by Amy Lukavics
Ma stands and goes to the corner of the cabin, where she slides on a pair of Pa’s work boots. It is far too early to begin preparing supper. Emily is no longer looking at me like I am crazy.
I’ve only ever seen Ma hunt once, in the mountains when Pa tried teaching her how to shoot. She got a quail after five or six shots, but still swore she’d never use the rifle again unless defending us against a bear. As she stands at the doorway holding it now, with her bloodshot eyes and thin legs stemming out of boots far too large for her and hair matted into dense tangles, she is an eerie sight to behold.
“Goodbye,” she sings, and steps outside. “Goodbye, sweet daughters.”
Emily and I go outside at once to be near the children.
“I told you something here is amiss,” I say under my breath. “Maybe Ma saw something, like I did, or maybe she’s hearing things—”
“I will not hear any more talk about demons,” Emily cuts me off. “I’m uncomfortable with this enough as it is. Let’s just stick to the plan to find Pa. We’d be silly to listen to Ma about the woods being dangerous, Zeke lives there, and he specifically told us that they were safe. She’s clearly delirious in her grief.”
“But you’ll help me convince Ma and Pa to leave, right?” I look to my sister in desperation. “After Pa is back? You have to know that we aren’t safe here.”
“I’ll help you,” Emily confirms, expressionless, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “As soon as lunch is through, you should head out to Zeke’s cabin.”
“We need to talk about Ma.”
“I know!” Charles pipes up, climbing to sit on the fence beside Emily. “I think something funny happened to her because she misses Pa and Hannah. I find myself to be afraid of her!”
“I understand it,” I say, and Emily nods. “But you have no reason to worry. After lunch is through, I will be going on Blackjack to find Pa.”
“Thank the Lord.” Jo sighs and sits next to me.
“Still,” Emily adds, “it’s very important to let Ma be for right now. Don’t ask her any questions, only speak when spoken to, and always stay very close to me.”
“Will Ma strike us, do you think?” Joanna wonders.
“She will do nothing of the sort,” I say. “If you feel afraid, we can come up with a secret way to show it so that you can tell Emily or me without alarming Ma. I don’t think she’s violent, I think she’s just very, very upset about what happened to Hannah.” Or being driven mad by infant cries that nobody else can hear, I think. “We mustn’t upset her further.”
“Is Hannah dead?” Charles asks.
Nobody says anything for a while. Joanna kicks at the swaying prairie grass with her boot.
“If I must be honest, little ones—” my voice is shaking “—I think that perhaps she is. I don’t know this for sure. It’s just what I believe.”
“I thought so,” Joanna says, but begins to cry anyway.
It doesn’t take long for Charles to follow suit. Emily and I hug the children close while they wail into our sleeves.
“She’s with our Lord now,” Emily whispers through her own tears into Charles’s hair. “She’s happy in Heaven, listening to the songs of angels and basking in the warmth of the eternal light.”
I shut my eyes and picture it, a happy Hannah with wings, with no more confusion or frustration. I imagine her sitting on a fluffy cloud, giggling and clapping her hands in joy. My last image of her stains the vision, makes it drip with black, prairie ants lodged in her nose and ears and mouth.
From the distance comes a gunshot, then another, then another. Ma must have gotten her rabbit.
“What should our code be?” Joanna sniffs after their cries fade into hiccups. “To let you and Emily know that we’re scared?”
“I know!” Charles speaks up. “We should say, ‘grasshopper bait.’”
“I think she’d figure out that something funny was going on,” Emily says with a half grin. “We need something a little more subtle.”
“How about a tune?” I suggest. “You could hum a certain tune, and we’d know that you’re afraid.”
“Good idea,” Emily says. “Now, what tune should we use?”
I think about the last time I held Hannah and hummed with her face against my chest, and my breath catches.
“How about ‘Come, Holy Ghost’?” I suggest. “I always liked that one.”
“Oh, me, too,” Joanna exclaims. “It really is lovely.”
“Very well,” Emily says, then hops down from the fence. “That settles it, then. Try not to use it too often, though, or she’ll catch on.”
“Amanda?” Joanna asks. From the distance we can see Ma, shuffling through the grass back toward the cabin. “Does Ma still love us?”
“Of course,” I say and squeeze her hand. “And Pa does, too.”
“I can’t wait to see Pa again,” Charles sighs.
“Trust me,” Emily says to the children and kicks at a rock. “Neither can we.”
“I’ll call you when the feast is ready!” Ma yells at us from the cabin door, waving with her free hand. The rifle is tucked under her arm, and there is a large bulging sack grasped in her hand. She disappears into the cabin.
We wait for what feels like an hour. Smoke billows from the chimney on the roof of the cabin, and with each minute I grow more and more impatient. I’m about to suggest to Emily that I leave before the food is ready when Ma pokes her head out from the front door and yells at us to come join her immediately. We all go together as I try to think of ways to sneak off without alerting attention to myself.
The cabin smells funny, unfamiliar, meaty but not like stew or fried meat strips. A dead rabbit lies carved apart in a bowl in the corner, and beside it lie two others that are untouched besides the bullet wounds in their heads or chests. Their blood seeps down through the fluffy white fur, staining the new hardwood floor.
We each sit before an empty plate in the circle Ma has arranged in the middle of the floor. Nobody asks what we are having to eat.
“Here it is,” Ma sings and pulls a dish from the fire with heavy pads. “A pie for my lovelies.”
“Pie?” Joanna says and licks her lips.
“Yes.” Ma sets the dish down before us. She kneels before it, knife in hand, and I find myself anxious at the sight. “Dried apple pie.”
Apple? I know for a fact that Pa didn’t get any dried apples on his last supply purchase, and the smell in the air is that of anything but fruit. Emily bites her lower lip and studies the pie.
It’s a pie, there’s no denying it, covered in a vented layer of cornmeal dough that is slightly burnt around the edges. Ma shoves the tip of the knife into the pie and begins to saw away.
“First piece for the baby,” she says and grabs Charles’s plate. She plops a huge piece on to it, then slides it back in front of him.
The pie is filled with something lumpy and gray. The gravy runs clear in places and cloudy in others. The smell makes my stomach turn as easily as if I’m still with child.
“Eat up, my littlest,” Ma encourages Charles. Emily and I look at each other in wonder. Ma finishes filling the rest of our plates with the steaming pie.
“Why is nobody eating?” Ma asks when she notices our stares. Her enthusiasm dies, and her dark eyebrows pull together in the center. “Eat it. Now.”
“Are you...” I clear my throat, afraid to set her off. “Are you sure this is apple, Ma?”
“You ungrateful bitch,” Ma snaps in my face, knife still in hand, and the children’s eyes widen in horror. She points the knife toward my face. “Now, I really must insist that you try it. You’ll never know if you like it, unless.”
My heart is pounding in my throat. The knife is still pointed to me. I take my fork with a shaking hand and gather a bite of the stinking pi
e. A large, dark slimy thing falls from the fork and lands on the plate, and I study it in disgusted curiosity.
“That’s probably the liver,” Ma says. “Or the heart. You really don’t want to miss either of them, regardless. Eat it, lovey.”
Charles begins to hum “Come, Holy Ghost,” and Joanna joins in almost instantly. No matter how subtle the song choice, the timing is terrible. Ma’s eyes flash to the children, narrowed with confusion.
“It’s singing time now, is it?” she asks. “Well, I can see that nobody is hungry.”
She makes a quick movement for me all of the sudden, from across the floor, and for an instant I think she is going to drive the knife right into my eye or my stomach or my throat. But instead the fork in my hand is snatched away. The remaining food on it flies over the floor and Ma’s lap.
“Ungrateful children don’t get lunch,” she says and spears another rabbit organ from the pie. She shoves it into her mouth and chews viciously, and I can hear the gristle grinding like sand between her teeth. Fluid dribbles from her smacking lips and down her chin. “Or dinner, or breakfast. In fact, I think that none of you will ever eat anything, ever again.”
I cannot leave them here when I go, I realize. She is going to kill us all.
Emily stands up and motions for Jo and Charles to do the same. They do and move behind Emily. “We’re going to go play, Ma,” Emily says and starts leading them out.
Wait, you’re leaving me, I want to cry out, but my legs won’t work and I can’t stand up and the children need to be taken away. I understand why Emily is abandoning me, but that does nothing to ease the panic.
“I don’t want to see your faces back in this cabin again,” Ma yells at them. Tears well up in Charles’s brown eyes. “You can live outside like the little animals that you are.”
They leave, and I’m left sitting on the floor to watch my ma attempt another bite of the gizzard pie. After three chews, she vomits into the pie dish, filling it back to the brim. I finally find the strength to stand and back away when she starts eating at it just as eagerly as before.
“I’m...going to go join the children,” I say, struggling not to scream, struggling not to run. She looks up at me through yellowed eyes, and my heart skips a beat.
“It’s you,” Ma says, as if seeing me for the first time. “The one who wouldn’t let me in when I knocked. I didn’t think it was possible, but this one had just as much guilt as you did. Delicious.”
I take another step back. “Wouldn’t let you in?”
“I tried and tried, but in the end there was no room for me, oh, no.” She stops eating for a moment, tilts her head curiously. “Because you already have a devil in you, girl. I see him whispering in your ear right now.”
Sinner.
I cannot move. I must get to the door, and I cannot move.
“You prayed for those babies to die,” she rasps now, much louder than before, her voice completely changed. “You prayed for those babies to die and yet you wonder what it is that is wrong with you?”
I feel very light-headed all of a sudden, as if I am going to faint, and the thing that calls itself my ma continues to stuff its face, without a care that the pie is spilling onto the front of the already stained nightdress.
“Your little bastard would have been a girl, you know,” it adds through a full mouth. “Dark hair, just like her ma, with the nose of her father. Giggly like Joanna, and smart like Emily. And, Amanda—” it pauses swiftly to take another bite “—she would have hated your guts.”
Her body shudders then, and whatever this creature is clears my ma’s throat and lifts a single eye to stare into my soul. “That wasn’t me who collected your baby’s slime into my earth,” it finishes. “Oh, no, deary, that was God.”
I back away another two steps and nearly trip over my own feet. Ma grins up at me, her teeth clotted with dark liquid.
“You fucked that boy in the mountains,” it says and begins to giggle hysterically. “But there was no baby! There was no baby! There was no—”
I turn and sprint from the cabin, and the laugh that chases me out sounds like it is made up of many voices, and I fight with all my might not to faint. After I slam the door behind me, I trip over my own feet and come facedown in the grass. I’m convinced that she’s going to emerge from the cabin any second, her chin and neck shining with gravy, ready to use the pie pan to crack my head open like a hen’s egg.
I wait, but the cabin door stays closed. Emily rushes to my side in alarm.
“What happened, sister?” she asks and pulls me up. “Are you all right? You’re soaked through with sweat! Did she hold the knife to you again?”
It all comes together, then. Zeke’s story of Jasper Kensington murdering his family. A cabin found stinking with blood before it was rebuilt and claimed by our family. Henry telling me about ruined flatlands that could come out to play through the living if it wanted.
The one who wouldn’t let me in when I knocked, the Ma-thing said to me just now. You already have a devil in you, girl.
The devil in the woods has been here all along.
The prairie tried to possess me at first, pulling me in with cries in the dark and an infant standing in the grass, and when it found that my soul was already claimed, it got angry, it came out to play through Ma and a swarm of fire ants instead.
“We need to leave,” I stammer as my body shakes. “That man Zeke told us about, Kensington, we’re living in his cabin, it’s going to happen to Ma if we stay. We need to bring the children with us, it’s not safe here, we have to get away right this very instant—”
“I...I believe you,” Emily says. The color in her face has drained. “I really do, Amanda. That wasn’t Ma in there, oh, my word, that wasn’t Ma at all. Zeke said the forest would be safe, like you mentioned, he must have known something. Why didn’t he just tell us?”
I notice for the first time that Joanna and Charles are staring at me, openmouthed, from the back of the wagon. Their faces are aghast with fear.
“Everything will be all right,” I promise them, for what is one more lie after all that I’ve told? “But it’s time to go now, children.”
They jump down from the wagon and follow us eagerly to where Blackjack is grazing.
“Are we going to find Pa now?” Charles whimpers.
“Yes,” I say, and the children sigh in relief. “We are.”
“No matter what happens,” Emily tells the children for the tenth time, “do not come out of this spot for any reason, whatsoever. You wait here until we come and get you, do you understand?”
We are all gathered around an enormous hollowed log whose end is hidden by a large, leafy bush. The children are crouched inside, their heads together, their arms wrapped around each other. Both of them have tears in their eyes.
“Very well,” Joanna whimpers. “Just, please, hurry, sisters.”
After putting the children on Blackjack and leading the horse to the start of the trees, Emily and I argued about what to do next for minutes, neither of us tearing our eyes away from the cabin in the distance in case Ma started to come after us. When she continued to stay inside, we broke through the barrier and delved deeper into the forest. With no horse, it would take Ma at least an hour to find the spot, if she decided to come looking. We had to act quickly.
Emily originally wanted to bring the children with us to Zeke’s cabin, but I was insistent about the possibility of there being danger waiting for us. If something happened and we had to go quickly, we’d be stuck since there is only one horse between the four of us. Even if we all piled on, any speed faster than a walk could send us flying to crack open our heads on the ground below.
Well, what do we do then? Emily cried out in frustration. We certainly can’t send them back to the prairie. And I’m not letting you go alone with Blackjack.
After some more deliberation, I had an idea: we could hide the children, go look for Pa, and hopefully bring him back to retrieve Joanna and Charles before heading into Elmwood. If we couldn’t find Pa by the time night was falling, we’d take the children to the settlement ourselves, by the light of the moon where the fields meet the trees. I don’t know what else we could possibly do.
“I don’t think that Ma will be able to come into the forest,” I assured the children after we found the perfect hiding place. “It should be safe here.”
Then, where is Pa?
We have no choice. After warning them once again to stay put and stay quiet, Emily lets the bush fall back into place. The children are completely hidden from view. I memorize the spot in my mind, burn it in, do not forget this tree. We mount Blackjack, me in front, Emily behind me, and keep heading deeper in the opposite direction of the prairie.
The forest in the mountains was hardly ever quiet, except in the dead of winter, and usually buzzed with the sound of animals and insects that could always be heard in the air.
Here, there is no sound. We see a single deer as we ride through, small with alarmed eyes and brown spotted fur, and the second it sees us, it bolts away and disappears in four swift prances. Blackjack picks up his pace without being prompted.
I imagine the children lying in the bushes, wrapped around each other and shaking with fright, and my throat closes.
“They’re safe for now,” Emily says as if reading my mind. “But we do need to make this quick, Amanda.”
After we’ve ridden for another half mile or so, I halt the horse, and Emily glances all around us.
“Didn’t you say it was supposed to be straight out from where Zeke usually rode through?” I say with uncertainty. “I don’t see anything.”
“I don’t either,” Emily says, leaning to the side as if straining to hear. “Hush!”
I quiet myself and turn to watch Emily. She lifts her hair away from her ears and leans even farther. “Do you hear that?” she murmurs quietly.