The Year of the Storm

by John Mantooth

Soon I was sleeping there and not going to school at all. I’d sneak into my house for some food late at night and then slip back out to the shelter. It was on one of these nights that I finally found the proof I was looking for.

  It happened by accident. I couldn’t sleep and had decided to wander over to Seth’s house to see if his dad was still awake. In the darkness, I must have taken a wrong turn because the woods grew thicker and soon I was lost. Despite the lantern I carried, I got confused and I couldn’t find my bearings, something that’s easy to do in these woods.

  Then I saw something. It was up ahead, a hulking shadow covered in kudzu, just a shape in the dark. It was a little hunting cabin that was almost invisible to the naked eye except from the back, which just happened to be the direction I’d come from. It must have been the same one Seth had mentioned before, which meant I wasn’t very far from the storm shelter.

  I probably don’t even need to say that the cabin, the one I found that night, is this same cabin. Rebuilt by Seth’s father, my uncle, it looks basically the same, minus a few vines of kudzu, as it did in 1961.

  I stopped a dozen or so feet short, studying the place for any signs of life. A few moments passed and I saw nothing. I crept a little closer.

  I paused to listen at the back window—the one in the room right down that hallway. There were no sounds other than the crickets and bullfrogs down by the pond. I took a deep breath and pressed my face against the glass. It seemed empty. Abandoned.

  Circling the cabin, I looked for a way in. The door on the front was locked. I went back to the window and tried to open it, but it was stuck in place. I tried again, this time putting everything I had into lifting it, but I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not really sure why I felt it was so urgent to get inside, but I did.

  I cast around for a rock or heavy stick to break the glass with. Waving my light around, I spotted a fallen tree limb, picked it up, and swung it like a baseball bat. It would do. Back over at the window, it took me three swings to break through the glass and another few swipes to knock loose the shards so I could pull myself up and through.

  I tumbled inside, just managing to get my hands up before I hit the floor face-first. I was lucky I didn’t land on any of the glass. Other than a few pieces of half-finished furniture, the room seemed empty. I made my way into the short, narrow corridor that led to the back, holding my light out in front of me, feeling like I’d found the very answer to all my problems right here in this cabin, but I had to just unwrap it, you know? I was close, so damned close, but not there yet.

  If my light hadn’t gone out, I might never have found the cellar. It was an old oil lantern I’d swiped from Daddy’s shed, and I hadn’t bothered to get more fuel for it. I watched in dismay as it dimmed, casting flickering shadows against the wall, and then went completely dark. I set it down and reached out blindly, determined to keep searching.

  In the hallway, I stubbed my toe on something. I sprawled forward and hit the wall. I lay on the floor for a moment, shivering. It was like I’d crawled into some monster, and a false move would wake it up, and once that happened he’d swallow me forever. I touched my head to see if it was bleeding. Only a little. I sat up. The moon was rising and its light filtered through the cracked glass. I saw what I’d tripped on.

  There was a rug, a big throw rug embroidered with every animal imaginable—deer, elk, wild turkeys. In the center was a tiny rise, like a bump in the floor. I pulled the rug away and saw that I’d stubbed my toe on a metal latch that led to a trapdoor in the hardwood floor. I didn’t even think about it. I opened it up and saw a ladder leading to a cellar. I was halfway down it when I noticed the ladder seemed encrusted in a dried, flaking substance. The smell of copper and rust and something deeper, older, invaded my senses and I knew it was blood.

  I kept going.

  A beam of moonlight filtered through the hole and as I neared the bottom. I let myself drop. I landed on my feet but was almost knocked over by the overpowering stench of blood and waste as I covered my mouth, trying to keep from vomiting. It came anyway. Thankfully, only dry heaves because I had nothing in my belly to expel. Once my stomach stopped seizing, I turned around slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the deep black of the cellar.

  Nothing came clear—some shapes slouching into themselves, the swirl of odors too strong to comprehend—until I saw them standing there against the back wall, two girls glowing in the dark, so bright I thought I’d go blind.

  They were dead, ghosts or something even less than ghosts—afterimages, photonegatives burned like heat into the cellar wall.

  For an instant, they were everything. I lost sight of why I was there, what I was doing, who I was, even. I felt a sadness cinch so tight in my gut that I doubled over, dry-heaving again, my cheek cold against the dirt floor.

  Then they were gone.

  The afterimages stayed in my vision like those floaters you get from staring into the sun too long, but the girls were gone and if I’d wanted to (and part of me did, believe me) I could have forgotten them, pretended they never showed themselves, written it off as my mind playing cruel tricks on my soul. But I refused to do that.

  I pulled myself up and slid carefully to the back wall. The wall was sticky to the touch. I felt around some more until my hand landed on something else, a leather strap attached to the wall. After some investigation, my heart sank when I realized what it was—a shackle. Two sets. The same crusty blood clung here and had been smeared against the back wall. For an instant I saw them again—or heard them—this time moaning, begging for mercy, but Sykes wouldn’t give them any. There were shouts and cries, and deep moans, things that I never heard before or since, not even in Vietnam, and I understood then what Seth had meant about his father being evil. I clamped my ears with both hands, but the sounds wouldn’t go away. Instead, I heard new ones, dripping in the hollows, the empty spaces of the screams, flesh being torn away, bones cracking, and all the while the cries for mercy. But Sykes wouldn’t give them any. Not even a drop.

  When it finally ended, a long silence remained. It was like wind had come through and blown everything away. I couldn’t even smell the blood.

  I didn’t need to. I’d experienced everything I needed. I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to keep my lungs working evenly, trying to feel the anger as it seeped out into my fingers and toes.

  I was halfway back to the ladder, a plan formulating in my head about a visit to Sheriff Branch’s office, when the cabin door slammed shut somewhere above me. I slipped back toward the back wall, pressing myself flat against the place where he’d shackled the girls. I reached into my pocket for my switchblade and waited. I prayed he didn’t have a light.

  That was one prayer that didn’t get answered. I saw the light bending into the cellar as he drew nearer. He was whistling. Damn if that didn’t almost do me in right there. That whistling. I still hear it in my nightmares sometimes. I wanted to rush him, run at the ladder, climbing up it as I swung at him, but I held on. I had to make this count.

  For Seth. For those girls. But mostly for me. Up until that point, I had been just sort of drifting. Now I had a purpose, something I knew was right, something I knew that I could do. A man could do a lot worse than that feeling.

  My hand itched to pop that blade.

  He stopped whistling, and I knew he’d noticed the cellar door was open. There was another long silence. I heard my own heart thudding against my rib cage, the sound of my breath coming out in a stifled wheeze.

  One more step, the floorboards groaning. Another, this one not as loud. He stopped again. His boots creaked as he settled his weight right above me. I looked up, wondering how strong the barrier between us was, and if I could stick a knife through it.

  “Somebody down there?” he called out. His voice sounded pleasant. Almost jovial.

  I didn’t breathe.

  “Well, I don’t suppose,” he said, “t
hat this door opened itself.”

  The floorboards above me groaned as he took another step.

  “Did you like what you found down there?” he said. His voice changed to a falsetto. “I didn’t mean to kill them. Just happens sometimes when you’re trying to get them to do right.”

  I clenched the knife in my sweaty palm, determined not to let him bait me.

  “Not a talker, huh? Or maybe you think I’m a damned enough fool to come down there.” He laughed and began to whistle again. The light moved, the floorboards talked, there was a loud slam, and I was completely in the dark.

  —

  I was in the cellar for a long time. Because of the darkness, I can’t say exactly how long. Four days is my best guess, but it might have been more as each moment bled into the next. I was hungry, but not frightened. That might sound strange, even hard to believe, but no part of me was afraid, not anymore. When you’re as hungry as I was, fear will always take a backseat.

  There were bugs, creepy crawlies that I managed to put my hands on in the dark. I ate them as reflex, not even considering what they were, popping them inside my mouth like candy, sometimes swallowing them whole, feeling them squirm down my throat. I trapped a rat in the corner of the cellar using an empty jar. At my lowest moments, I wanted to eat it alive too, but I’d heard about the diseases they carried. Still, I kept it under the jar, ready if I got desperate enough.

  Luckily, it never came to that.

  Rats and bugs weren’t the only things I shared that space with. The past lived in that cellar. As I began to slide in and out of consciousness in my weakened state, I saw the girls again, their dresses shining in the dark, their hair like silken coal. They were unaware of me, and time and time again I listened to them moan for help. When they finally stopped, there was only a moment’s worth of silence and absolute dark before I heard the small boy crying. Then I saw him, not two feet from where I lay, hunched over the body of his mother. What kind of ghosts were these? The boy was Sykes, and Sykes wasn’t even dead yet.

  Yet.

  At some point, the door above me creaked open, and when it did, I was lying huddled in the corner, still gripping my switchblade tightly. My eyes were closed, but I opened them just enough to watch as Seth’s father came down, first a heavy boot and then another, until his whole body was inside.

  I watched him, so smug as he stepped off the ladder and swung his lantern around, just missing me, against the far wall. He had a knife in his hand, and I knew I’d only get one chance.

  It was hard—no, impossible—for me to square the man who stood next to me with the crying boy that I’d spent the last several hours with. They were two different people, and that, I think, is all you need to know about growing old.

  He swung the lantern light out again, this time in a wider arc. I felt the light moving over my body, and I wondered what I must have looked like lying there, half-starved, unmoving. I hoped I looked dead.

  That’s when I heard him gasp.

  I stayed still, barely opening one eye to see. He’d moved past me and was examining the blood spots on the back wall. Was it possible he wasn’t aware that the girls were gone? And if this was true, who had taken them, and why?

  He swung back around violently. “Where are they?”

  I continued to play dead or at least passed out, holding the knife under my shirt, the cold casing next to my empty belly. He drew back with his foot and kicked me hard in the ribs.

  “I asked you a question, boy.”

  I bit my lip, holding it all in. I wanted to scream. Damn, did I ever. His boots were steel-toed, and my ribs felt like they’d been knocked right into my lungs.

  I heard his boots creak and he knelt next to me. I opened my eyes just enough to see his outline, blurry in the lantern light. He was holding the knife out, ready to prod my face with it.

  Slowly—while his attention was focused on my face—I slid the switchblade out of my shirt. His blade touched my face. He used the tip to pry at my right eyelid, trying to force it open.

  Without a sound, I put the switchblade inches away from his midsection. His blade was so near my eye now, and that was when I realized what he meant to do.

  With a shriek, I popped the blade and thrust it into his midsection. His hand jerked and slashed my eye good. Instantly, I felt blood running down my cheek like tears. I released the switchblade, leaving it in his stomach, and grabbed his arm with both of my hands. I shoved him off me, and his knife fell onto the cellar floor.

  I touched my eye, sure that I’d find only an empty socket. But it was still there. For now.

  Half-blinded, I fought him, tumbling on the ground. He cursed me, beating at me with his big fists. I absorbed the pain because none of it hurt as bad as the knife in my eye. Somehow, I managed to work my way onto his back. He stood up, trying to spin around and fling me off. My hands clawed at his face, his eyes.

  He kicked over his lantern and there was a sudden explosion of flame as the oil caught. I didn’t let go. Madness had come over me and I only wanted to claw out his eyes, to pay him back twofold for the one he’d taken of mine.

  I rode him like a bucking bronco around the cellar. He pummeled me against the walls and tried to toss me off into the fire, but I held on to him with everything I had. I worked a hand inside his mouth and ripped his right cheek hard and then harder, screaming for all I was worth. He flailed back at me with his fists, striking the spot he’d kicked.

  He twisted his body around, so that my head collided with the ladder, knocking it loose from its moorings and making me momentarily woozy. Still, I held on.

  He staggered into the darkness, tossing me like a bull flings a cowboy, but I wouldn’t let go. My eye had gone numb and blind from where he’d cut me, but I continued to twist at his cheek, stretching it until it bled over my fingers. He must have spun himself dizzy because eventually, he fell. He was still spinning on the way down, which explains how I ended up landing on the knife. It sliced into my leg. The puncture was deep and hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before, but when I reached for the knife, it slid out of me as easy as pulling a toothpick through melted butter.

  Then he was on top of me.

  I slammed the knife into his side and twisted. He moaned and cursed. He told me he’d see me in hell.

  I kept twisting and he kept talking. I was surprised he knew who I was. Had he gotten a look at me at all? I didn’t think so. He just knew.

  Then the thing that haunts my dreams still: He spoke of the swamp. “I see it,” he said. “I see the swamp. I see them.”

  Believe me, I’ve lain awake so many nights debating what he saw, who he saw. Despite all those sleepless nights, I don’t have answers. Just a bushel full of doubts and bad lungs from all the cigarettes I smoked sitting upright in my bed beside the open window.

  Finally, he stopped talking and went still. I let go of the knife and tried to push him off. Unfortunately, my energy was running out of my leg. I settled for sliding out from under his weight. When I stood, I felt light-headed. I couldn’t think. The pain wasn’t so bad. It was more that I felt different, not all there, woozy. I was covered with blood, slick and warm. My stomach lurched, but nothing came up other than bile. I coughed it out, there on the floor. My hand fell back to my thigh, and I plugged the bleeding by pressing my fingers into the cut. I stood, took a faltering step, still keeping my hand on the cut, and began to stumble toward the ladder.

  There was pain, but I ignored it. Somehow, I worked my bleeding body up the ladder and into the cabin. It was daylight, and I had to fight the overwhelming urge to just lie down and fall asleep in the sunlight shining through the cracked windows. If I’d done that, I’m certain I would have died right there. So I forced myself to ignore what my body wanted and I dragged myself through the woods, trailing blood along the way to my house. Mama was in the bathroom. We didn’t have a phone in those days, so
I would need her to drive me to the hospital or go get help or something. I collapsed against the door, and I didn’t remember anything else until the next day.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I woke in a room and saw both my parents sitting next to me. My good eye fell on my father first. He held my gaze long enough for me to know that he was sober or as close as he would ever get to it. This small sacrifice touched me. Maybe he cared about me. It’s still a debate I have in my head to this day.

  Mama’s eyes were more vacant, but when she saw me awake, she leaned in and hugged me. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank Jesus.”

  Dad stood. “The sheriff is wanting to talk to you.” He was fidgeting with his collar, pacing now. He was ready to go have a drink, and I knew his encounter with sobriety was about to end. I nodded at him.

  He started to leave and stopped. “You all right?”

  I didn’t have a clue. I knew that something was wrong with my eye. It still felt numb all around the socket, and no matter how hard I tried to open that eyelid, it refused to budge. I told him I was fine.

  He considered leaving again but stopped short. His mouth opened to say something else. He was about to speak, and God only knows what he might have said. I think about that all the time, far too often for an old man whose daddy’s been gone for nearly twenty years. He opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. He shook his head and left.

  I like to imagine he was about to say something encouraging. Something that might have gone a long way toward erasing some of the hate I had for him. Maybe he thought it, and maybe that’s enough. I go back and forth about that too.

  —

  Sheriff Branch came into the room and asked my mother if she would give him some time alone with me.

  When she left, he sat down heavily in her chair. He didn’t ask how I was feeling or anything like that. Instead, he just looked at me for a long moment. I looked back, meeting his eyes.

  “We followed your blood to the hunting cabin.”