Father Ritchie laughed. “Well, with Grandma Petrovich, I understand. Now, we are not in the practice of giving out holy water, but I suppose it won’t hurt anything. I’ll be back in a moment,” he said and went to the rectory.
I sat in the last pew and waited. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. The stained glass windows showed images of saints. The window closest to the pew where I sat had an image of St. Michael slaying a dragon. Behind me a statue of Mary stood over the votive prayer candles. Five candles were lit. Their flames cast glowing light on Mary’s elongated face and hands. The statue depicted Mary with overly-white skin and pale lips. She wore the lightest of blue robes. A small chip had come off one side of her nose, disfiguring her. It showed the gray plaster beneath. I closed my eyes. The images in the church bombarded me. I could not quiet my mind. Flashes appeared before my eyes, random unclear images. Then the face of a dead woman appeared before me; like Mary, her nose was torn off. She was grunting and biting at me through a fence. Though her decayed face was horrific, I noticed she had a striking red ribbon in her hair. I shuddered, my eyes popping open.
“Here you are, Layla. Can I expect you and Grandma to come to Mass this Sunday?”
“Thank you so much, Father. I appreciate it. No, I’m sorry. You know we are Russian Orthodox. Thank you again,” I said and hurriedly left the church.
Before heading back to my SUV I walked to the cemetery; it sat to the right of the church. Grandpa Petrovich was buried there. It occurred to me Grandma might not have been by to clean his headstone. I walked toward the tall willow tree; Grandpa Petrovich was buried underneath.
Though I had never met him, I’d heard about Grandpa Petrovich often enough that he seemed alive in my memory. My grandma loved to tell their story. Back in Russia, their families had known one another. They courted but nothing came of it. Then my grandmother decided to come to the US. My Grandfather, Sasha, had written to her every week for five years asking her to come home. Since she always refused, he finally came to the US to join her. They were married almost immediately, and my mother was conceived. But my Grandfather died shortly after coming to the United States. There had been some sort of accident at his work. “Well, I told him not to come,” my grandmother would say, but I saw the pain behind her eyes. I always wondered if she had foreseen his early death.
I found his monument in the same state as Grandma’s house. First, I cleared away the weeds. Then taking a scarf from my pocket, I wiped off the face of his tombstone. It was a shame. I would bring my grandmother by to plant some flowers.
“Layla, is that you?” someone called.
I turned to find Ethel, my classmate Summer’s mother, crossing the cemetery. She was carrying a basket. Inside I saw she had stashed a small shovel and gloves.
I rose, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Hey Ethel,” I called and walked to join her.
She mopped sweat from her brow. “How long you in town for?”
“Not sure, actually.”
“I’ll tell Summer you’re home. How is Grandma Petrovich?”
Indeed, how was she? “About the same.”
Ethel smiled knowingly. How many times had Ethel sat across the kitchen table from my grandma to hear advice from the spirits? “Well, your Grandma always tells it like it is, but I sure was glad she was there when your mother ran off. You ever hear anything from her?”
I shook my head. “For all I know she’s dead.”
Ethel sighed. “That is a pity. She’d be really proud of you, honey. You had a rough start, but you sure made good out of it. Of course you were always the smartest child I ever saw. No one was surprised when you got that scholarship, but I think most people worried that Campbell boy would--”
“Planting flowers on Phillips’ grave?” I interrupted. Ethel’s husband had died the year Summer and I were juniors.
We looked across the graveyard together. “Oh, yes, every fall I plant chrysanthemums,” Ethel said. “Seems like they’ve buried a lot of folks the last couple of weeks,” she added and pointed to some freshly dug graves.
We turned and walked back toward the street.
“Some kind of bad flu going around,” Ethel said as we walked by one of the fresh graves. “We lost old Mrs. Winchester,” she said, pointing to the grave nearest us. “You know she had a green burial? They dropped her in the ground wrapped in nothing but a light blue shroud. Oddest thing. ”
We stared down at her grave.
“I loved her oatmeal cookies,” I said.
Ethel looked questioningly at me.
The soil stirred.
“Watch yourself, Layla. The earth is still settling,” Ethel said, pulling me back and looping her arm in mine.
I walked Ethel to her car. She opened the trunk and dropped the basket inside. She then turned and hugged me. “Don’t be a stranger, honey. Come by and see us,” she said, squeezing my chin, and then got into her car. With a wave, she drove off.
I gazed toward the graveyard. Mrs. Winchester had been the town librarian. I used to sit in the back of the library and hide from my mother, hide from whatever man she’d dragged home that week, hide from the chaos of our house. Mrs. Winchester would give me homemade oatmeal cookies and would lie to my mother when she came looking for me. Mrs. Winchester would wait for my grandmother to turn up. From time to time I still craved those cookies. As I slid back into my SUV, I made a mental note to pick up some flowers for Mrs. Winchester too.
When I got back to the cabin it took nearly an hour to unload all of Grandma’s supplies. By the time I had finished, Grandma returned from her walk.
“Ah, Layla, my good girl. Thank you so much,” Grandma said and clasped her hands together.
I noticed she was carrying her herb satchel. “Harvesting, Grandma?”
She laughed. There was a hard edge to it. “Oh, yes, it is definitely harvest season. Come. Now we go in and get everything ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Ehh, you’ll see. Come now, Layla.”
That night Grandma and I turned the house upside down. Grandma must have tossed forty years of junk, knick-knacks, and all of the other useless things a person collects over a life-time. In their place she stocked the cupboards with supplies. I must have made 10 trips to the dumpster at the end of Fox Hollow Road. No matter how many times or ways I asked why she had all that stuff or why she was throwing everything away or why she had called me or what was wrong, all Grandma would say is “you’ll see.” Thinking of all the possible answers she could have given, that one seemed the worst.
I woke near noon the next day to the sound of men hammering on the roof. Grandma was in the kitchen storing a massive tray of beef jerky.
“That looks like a whole cow,” I said with a yawn as I sat down at the table.
“Two,” she answered absently as she stopped her work to pour me a cup of coffee.
“Why two?” I asked as I stirred in the cream.
“The spirits said two, so I made two,” she replied.
I stopped and looked at her. “Grandma?”
“Tu-tu-tu-tu,” she jabbed at me with a wave of the hand. “I made you piroshky,” she said, pulling the warm pastry from the oven. All other thoughts left my mind. “I love you, Grandma,” I said with a laugh.
She chuckled. “My darling.”
After I ate, Grandma put me to work. We boarded up the barn windows, secured loose hinges, stored food, and sharpened axes. We were adjusting the last items in the kitchen when Grandma asked: “Where is the flour?”
I pretended not to hear.
“Layla?”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Oh, my Layla, that boy, he is so stupid. He had a beautiful Russian girl like you, and he married that stupid fat girl with a face like a donkey. And for what? She did not even carry that baby to term. You see, she just got that baby to steal that boy from you, and now he is stuck with her. He is too stupid, Layla. And thanks to him, now you have that ugly tattoo on your arm and sh
oulder. What about some nice rich man? Didn’t you find a nice man at the Smithsonian? So many nice looking men in suits in Washington, so many soldiers . . .”
She continued, but I’d tuned her out. She was right. Ian was stupid. After one fight, Ian had slept with someone else. His dumb, rash decision resulted in the conception of an innocent child who, sadly, had not lived. Ian had done right by Kristie and married her; but he had not done right by me.
“ . . . and anyway, it no matter. Come tomorrow, no one will care anymore anyway. You see, all things happen for a reason. Now, we are done here. I will go pay the men for the roof, then I will show you the guns, then we’ll drink tea.”
“Guns?”
“Ehh, peel some potatoes,” she said and then wandered outside, still muttering.
Chapter 3
“This is a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. Most policemen use this gun. Comes with 17 rounds. You pop in the cartridge like this and . . .” Grandma squeezed the trigger, blasting a decorative plate with a picture of fruit on it. It used to hang in the dining room. Ignoring my astonished impression, she handed the gun to me. “Didn’t you go hunting with the Campbells?”
“Yes. I can shoot a gun, Grandma,” I said bewildered. Why in the hell did my grandmother have a semi-automatic pistol? We were standing behind the barn. She had guns laid out on the lid of an old feed barrel. I set the gun down.
“Good, good, then you’ll have no problem. Now, this is .44 Magnum, like the Dirty Harry movie. It has good stopping power. Lift up the safety and boom,” Grandma said pulling the trigger. The gun barrel let out a resounding noise, shattering Grandma’s old mantle-piece vase. “The man told Grandma this is a kill-shot gun, very powerful,” she said and set the gun down.
I picked it up, took aim at an old porcelain figurine, and fired. The smiling cherub exploded into a puff of dust.
“Very good! Ahh, here we are,” she said picking up what looked like a machine gun. “This is Colt 9mm sub-machine gun. Grandma had a hard time getting this one, but a nice man on the phone, of course he was Russian, helped Grandma get this one ordered for you. This gun can shoot almost 1000 rounds per minute. Very fast, no?” Grandma said and launched a spray of bullets toward the remaining china pieces she had set up on the fence-post. “Here, you try. Watch for kick back,” she said and handed the gun to me.
I set the gun down and took Grandma by the hands. “Grandma, what in the hell is going on? You’re scaring me.”
“Shoot first,” she said, picking the Colt back up and handing it to me.
I sighed. The gun, surprisingly, didn’t feel heavy in my hands. I held it as I had observed Grandma doing, and as every drug smuggler on T.V. had done, and let off an easy rattle of ammo.
“You see, very easy.”
I set the gun back down. “That is enough, Grandma. Please. What is happening?”
Grandma inhaled deeply and took me by the chin. She looked into my eyes and then kissed me on both cheeks. “First, we’ll put guns away,” she said, picking up the weapons. “Oh, I also bought grenades. Just like on T.V.: pull the pin, throw, it explodes.”
“Grenades?”
After we had restocked Grandma’s personal arsenal, we went back inside.
“Sit down in living room. Watch T.V. I’ll make tea,” she said and wandered into the kitchen.
“But Grandma—“
“Tu-tu-tu,” she said to shush me. “You watch T.V. I’ll come in a minute.”
I flipped on the T.V. to find it turned on the news channel. At once I saw what appeared to be a riot taking place. At first it looked like just another scene of violence, but then I started reading the crawling banners: wide-spread outbreak and rioting in major US cities in the south and on the west coast. Police had instituted martial law in LA, Miami, and Atlanta. Outbreak reports were cropping up in all major US and foreign cities. Airlines had closed all international travel. The United States President has been moved to a protected location.
The T.V. buzzed with three loud chimes: the Emergency Broadcast System had been activated. The screen went blue and after a few minutes, an official looking White House spokesman appeared at a podium, the emblem of the CDC hanging behind him.
“Grandma? You should come see this,” I called to her. I felt like someone had poured cold water down my back. Every hair on the back of my neck was standing on its end. Is this what Grandma had foreseen? Is this why I was here? Did the spirits tell her something?
“At this point it appears to be a highly contagious flu-like pandemic,” the Director of the CDC was saying.
“Citizens are urged to stay inside their homes. Military personnel have been dispatched to major US cities,” the White House spokesman added.
A reporter asked why the pandemic seemed to happen almost overnight. I noticed then that the press were all wearing surgical masks.
“Incidents of flu have been steadily on the rise for the last one week which has exacerbated accurate diagnosis. The symptoms of this particular strain resemble seasonal flu at the onset—body pain, fever, and vomiting—but gradually worsen with additional non-normative symptoms,” the Director of the CDC explained.
“Non-normative? What does that mean, and how is it being spread?” a female reporter asked. I recognized her from the President’s regular Press Club. I’d seen her in person once at a downtown café. She’d been eating a massive plate of fries.
The Director of the CDC gave a side-long look toward the White House spokesman. “Citizens should avoid direct physical contact with the sick until we can pin-point the cause,” the CDC Director said at last.
“Is there a vaccine or immunization?” another reporter asked.
“Until the cause is identified, it is difficult to develop a vaccine, but we are working around the clock analyzing possible contaminants,” the Director replied.
“What is the mortality rate?” someone asked.
The Director of the CDC looked uncomfortable. “It is difficult to ascertain. At this point the mortality rate appears to be 100%, but post-mortem there appears to be brain activity-”
“No further questions at this time,” the White House spokesperson said with a scowl and ushered the Director of the CDC out of the room.
Grandma sat down beside me, setting a serving tray on the coffee table. She picked up the remote and muted the T.V.
In the far off distance, we heard the alarm on the town fire hall wail. It was used to call in emergency volunteer fighter-fighters and medical personnel or to warn of tornado. Three rings to call for help. Seven rings for tornado warning. The alarm wailed and did not stop.
“When I was 12 years old, my grandma knew I had the sight,” my grandmother began. “My mother only had the gift a little. She had, what you call, good instincts, but she never heard the spirits. I was lucky. I was born with the mark of the bear,” she said, showing me the small birthmark on her knee shaped like a bear’s paw, “so everyone knew I would have the gift. But when I was 12, my grandmother sat me down in her living room and poured me a cup of tea,” she said as she poured me a cup. I noticed that she had placed two slices of a strange looking mushroom in the water. “My grandmother told me, while I was lucky to hear the spirits, there are other things in this world, some good, some evil. There exists spirits, demons, creatures who are not like us. She wanted me to see them. She wanted me to be safe from them. She said that until the great eye inside is awake, we do not see them. She said, you must awaken and see. That is what my grandmother told me as she handed me a cup of tea,” my grandma said and then handed the mushroom laden tea to me.
I took the cup. I looked back to the T.V. and saw strange images of people in hospital gowns being shot by armored military service.
“Drink,” Grandma encouraged.
I did as she asked, polishing off the cup.
“My grandma loved me. She tried to protect me by making me see the otherworld. She was right. Afterward, I saw and heard spirits and those other things in this world. This has ke
pt me away from evil and has helped me see good. Did you know there are forest spirits living right behind our house? Ehh, anyway, my grandma loved me, so she made me see. I drank the tea then slept for almost two days. When I woke, I could see.”
My head felt woozy. Images on the screen melted into a strange haze. I reached out for my grandmother.
“You sleep now. I’ll go close the fence and bar up the doors. It has already begun,” she said.
“What has begun?” I asked drunkenly. The room spun, and I felt like I might be sick.
“The harvest,” she said. I heard the front door open and close, and then everything went black.
Chapter 4
When I woke, the zong, zong, zong throbbing in my head felt like it would never stop. I’d once dragged Ian on a winery trail tour. I’d drunk my weight in Merlot and woke the next morning with a similar mix of sour mouth, blaring headache, and nauseous stomach. I could not believe my grandma had drugged me—oh wait, yes, I could.
The alarm on the fire hall had stopped blaring, but the bell on the Catholic Church was now clanging, making my head ache even worse. To top it off, I had just awoken from the strangest nightmare. In my dream, a robed figure invited me to join him at the harvest. Excited, I picked up a vegetable basket and went with him. Much to my confusion, he led me to a graveyard. I asked him, “Why are we here?” The hooded figure turned toward me, showing me his skeletal face. He extended his boney arm, brandishing his sickle across the tombstone vista. “Why, we are here for the harvest,” he said in reply. I shuddered as I remembered his words.
“Grandma?” I called as my feet hit the hard-wood floor. There was no reply.
I went to the living room to find the T.V. on, but the screen was buzzing static. I clicked it off. The smell of burning bacon assailed my nose. I went into the kitchen, which was full of smoke, and turned the heat off. I threw the pan, the bacon burned black, into the sink. It hit the water with a sizzle. I cracked the window to let the smoke out.
The Harvesting Page 2