by Joe Zito
The sassy waitress who had jumped into Susan’s mind had disappeared completely from her thoughts as if she had never been there at all.
Susan let out a stress relieving breath. She noticed a book in Eldon’s hand. She took a sip of her coffee. Feeling much better, she nodded at the book. “Does that have something to do with you wanting to talk to me?”
Eldon looked down at the small black book and then at Susan.
“Yes, it does.”
He went on to explain to her how the past had gotten the best of him yesterday day when he decided to go back to his old house about two hours after they left.
“It was pulling me back. I had to see the barn again.”
“But why?” Susan asked. “I thought you would never want to set foot in there again.”
“I know. And you’re right Susan. It was crazy to go back but I felt I had to.”
He said that after he stepped inside, the horror of that night still hung heavily in the barn. It all came rushing back to him. He felt dizzy at the memory of what he and his father did. He stumbled around the dark, stinking barn until he fell to his knees, overcome with terror. He took a few deep breaths and somehow managed to stand up.
“It was so hot yesterday, but it was damn cold in that barn,” he said.
As he walked around inside the barn, he felt like a spectator at some haunted museum in hell. He turned the corner of one of the stalls and stopped.
“I was looking right at the spot where my father and I built that horrid beast. I shouldn’t have walked any further, but I did.”
Susan’s eyes were on Eldon as he told her about what he did yesterday and what he had found. He slowly walked over to the area of the barn where the demon was born that night. He looked all around him with scared eyes. The memory was too strong. He broke down and cried alone in the barn.
“I couldn’t help it. I was so overwhelmed by it all. But then I saw something lying on the floor in the corner. And that’s when I found this.”
He pushed the book across the table towards Susan. She looked at it with hard, curious eyes.
“It’s the book my father used to open the gates of hell.”
Eldon glanced out the window at the brush of pine trees across rt. 11, like he was sure something was going to come barreling out of there and lurch across the highway and into the diner and right up to him and kill him right then and there.
“Are you sure about this Eldon? We don’t know what could happen.”
A hot gust of summer wind blew through Susan’s hair as she and Eldon stood in front of their cars, staring at the old, giant barn in front of them.
Eldon had convinced Susan to go with him, back to the barn so they could burn the spell book his father used that night. Eldon wanted her to have closure as well.
“It will kill that beast once and for all. I’m sure of it.”
Susan crossed her arms like she was cold, even though it was a warm day. She all of a sudden remembered her leaking air conditioner unit. She didn’t know what would make her think of something so mundane, considering the fact she was getting ready to step into some unknown world or possibly hell.
As she sat with Eldon at the diner earlier, he explained to her that his father had secretly read one of the spells in the witchcraft book he had found in the barn. Eldon had pushed the small black book in front of Susan, letting her see the passage for herself. He dare not read it out loud for fear of something evil and unearthly happening right there in the diner. Susan took the book and with hard eyes, gazed down at the pages.
“Don’t read it aloud,” Eldon said with urgency in his voice.
She quickly averted her eyes from the book and took in Eldon’s sudden warning. Slowly and now more afraid, Susan looked down at the book.
Her fingertips touched the brittle, yellowish paper. Eldon could see her eyes shifting from her right to left. After a few moments of silence between them and the sound of the entrance bells clanging as a few truckers entered the diner, Susan raised her head and Eldon could see the unstable form on her face: a mask of a thousand questions.
“What does all this mean?” She said.
Eldon pulled something out of his coat pocket. It was a few pieces of paper.
“Inside that book I found these.” He let Susan look at them. She read silently. The words on the crinkly old paper were written by Eldon’s father, explaining his actions of what he was going to do.
“He found that black book of evil out in the barn three days after he and my mother moved onto the farm. I don’t think he knew really what it was or what to do with it.”
Susan tried to understand what she was reading.
“I haven’t slept very well the past three nights. I can’t stop thinking about that book I found about eleven years ago when Marla and I first moved to the farm. When I first read it, none of it made a lick of sense to me. I know it was something evil. I don’t even know why I kept it. I should’ve just thrown it away. We haven’t seen any rain for weeks and I know we’re gonna lose our crops. And all of those damn crows keep pickin’ at my corn. They won’t leave my corn alone. They’re just nasty, hungry birds. I’ve been thinking about something I read in that book just a few days ago, something that might help save our crops.
Susan looked up from the letter. Her coffee had turned cold.
“So your father put a spell on his cornfield?”
Eldon shook his head.
“Not the cornfield Susan, but that white bag full of things to make that scarecrow with.”
A cold flush of terror ran up her spine. She read some more of the letter. “I’ve never believed in any hocus pocus kind of stuff and I never believed those farmers around here saying that the best way to get rid of a crow is with a scarecrow. But that’s what has been keeping me awake at night. In that book there is a spell made just for a situation like mine, I guess.”
Susan covered her mouth in grief. She understood completely now what Eldon’s father had done.
“And that’s just what he did. He put together that deadly bag of goodies and put a spell on it, in hopes of it working. Well, he got his wish.”
Susan read the final paragraph on the paper.
“There is one thing though that frightens me the most about that spell. It claims that whoever casts the spell shall have eternal life.”
“Eternal life,” Susan said and didn’t even notice she had laughed a little when she said it. Eldon looked at Susan grimly. It frightened her how his face had turned so quickly from desperation to dead pan serious.
He said, “We need to destroy that book.”
Susan stared up at the giant barn that seem to resemble a dead beast of broken windows and rotted wood. Everything Eldon had told her at the diner she was still trying to process. She felt overwhelmed by the reality of it all. Angel really didn’t do it. This old man’s daddy lost his mind years ago and conjured up some beast by saying a few words from a book and that beast killed my daughter. She felt sick suddenly by the thought. She ran her hand through her white blonde hair.
“Are you all right?” Eldon asked.
It was a silly question, because of course he knew that she wasn’t. But what could he say? How could her comfort her after telling her all of this life altering information. He felt a little dizzy when he tried to imagine the thoughts going through her head right now. He was wondering if Susan was ever going to begin walking to the barn. It will be the first step towards a new life, Susan.
Quietly he said, “Are you ready?”
She didn’t look at him or respond. She only stared with fear at the barn, the way a kid would do at the fair, standing in line at the haunted house ride, full of apprehension and terror. But she surprised Eldon when she took a step forward and then another and then another step until finally she was walking straight towards it, not saying a word and never once looking away from the wooden monstrosity.
It was cold inside the barn just like Eldon had told her. The stalls were bar
e but decade’s old aroma of pig manure and hay still seemed to hang in the air like an undying ghost. Only a little light seeped through the broken window up in the loft.
“Watch your step now,” Eldon said. He put his hand out in the gloom of the barn and Susan reached out and took it.
They finally stopped at one of the stalls and Susan was assuming this was the spot where Eldon and his father put together the contents of the spell cast bag of scarecrow fixins’. The concrete floor felt cold under Susan’s tennis shoes and she wondered if this was where they would burn the evil spell book that has dealt her twenty three years of heartache.
“It was right here,” Eldon said with a chill in his voice.
Susan wrapped her arms together once again because she really was cold but more terrified standing in the dark gloom of the old barn. How will we know if it works? She thought.
She was getting lost in her mind as she stood there in the stall, not knowing what the future held and if burning the book would not destroy the scarecrow but anger it and conjure it from the depths of the corn. What am I doing? This is crazy. I should be at home right now. Something was wrong. She could feel it. This isn’t right.
She turned to Eldon to say something and then a piece of metal came crashing into her forehead, knocking her out cold, ending all thoughts of fear and doubt.
Darkness and pain.
No light.
Susan’s eyes slowly opened like an ancient coffin. Through the murky grey blurriness, she could see movement. She began to moan. A heavy throbbing ache came from the impact point on her forehead. Disorientation had numbed her senses. She felt no fear. Her vision was getting clearer and everything was in a sideways view. She instinctively put her hand to her forehead to massage away the ache, but it did not help.
A dark shape suddenly came into her view. She squint her eyes to see what it was and then she remembered the dirty metal shovel coming straight at her.
“I’m so sorry Susan.”
The voice sounded familiar to her but she was still having trouble seeing. She rubbed her eyes. She knew she had been hit, but she never saw the person holding the shovel.
“I had no choice,” the voice said again.
She could see a little more movement in front of her and then she recognized the deep, friendly sounding voice. Slowly, she began to sit up. She put both hands to her bruised forehead as she massaged the painful knot on her head. She peeked through her fingers and saw Eldon sitting just a few feet in front of her.
She lowered her hands and with a look of utter shock, she asked, “Why?” But it came out in a scratchy whisper.
Eldon was sitting Indian style on the floor and despite the shocking turn of events, Susan couldn’t help but wonder how he was able to lower himself to the floor and sit that way because of his age. It was just a thought. She tried adjusting herself to a more comfortable poison and in doing so she heard a metallic rattling of a chain hitting the barn floor. Her ankle was cuffed and chained to a rusty metal pipe sticking up from the barn floor. She looked down at the contraption. When she looked up she saw an old man sitting in front of her looking broken, guilty and pale. Her voice elevated in a panic stricken tone. “What’s going on Eldon? What are you doing?”
His sickly looking face stared back at her with eyes of both hope and regret.
“I’m making things better,” he said.
Her mouth hung open in a look of sick appalment. Her face and tear filled eyes saying, “Are you fucking out of your mind!”
“What is going on Eldon? Let me go! Why are you doing this?”
The barn was eerily silent. Eldon didn’t answer her right away, but after a few moments he pulled a group of papers from his pocket. He looked down at the papers in his shaking hands and then at Susan.
“It’s because I want to live Susan.”
She shook her head not understanding at all what he meant. He stood up. His old bones popped as he did. He began walking back and forth slowly with his head down, like a doctor getting ready to tell a wife that her husband just died on the operating table.
“Everything I’ve told you Susan up to this point has been true. Well, not really. I did find that black book and those letters my father wrote in our barn, but I was nineteen when I did. It was a week before I moved away from Indiana and from that night of hell. I sat there crying in the barn one hot June afternoon. I tried not to think too much about that night as I got older, but it all came rushing back to me when I found those letters and the book.”
Susan listened and watched Eldon with distraught and fearful eyes. This old man seemed so gentle and harmless and she didn’t know what he was capable of.
“I’m not sure why I had decided to keep all of it. I never showed anyone. Not even my mother or sisters or even my wife, god bless her soul. In fact Susan, you are the first person I’ve ever shown the book to.”
Eldon said it as if Susan should feel privileged or proud that she was the only one he had told his secret to.
“Well, after I moved away, I put that book and the letters my father wrote in a lock box and hid it and never looked at it again. He paused and stopped pacing and stared at Susan in the late afternoon gloom of the barn.
“That was until three months ago.” The barn seemed so still and quiet, like the structure itself was listening in on the conversation.
“I had gone to the doctor because I thought I had the flu. I was never big on getting the flu shot anyway. They drew some blood and took some tests and said it was routine and then I got a call from their office one day about a week after my visit. They told me the doctor wanted to talk to me about my blood work.”
“I about collapsed right then and there standing by my kitchen window looking out at the hummingbird going crazy over the feeder I just filled.”
“I knew…..oh my lord I knew. I know when a man my age who receives a telephone call about a follow up on his blood work can’t be nothin’ but bad news.”
“And it sure was Susan. Cancer, to be exact, with a year to live. I must have scared about every person that saw me driving home. I was a terrified mess and almost forgot how to get home because of the shock. I cried for two days straight. It was too much. I just couldn’t believe it. I knew this kind of thing happened all the time to people my age, but I was blindsided by it. I guess I felt guilty more than anything because my wife had passed before me and I should have accepted what the doctor had told me and accept death with open arms, because I would be with her once again. But I didn’t Susan. I was horrified and downright terrified of dying. And as much as I missed my wife, I wasn’t ready to go yet.”
Eldon stopped and rubbed his moist eyes. He continued, “After the shock wore off I started thinking about that lock box. I know what was in there. I knew my father’s secret and what he had intended to do. But he couldn’t because that beast killed him.”
Susan was at a loss because she had no idea what Eldon was talking about until she thought it at the exact same moment he said it.
“Eternal life.”
A black chill went up her arms when he said it, sounding like some mad preacher in the night with his eyes glowing with a blood red insanity.
“I do believe that my father wanted those crows gone more than anything and he may have lost his mind in thinking he could use that spell to kill them off. But I think he also wanted to know if he would receive eternal life from casting that spell. He never got to see. We both know that. I need to see Susan. I need to know.”
“I’m so sorry that I had to do this to you and I’m sorry that I lied to you, but you know what I have to do.” He opened the spell book.
The whole time Eldon was speaking to Susan, he had that same gentle, deep, non-threatening tone of voice. She thought he sounded scared as he talked, almost like he knew he was doing something evil and there was no turning back. It was a mix of horror and desperation.
“My father chose this particular spell I guess because it states that eternal life shall
be granted upon the one who performs the spell. But there is more,” Eldon said.
He opened the book. Susan frowned in horror at what was happening. She had put her trust in this man and now he was going to kill her or at least that’s what she believed. She honestly didn’t know what was going to happen.
“This spell is to be used for getting rid of evil, Susan. In my father’s case it was those crows. But he cursed that bag instead and when he made that monster, the spell had a reverse effect and all hell broke loose. Once the spell is done, it uses nightmares to keep the evil away. That would explain all the nightmares I’ve had over the years. It also says that its effect will last for years, being the strongest in whatever time period or season the spell was performed. That beast Susan, it dies during the harvest every year but it comes right back haunting every summer and fall and every cornfield around Witchington county.”
“But now I’m going to set things straight and do what needs to be done.”
He began reading the spell. To Susan it sound like some of it was in Latin although she wasn’t for sure. She pleaded with him to let her go but he kept on reading as if she wasn’t in the room. She used his deceased wife as a hopeless way of reasoning with him, saying that he could be reunited with her, but it was useless. He kept reading until finally he stopped and the spell was complete.
He closed the book slowly. His eyes were closed. A close rumble of thunder boomed outside. Eldon opened his eyes and stared at Susan as if he was waiting for her to morph into some hideous creature, but she didn’t and she never would because what he failed to learn about the spell was that it could only be used once and that’s when a loud, harsh bang came from the close and locked barn doors.
Susan gasped.
Eldon shot his head up quickly in the direction of the doors. Slowly, he removed his 44 magnum from under his long black trench coat. Susan let out an ‘hah’ sound that was part scream, part laugh because she realized that Eldon had come prepared and was going to use that gun if need be once he was finished reciting the spell. But things had taken a major change of direction.
Susan was still alive and unharmed and there was something outside the barn.