Firefly Rain

by Richard Dansky

  I ran faster. Another dozen steps and I heard the first explosive thud as the hound threw himself against the damaged door, and the first angry snarl as it refused to give.

  “I’m coming,” I called out, though I knew no one in the house could hear me. “Hang on, I’m coming.”

  Somehow, I covered the ground. All I remember is a series of blunt, harsh sounds—my feet against the turf, the pounding of my heart, and the battering of Asa against that weakened door.

  Shaking his head from another failed attempt to batter his way indoors, he saw me when I was maybe a hundred yards from the house. As he caught sight of me, he stopped and turned, looking up to meet my eyes. I stared back and started running right at him, that walking stick raised high.

  He waited a second, then charged back at me.

  We met there on the grass, a little closer to halfway between us than I would have guessed likely. Asa leaped up at the last moment, his muzzle open wide and his teeth gleaming. I threw my arm in the way just in time, and his jaws closed on it instead of my throat. I gave out a yell of pure pain, but still managed to slam the dog down against the ground. He didn’t let go, so I tried to bring that walking stick down on him, hard. The angle was wrong, though, and what was supposed to snap ribs instead glanced off.

  He let go, rolled away, and bounced back to his feet. I saw blood on his muzzle and felt the same dripping down my arm. The pain was white lightning shooting up and down from my fist to my shoulder. I ignored it and shifted the walking stick into a two-handed grip, crouching low and growling right back. Inside the house, I heard shouting and doors slamming. Jenna will take care of things, I told myself. Jenna’s got it under control in there.

  Asa charged again. I swung my weapon at him, but he dodged and went for the back of my ankle. I backpedaled enough that he barely missed, then the back of my calf hit him and I went over. He was on me in an instant, with only that length of wood keeping his teeth away from my throat. I twisted it left, then right, his strength matching me in everything I did. His paws tore at my chest and belly, trying to disembowel me, and all I could do was curl up and try to roll, to get my weight on top of him.

  Finally, I wrenched the shaft out of his mouth and slammed it against the side of his head. Asa let out a whine of pain and staggered back, his ears flat against his skull and his eyes narrowed. We circled each other, me trying to get between him and that weakened door, him intent on me but still eyeing a way past. “Come on,” I said, and I thumped the heavy wood against my hand. “Come on, boy. You’re gonna get the stick.”

  His response was a blood-chilling howl that went up to the skies. Behind him, the moon sank red down to the horizon. His claws tore at the dirt as he crouched, impatient and angry.

  From the house, I heard a click. Asa heard it, too. His ears shot up and his head turned, away from me and toward the porch.

  Toward the kitchen, I knew. Toward the door that had just been unlocked.

  “Oh, no,” I breathed, and charged.

  Asa was getting ready to spring away from me, and I caught him half-turned. The swing I took had no poetry in it, no grace. It was just a desperate man with a length of wood trying to beat something he hated to death, pure and simple. It caught Asa broadside, and I could feel ribs snap under the impact. The follow-through took me off-balance, though, and I stumbled. Asa swung his head back to me and bit down on my hand. Bones crunched under the pressure, and I saw, rather than felt, myself drop that walking stick. It rolled away into the grass, useless. With my other hand, I pounded Asa in the face as hard as I could, again and again. He snarled, twisting his head to tear chunks of flesh out of me while I whimpered and hammered at him as best I could.

  It was the blood that saved me then. Too much of it was flowing, I guess, choking Asa as it pooled down in his throat. He made a sound that was half cough, half bark, and let me go, a gobbet of red liquid flying free as he did so. I fell backward, clutching what had been my hand. I tried to get up, but he butted me with his head, and again I went over.

  He stood over me then, looking down with his fangs bared. “I was supposed to kill you,” I said, fear and pain and sadness all mixed up in me. “I guess I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t move, Logan,” Jenna said from somewhere off to my right, and she pulled the lead trigger.

  There was a click and, a half-heartbeat later, an explosion louder than thunder.

  Asa’s head disintegrated in an instant. A hot wind blew over me, pellets grazing my skin as they rushed past. I blinked, unable to move.

  “Go down, damn it,” she said, and she fired again.

  Asa’s headless corpse collapsed in stages, its blood running down into the ground.

  “Jenna?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

  Her face appeared in front of me, the shotgun falling from her hands to rest on the ground beside me. “It’s me,” she said. “Jesus, Logan, you’re a mess.” She was crying, tears pouring down in a hot rain. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute. I mean, just look at you.”

  “I don’t want to, thanks,” I said weakly, and I got a halfhearted chuckle out of her for my efforts. “Help me up. Please.”

  “Screw that,” she said, and she looked back over her shoulder. “You stay right where you are. I’m gonna go get my car and we’re taking you to a hospital. What the hell happened to you, Logan? What’s going on?”

  “Promises being kept,” I mumbled, and I tried to sit up. “Adrienne?”

  “Safe and sound and locked into that bedroom, scared half to death,” Jenna assured me. “Now lie down. Relax. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I sagged back onto the ground. I could hear her footsteps move off, and I closed my eyes. The ground was cool against my back as I wrapped my torn hand in my shirt, pressing as hard as I dared to stop the bleeding. Everything was all right, I told myself. Everything was over. Everyone was safe. I lay back and listened to the footsteps.

  Footsteps. Lots of them. More than Jenna could be making by herself.

  I heaved myself up, my stomach nearly emptying itself as I did so. “Jenna!” I called out.

  “Way ahead of you, Logan,” she said, but there was a note of fear in her voice, and I could see why. It was the men I’d spoken to in the Thicket, the men who’d made that pledge to Mother to seal my bargain with the land, no matter what. They were past the pine trees now, closing in on the house and moving fast. Carl was leading them.

  His face was swollen and distorted, leaking blood in a couple of places and misshapen in others, but he was moving at a steady clip that was more frightening than a full-on sprint would have been. The others moved behind him, spread out in a wedge like a flight of geese headed south in a hurry.

  They were headed for Jenna, though. Quickly and with a stride full of purpose, they were coming for her.

  “Jenna!” I called out desperately. “Get in the house! Lock the doors!”

  “I won’t leave you!” she said, caught between the house and the car. “They’re gonna kill you, Logan!”

  “They’re not after me,” I said. “Not anymore. Go!”

  She hesitated a moment, then ran for the house. I reached out for the shotgun and used it as a crutch, hauling myself to my feet. I checked the chambers, just to be sure, and had my worst fear confirmed. They were empty.

  Resigned, I jammed the muzzle into the ground and leaned on it. It had saved me once; now it could support me as I waited.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Jenna had barely slammed the door when Carl and his men covered the last bit of that long slope, up to where I stood. I held myself up as best I could and regarded them.

  “Carl,” I said. “It’s over. Go home. Go see a doctor. Just go.”

  “I can’t do that, Jacob,” he said. “Blood or love, and you let someone else spill the blood.” Behind him, I could see Sam Fuller. A dead man might have worn that face, some Egyptian king buried long ago. It showed nothing but the grave.

  “I’ll make my ow
n choice,” I said. “Get off my land.” Overhead, the fireflies danced frantically. Faces half-formed in the cloud the fireflies made of themselves, then vanished away in a heartbeat. Other shapes showed themselves, too, things I didn’t want to think too hard about.

  “It ain’t your land properly yet.” Carl shook his head, slow and wistful. “Not until you seal the deal. And you know what that means now.”

  I knew exactly what he meant, and my blood ran cold at the thought. If Adrienne was going to bind me to this place, then the next logical step was to get rid of the rival, real or perceived. To get rid of Jenna. “You’re not hurting Jenna,” I told him. “You’ll get to her over my dead body, and if you do that, you’ll never be free of Mother. You want that, Carl?”

  “He ain’t so dumb after all,” one of the cops cracked, and there was low, nasty laughter. “Dead body ain’t too far off,” another man said. “Step aside easy and you won’t get hurt.”

  “And if I don’t step aside?” I raised the shotgun.

  Carl stared out at me with one good eye and one gone crazy from broken bones and blood. “Then we beat you within an inch of your life, kill your Yankee tramp, and let Adrienne nurse you back to health. You might even learn how to walk again someday. No leaving after that, I promise you. None at all.”

  I leveled the gun at him. “You’re not going past me, Carl.”

  “Your barrels are full of mud,” he said mildly. “You’ve been up north too long. No man who cares about his gun treats it like that. ’Sides, we heard the shots. It ain’t loaded now, is it?”

  “You ready to take that chance?” I asked.

  “No chance ’t all,” he replied as he stepped forward.

  I rammed the shotgun forward as hard as I could into his chest and pulled both triggers, hoping for a miracle. I got no miracles, but Carl did stumble back into Sam Fuller’s arms, and the two went down in a heap. Mr. Hilliard surged past them, though, and one of the cops on my left, and even as I swung the gun like a club back and forth, I found myself giving ground.

  “Keep him busy, boys!” Reverend Trotter stood at the back, urging them on. “The rest of you, get into that house! Hurry!” I tried to fight forward through the press, but numbers bore me down. Someone stomped on my broken hand and I screamed. From around the corner of the house, I could hear breaking glass and splintering wood. Someone was going in through the kitchen door the hard way. Faintly, I could hear cursing—Jenna’s and someone else’s. She’d found the knife block, near as I could tell, and was making a fight of it. But even with three men holding me down, there were still more than enough to take her. It was only a matter of time.

  Another man came down on my legs, pinning them, then a third man threw himself across my chest. I struggled as best I could, but there were too many of them. Someone wrenched the shotgun out of my fingers, then reversed it and slammed the butt into my face. I felt my nose crunch underneath the blow. Fresh blood flowed down into my throat, filled my mouth, and spilled down over my face. I gasped for air, and Sam Fuller put his boot down, lightly, on my throat.

  “Hold still,” he said in his dead, angry voice. “Hold still and it won’t hurt anymore. Hold still and it will all be over soon.”

  I could still hear Jenna, cursing like a wildcat. Something was breaking in the kitchen, more glass and maybe some furniture. They were in the house now. Even if she kept retreating, there was only so far she could go. Fuller was right. It would be over soon. A small part of me hoped that Adrienne had fainted, that she wouldn’t be hearing or seeing any of this.

  Another part of me wondered what the hell Mother—my mother—was thinking of all this. If she was there right now, and seeing the things being done in her name. If this was what she wanted, what she truly wanted for her son. Somehow, I didn’t think so. At least, that’s what I tried to believe.

  Fuller’s head jerked left as he stared up at the house. “What the hell?” he asked, but the sentence was never finished. Glass exploded outward, streaks of yellow-green lightning arcing between the shards as they scythed outward. Men went down, clutching at a dozen razored slashes. Fierce light crackled in the air.

  The pressure on me suddenly eased as the men holding me fell away. I rolled myself over, spat blood onto the ground, and propped myself up as best as I could to see what the hell had just happened.

  What had happened was Adrienne. She was half-climbing, half-floating out that broken window, surrounded by a sickly green glow. There was blood on her feet from the glass, and more dripping down her fingers. The light mixed in with the streams of red, wrapping itself around her and mixing with them until I could have sworn it, and not blood, was flowing in her veins. It flared strong around her eyes, her hands, and over her breast. Her hair whipped out behind her, tossed by an unseen wind, and she was dressed simply in a white cotton nightgown, ankle length and modest.

  One of Mother’s, I realized, and for an instant, my heart damn near stopped. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I smelled ozone sharp and clear.

  And then she was on the grass and walking toward them, the broken glass taking a terrible toll from her bare feet and her not noticing it.

  “Not like this!” Adrienne shrieked. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” and suddenly I could hear Mother’s voice overlaying her own. The two of them spoke in some terrible harmony, each echoing the other and making weird music of their voices. “This is not what I wanted. Not what you promised!”

  Carl staggered past me, long red slashes across his face and arms from the glass. “Elaine, let us finish this,” he begged, and he dropped to his knees. “Please. Then you can rest.”

  “This isn’t what I asked for, Carl,” she whispered. “You promised to protect him, to bring him home.”

  “He needs protecting from himself!” Carl’s voice was frantic now. Behind him, the other men slowly backed away. No sounds came from inside the house, which I prayed was a good thing. “He was going to leave again. He was doing everything wrong. This is for his own good!”

  “This is for my own good?” I asked, and I held up my hand. I could see white bone through torn skin, brown dried blood cracking as I reached toward Adrienne. “Please, Mother. Not this. Not anymore.”

  She turned toward me, her eyes shining bright. “Jacob,” she asked. “My darling boy, is that you?”

  “It’s me, Mother,” I said. “Please. Make it stop.”

  “You never came back,” she said, walking closer to me. Carl, forgotten, blinked wordlessly beyond her. “You promised and you promised, and you never came back.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was wrong. Punish me if you have to—I was a bad son, a liar. I know that now. I deserve it. But let Jenna go. Let them all go, Mother. Please.”

  “You’ll stay?” she asked, and it was all Mother now, Adrienne’s voice gone somewhere I couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine.

  “I’ll try,” I told her. “I can’t promise any more.”

  “Elaine,” Carl began, and Adrienne turned toward him, cold fire dancing in a halo around her. “Let us do what we have to do. It needs to be finished.”

  “It’s finished now,” she said in a voice of infinite sadness. “I keep my promises too, Carl. Always and forever.”

  And with that, the green-gold light came up from inside and around her, and swallowed us all.

  twenty-three

  They’re dead?” Jenna asked. “All of them?”

  “All the ones who are still here,” I said, too tired to keep the pain out of my voice. “The others… gone. The ones who’d been kept past their time? Here.” I pointed with my good hand, at the bodies stretched out on the ground. Dr. Trotter was there, and Mr. Hilliard, and Carl, and Sam Fuller. They looked peaceful, even with the slashes and tears. Around them, bits of broken glass reflected weak starlight. The fireflies that had followed in their train were gone, though, and I found I missed them. Dawn was an hour off, at the very least, and the sky was still dark. “I think my mother let
them go.”

  “Your mother,” she said, like the words tasted funny in her mouth. “Strange to hear you say that.”

  I shrugged. “It’s the truth. How’s Adrienne?”

  “Sleeping it off inside. I don’t think she knows what happened, but poor thing, she’s terrified. Her feet…,” she started, and then her voice trailed off. “They weren’t as bad as they looked. Just so you know.”

  “Thank God,” I breathed. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  She gave me a hard look. “You could go inside and comfort her, you know.”

  “I could,” I agreed. “But I don’t think I can comfort anyone right now. Except maybe the two people I should have given that to a long time ago. Help me up?”

  She reached down and clasped my hand in hers. There were vicious cuts on her arm, I could see, and I wondered what else had happened in that house that I didn’t know about. Maybe she’d tell me, someday.

  The two of us managed to pull me to my feet, somehow. Our hands stayed intertwined longer than absolutely necessary, then slipped apart, and I turned to face her.

  “Jenna,” I started to say, but she put a finger on my lips.

  “Go do what you have to do,” she said. “Talk to them. I’ll be in the house when you get back. Then we can start thinking about what happens when the sun comes up.”

  I nodded, and started the slow trudge down the hill to where my parents lay buried. Jenna was right. There were things I had to say to the dead before I could talk to the living.

  It took longer than expected to reach the graves, each step a new kind of agony. But at last there I was, looking down on them in sorrow and regret.

  Lacking any other path to take, I spoke to them. “Mother,” I said. “Father. If you’re here. If you can hear me. I’m home. I should have come back sooner, I know, but it wasn’t home for me for a long, long time. I don’t know if I can stay, either. You know that. I’ll keep the land, I promise. It’ll always be in the family. I love you. I miss you. I wish I’d been a better son, but I am the man I am. And I wish I could see fireflies here again.” Then my throat pulled itself tight, and any other words I could have said would have found themselves wrapped up in tears.