” Mamie said. “Remember, don’t tell.”

  They dug the ends of their gloved fingers into the crack of the door until they could squeeze it open, and Mamie stepped up across the stone threshold, crept to the door inside the porch, struck it with her fist, and dashed back. They closed the screen door and stood there, shivering, peering in.

  Slowly the door opened and they stepped back even farther. A hand holding a lighted lamp emerged slowly through the opened doorway. “Hey,” Mamie said, her voice shaking. “We’re out here.”

  The upheld lamp came toward them. Light spilled down a woman’s sleeve and burnished half her long face; the other half melted in darkness. She was a tall woman and she was wearing a sweater over her apron and blue work shirt. A knotted scarf hid her hair. “Who is it?” she said. “Who’s out there? … Kids? Little kids? What on earth …”

  “Wreck,” Patsy cried, running in. “Wreck, we’ve had a wreck!”

  Holding the small of her back, the woman leaned down, shining the lamplight over them, turning her head from one to the other as they all talked. Then, as Patsy ran out of breath, Walter pointed out across the white fields. “She’s hurt,” he said. “She’s bleeding. She’s died!”

  “Come in here,” the woman said. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Don’t let my heat out, now. Come on in here and tell me what happened from the beginning.”

  Near the warm cookstove in the kitchen, she gathered them to her, loosening their coats and rubbing their cold hands, and when she understood what had happened, she said, “Now, listen. Where was it? How far?” And they told her about the bridge, the low bridge.

  She went immediately to the telephone and dialed it. She said, “Mark, this is Vivian, up here. Come quick! There’s been a wreck down by Forky Creek bridge. Somebody’s hurt.” She slipped into her coat, sat in a chair to pull on rubber boots. As soon as she was ready to go, she ushered the children into the living room where the drum of another wood stove glowed with heat. “Mom,” she said to the woman sitting near the stove. “Mama, you look after these children, now. While I’m gone.” And they were left alone in that tall room quaking with light, alone except for an old woman whose eyes glowed from the deepest crevices of her face. Coming inside from the violence of all that had happened, their bodies still vibrant with fright, they stood gazing across the stove at the creaking chair that had slowly, very slowly, stopped rocking.

  They brought Leona back to the farmhouse in Mark Hardesty’s old Willys car, and he carried her in his arms to Vivian’s bed in the living room. To the children, Mark was a provocative and beguiling sight, tall, dark-haired, a man of action. Murmuring among themselves, they crept forward to see him better in the lamplight. “I like him,” Walter whispered. “He’s kinda like my daddy.” But Mamie whispered, “Sh-h-h. Don’t say that any more. They’ll know something’s wrong.” Her small white fingers were like knobs pressing through his coat sleeve. Straightaway, Vivian tried to call a doctor but after a moment she hung up the receiver. “I cain’t get through,” she said. “We’ll have to do the best we can.”

  “Maybe if I left right now,” Mark Hardesty said. “Maybe I could still get to town.”

  Vivian shook her head. “In this storm, you’d never make it. And even if you did, you’d never get back. Don’t you leave me stuck out here. We’re just lucky we got back here with ’er.” Then, while Vivian swiftly attended to Leona’s most critical needs, wrapping her in quilts and heaping wood on the fire, Hardesty brought in suitcases from the car. Vivian asked the children which of the suitcases their clothes were in and Mamie pointed to two of them. “All right. Now, tell me, what would her name be?” Patsy and Walter turned to peer at Mamie. “It’s Leona,” Mamie said without looking up. Vivian slid the two suitcases away from the others, pulled more blankets from the wardrobe, gave them to Hardesty, and told him to put the kids to bed upstairs. Hearing their footsteps on the staircase, she turned immediately to her mother, who had been watching throughout the commotion. “Mama, you’re gonna have to put yourself to bed tonight. I got work to do.”

  The old woman’s cane tapped the floor. Slowly she stood; then her face twitched as if she had walked through spiderwebs, and her quivering voice began, “Vivy, listen to me. There’s somebody in yore bed. Hit’s some gypsy woman with a whole passel of kids. Ye oughter watch out. They’re gonna steal ye blind.…” Vivian went with her as far as the kitchen door and turned back.

  The snowstorm lashed the old farmhouse in great, droning gusts; against the winter blasts, the kerosene lamps in the room guttered and throbbed with smoky light. Much later, after Vivian had cut away Leona’s bloodied clothes and bathed and covered her in one of her own gowns, after Hardesty had closed the vicious head wound with mercerized thread, they stood by her, waiting for some remnant of color to return to her stone-white face. They couldn’t have marveled at her more if she had plummeted from the sky. “My God, look at her,” Vivian said, her voice constrained with worry. “I wonder who she is.”

  “Come on, now, Vee. She looks healthy. She’ll come through this all right.”

  “She’d be pretty if she didn’t look so nearly done in. Surely, somewhere, her people must be waitin’ for her.”

  “We could find out who she is if you want to,” Hardesty said. “We could go through her purse.”

  “No, sir,” Vivian told him. “I’d hate to do that—unless we have to. I wouldn’t want somebody rummagin’ through my things. I guess it don’t matter who she is right now—we cain’t get word out anyhow.”

  When it appeared that Leona would, indeed, survive the night, Vivian sent Hardesty home, with the understanding that he would be on hand the next day while she did her chores. She didn’t tell him what she had seen.

  Leona’s clothes had been well tailored, so unlike Vivian’s clothes she had hated to cut them, and there were welts and scratches on her abdomen and thighs that did not correspond to any of the tears in her clothing. So what had really happened? And why had her car crashed in this isolated place? She wore no wedding ring, yet she had three children. Who are you? Vivian thought. What sent you out on that mean stretch of road on a night like this? With three kids in the car? And why get them out of the car and not yourself? But finally … Lord, she looked so hurt and helpless. Vivian took her limp hand momentarily and patted it. “Well, Leona,” she said, “you don’t make any sense to me. You look like you’ve been through livin’ hell.”

  The next morning, while Hardesty and her mother watched over Leona and entertained the children, Vivian went out to do her chores, glad to be ou
tside even in a blowing storm. Hardesty had offered to do her work for her but she refused him, taking some pride in the little farm work she left for herself. She treated the children in the only way she knew how, with a warm place to sleep and good food from the stove and cheer in her heart. Even her mother, who was eighty-three and feeble, cantankerous, growing dimmer and weaker every day, rejoiced in the three little imps, as she called them.

  For three days and four nights, Leona lay on Vivian’s bed in the living room, wounds wrapped in bandages, as still and exotic as a mummy. Every now and then, she would rouse up and say something, but her ramblings made no sense. The enigma she created just by being there remained intact; the entire household revolved around her, and it was with a kind of freighted expectancy that Vivian waited for the woman to regain consciousness. I’ll know what this is all about when she opens her eyes, Vivian thought, as if the unknown were suddenly going to solidify into a definite shape.

  “Try to lay still and rest. You’ve had a bad spill.”

  The voice came to Leona in ripples, like the surface of a pond broken in disappearing waves, and the air itself condensed to the consistency of water, smooth and slick and easy to drink. She was aware of footsteps shifting quietly around her. From farther away, she heard a soft whirl of giggles. She opened her eyes and the place was full of light. Shapes were standing nearby, just barely out of focus. This is a dream, she thought, but realized it wasn’t; she seemed to be stranded in some bright void. Closest was a man, a stranger.

  She started to edge up on her elbows to see and talk, but a hand settled on her breastbone. The man said, “Don’t try to get up. You’ll fall down.” Then he spoke again: “Look at me,” he said. Leona strained to see him clearly, but against the glare her eyes began to water. “Look at me,” he repeated. “Do you see me?” She opened her lips and nothing came out. “Don’t try to answer,” he said. “If you hear me, just follow my finger with your eyes.” He moved his finger from left to right and up and down. The space where he had been grew clouded.