Migrators

by Ike Hamill

  “I want to collect the wood for the fire before it gets too dark,” Alan said. Bob climbed into the cab.

  Out back, across the bumpy field, Alan and Joe had stacked a bunch of wood. The tarp looked tattered, but the wood underneath was mostly dry. Alan and Bob loaded it into the truck.

  “Are you concerned about next year?” Bob asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you do this process this year, do you think that those things will seek out Liz next fall also?”

  Alan stopped with a big chunk of wood in his hands.

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Alan said. “I’m pretty focused on getting Joe fixed up.”

  “Understandable,” Bob said.

  “The diary strongly suggested that the migrators were called by the bones of the old practitioners. I’m going to tear up the floor of the attic and get rid of any bones I find.”

  “Huh,” Bob said. He picked up another log and loaded it into the truck.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No—please tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Well,” Bob said, “there’s a lot of missing details here. The Prescott women passed this process down from generation to generation through that ceremony that you witnessed. And then, when it went from mother to daughter, the mother died. Can Liz survive without the passing down ceremony?”

  “You remember your idea about this whole thing?” Alan asked.

  “Which?”

  “You said that maybe they built all the ceremonies as window dressing around a hard nugget of fact. Well maybe the process itself works without all that craziness about passing it down from mother to daughter in an elaborate ceremony. In fact, that’s why I’m willing to give this a try at all. If it doesn’t work—nothing shows up and Joe is still sick—then we haven’t lost anything but some effort. There’s no danger to Liz because she’s not part of the Prescott clan and she didn’t have the elaborate ceremony to move the power to her. But, if that’s all window dressing, then maybe all we need is the science behind calling the creatures. The fire, the blood, the borax, the water—if those things work, then we have a chance at a miracle.”

  By the time Alan finished, Bob was nodding.

  “I get it,” Bob said. “You’re picking the low-risk parts of the legend à la carte. You’re hoping to find the root of the mechanism.”

  “Exactly,” Alan said. “Let’s head back. The bed is almost riding on the tires.”

  Alan drove the truck slowly across the field. Unloading next to the Cook House took only a fraction of the time compared to loading. They stacked the wood on top of a bunch of kindling wood that Alan pulled from the shed. When they finished, Alan led the way back to Bob’s SUV.

  “Let’s get that borax spread,” Alan said.

  They had boxes of the white powder. Alan had signed up for a membership at the warehouse store just so he could buy the quantity he needed. They each grabbed several boxes and started making a line around the house and barn.

  “Leave a gap right along here,” Alan said. He indicated a path from the bulkhead to the Cook House.

  Around the back side of the barn, they had already used more than half of the boxes.

  “We need to go lighter,” Alan said. “I have to spread some on the stairs from the cellar.”

  When they’d finished, the borax powder formed a nearly unbroken line around the perimeter of the house and barn. The only gap was where the lines tucked into the house on either side of the bulkhead. From the cellar bulkhead, you could only move in a straight path directly to the bonfire without crossing the line of borax. With the last box, Alan dusted the inside stairs that led up to the first floor. Just looking at the damp treads made his foot ache.

  “There’s a little left in this box,” Bob said. “You want me to add it to the cellar stairs?”

  “No,” Alan said. “Do me a favor and dust the front porch, just in case.”

  “No problem,” Bob said.

  We have fire and mineral, Alan thought. Now I need blood.

  Alan pulled the cooler from the back of Bob’s SUV. He set it down in the borax path where it crossed the driveway. After talking with Liz that morning, Alan and Bob had left her to study as they’d gone around to collect the materials they needed for the process. The blood was the hardest thing to find. They’d called butcher shops only to find that most only stocked blood for special orders. People would call weeks ahead before they were going to make blood pudding or blood sausage, but the stuff coagulated too readily for the shops to keep any on hand. They’d finally gotten lucky—one shop had just butchered a cow and and the blood wasn’t spoken for. Alan and Bob drove over there to collect the fetid bags. They’d sealed them in the cooler to keep the smell from invading Bob’s SUV.

  Alan opened the cooler.

  The odor was deep and ripe. Alan pulled one of the bags. The blood was already beginning to clot up. Alan cut the corner and began drizzling a path from the cellar to the bonfire.

  In the book, the women described butchering a live animal and dragging it from the water to the fire. Alan hoped that the blood would serve the same purpose. They needed to draw the migrators down the path to where they would use them.

  Bob returned from the front porch.

  “Shit!” Alan said. “I forgot—we need more borax to close the circle, once they’re in. We should have saved some aside.”

  “Can we sweep some up from the ground and reuse it?”

  “We barely have enough for the perimeter as it is,” Alan said. “Can you look in the shop? There might be a box on those pantry shelves in there.”

  “No problem,” Bob said.

  Alan returned his attention to the blood. He used the second bag to draw another line of blood from the cellar to the fire. The clots stayed in the bag and Alan squeezed them, trying to get more liquid to spread.

  “You’re in luck,” Bob said. He came out of the shed with a box in each hand.

  “Do you think they’re still good?”

  The boxes looked old enough to predate the house.

  “They’re still powder,” Bob said. He walked them over to near the fire and set them down on the brown grass.

  “Do me a favor,” Alan said. “Use half of one of them to put a circle around that little well. I don’t want to get surprised.”

  Bob nodded. Alan finished with the blood and then walked over to Bob.

  “Okay, we got the blood, the borax, and the fire. What am I forgetting.”

  “You decided not to do the dried flower petals, right?”

  “Right. Seems like window-dressing and I don’t know where we’d even get them,” Alan said.

  “You have a pitchfork, a shovel, walnut leaves, and a small box?”

  “Everything but the leaves. I almost forgot those. There’s a walnut tree out back. I’ll go rake some up.”

  “That’s all I can think of,” Bob said.

  “Can you dig the hole while I’m getting the leaves?”

  “Sure. Where do you want it?” Bob asked.

  “Right here,” Alan said. He pointed to a spot a few feet past the wood they’d laid for the fire.

  X • X • X • X • X

  As instructed, Liz parked at the side of the road. If something went wrong, they would use Bob’s SUV to make the run to the hospital. Liz and Joe walked hand in hand up the dark drive towards the barn light and stopped at the edge of the white powder that made a line across the driveway.

  “What’s happening, Mom?” Joe asked. His voice sounded tired and slurred.

  “We’re going to do a Halloween play, Joe,” Liz said. “Your dad set it up. It’s going to be very spooky, but it’s all for fun, okay?”

  “Is that real blood?” Joe asked. He was looking down at the burgundy streak across the driveway. It looked shiny in the glow from the light mounted to the front of the huge barn.

  “You have to ask your father,” Liz said.

  They h
eard footsteps coming down the shed hall. Alan appeared, looking very serious.

  “You guys ready?” Alan asked.

  “I was just telling Joe about the play,” Liz said.

  “Do we get candy at the end?” Joe asked.

  Alan pasted a big smile on his face before he answered. “Yes, lots of candy when we’re done.” Alan realized that they’d discussed everything except what to tell Joe about the evening’s events. “Joe, you come with me to the Cook House. Your mom is going to start everything and we’ll join in later.”

  Alan put out his hand. Joe was reluctant to let go of his mom’s grip, but she nudged him towards Alan.

  “Are we going to have a bonfire?” Joe asked as they walked towards the Cook House. The roof of the Cook House blocked the barn light—the interior was a deep shadow. Alan flipped on the light. The bulb hanging in the fixture seemed weak and yellow. The lower half of each wall was wood, but the tops were panels of screen. It was pleasant in the summer, but this time of year it almost felt colder in the little building than out in the driveway.

  “Yup,” Alan said. He glanced back at his wife. She stepped gingerly over the line of borax and walked along the trail of blood towards the house. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “It’s nice out tonight. Mom said we have to go to Portland tomorrow. Is it because I’m sick?”

  “Yup,” Alan said. “They want to run some tests on you and the best machine is down in Portland. It’s one of those big MRI machines.” Alan held open the door and Joe walked in. They’d already put away the folding chairs, but the picnic benches were still inside. Joe sat down on one end and Alan took the other. “For the MRI, you have to lie down on this long table and then they slide you in to this big ring. It makes a lot of noise, but you don’t feel anything. The machine just sends out tiny magnetic waves that jiggle the water molecules in your body and then use the response to produce an image.”

  “Have you had it done?”

  “Yes. You remember when I had my appendix out?”

  “Kinda.”

  “They did an MRI on me to make sure that it needed to come out. You really don’t feel anything.”

  “I think I’ve seen it on TV,” Joe said. “What’s mom doing?”

  “She’s starting the play,” Alan said. “It’s a big Halloween tradition around here, so we thought we’d give it a try. I’m not sure how scary it will be, but I guess we’ll all find out together. Just remember—I’m right here, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t get scared very easily, Dad,” Joe said. “You and Mom jump more than I do when we watch movies.”

  “This isn’t happening on TV, bud,” Alan said. He tried to smile.

  Across the driveway, over near the bulkhead, Bob was standing just outside the line of borax, watching Liz work. She was crouched near the doors. Folded back like that, the doors looked like arms that wanted to gather Liz down the granite steps into the cellar to hold her in the dark. Liz chanted the strange syllables from the book. The sound swept over to Alan and Joe on the wind.

  “Mom read that old book all day,” Joe said.

  “Yeah?” Alan asked. His eyes were locked on the black hole that led down to the house’s cellar. The book said that the migrators would be visible during the process. Alan didn’t see anything.

  “I slept a lot,” Joe said. “I’ve been so tired ever since those pancakes. Do you think there was something in them?”

  “No,” Alan said. “I had the pancakes too.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “The play—I told you,” Alan said.

  “Yeah, but what is she doing?”

  Liz backed away from the bulkhead. She held her hands in front of her and they were white—dusted with the borax. Her feet slid carelessly through the path of blood as she backed up. Her attention was focused on dead grass in front of her. The pace of her chants increased. The wind blew hard and shifted direction. It rattled the windows in the barn.

  When Liz was about fifteen feet from the bulkhead, still backing up, she waved to Bob. He scattered some borax across the path leading from the bulkhead and then swung the doors shut. They banged closed with a metal finality. Liz stepped up to the asphalt.

  Alan and Joe could hear the chanting clearly now. It sounded guttural and strange.

  “Zy-enn al chook schoon deez oom khaloon,” Liz said.

  I wonder if it matters what she’s saying, Alan wondered. Could those things really understand any language, or are they just animals?

  Alan stood and leaned close to the screen wall. The things Liz was backing away from were invisible to him, but she certainly seemed to be focused on something.

  “I’ll be right back, Joe,” Alan said. “You stay in here until I come get you, okay?”

  “Sure,” Joe said.

  The door squeaked as Alan pushed his way out. Liz continued her slow march backwards along the line of blood and between the boundaries of borax powder.

  Bob approached. He had a box of Borax in his hand. It was one of the old boxes from the shop.

  “Is it working?” Alan whispered to Bob.

  Bob nodded.

  “Come here,” Bob said. He pulled Alan right next to the borax path, so his toes were almost touching the line of powder across the asphalt. A gust of wind blew so strong that it almost shoved him over the line. Alan caught his balance. The borax didn’t seem perturbed by the wind at all.

  “Now lean over and look down towards your wife,” Bob said.

  Liz was still backing slowly towards the bonfire, chanting the phrases over and over. She was a few paces away from Alan and Bob.

  Alan leaned over the borax, as Bob instructed. When his head crossed the plane of the powder line, he saw. He couldn’t imagine how Liz kept her sanity in the face of what she was staring at. Just inches from her outstretched hands, three of the migrators crept forward as she inched backwards. Their purple and yellow bruised bodies seemed to glow in the light from the barn. If they were to stand, they’d probably be as tall as a man, but they didn’t stand. They crawled across the ground on their hands and feet. Their elbows and shoulder blades made sharp points and the naked muscles of their buttocks were clenched. As they crept, they would raise a foot and silently swing it forward, even with their hands before putting it back down.

  Liz kept chanting but glanced up at Alan. Her eyes were filled with terror.

  At her glance, one of the creatures turned its faceless head back. Its body pivoted in an instant and it sprang towards Alan.

  He jerked himself back. As soon as his face crossed the plane of borax, the creature was invisible again. He imagined its bruised body just on the other side of the line and he took a step backwards.

  “Did you see them?” Bob asked.

  Alan nodded.

  “Why three?” Alan asked.

  “They all came at once. We couldn’t separate off just one,” Bob said.

  Down the path of blood, Liz backed through the circle of borax that surrounded the bonfire.

  “We have to get ready to close the circle,” Bob said. He handed the box to Alan.

  Alan wondered about the creature that had lunged at him—whether it had returned to its brothers. He wanted to ask Liz, but suspected that interrupting her concentration could lead to disaster.

  “You ready with the fire?” Alan asked.

  “Yes,” Bob said.

  Bob moved quickly to the outside of the circle’s perimeter. When Liz reached the far side of the pile of wood—that’s when they were supposed to act. Alan got as close as he dared to the line of borax where the straight path ended and the circle around the bonfire began. He tore the top from the box. There was no need to conserve the powder once he drew this final line. The wind was blowing steadily from east to west. He would have to keep the top of the box very close to the ground to make an unbroken line.

  Liz was almost in place.

  Bob lit his torch. It was a long stick wit
h an old shirt tied to the end. They’d soaked the shirt in kerosene. It lit fast. The flame sputtered in the wind.

  Liz found the other side of the pile of wood and backed up to it. The wind was in their favor. When the fire caught, the flames would blow away from her position. Still, with all the kerosene, she’d have to be careful.

  “Go,” Bob said to Alan.

  Alan clenched his teeth as he reached the box over the line of borax. It was his job to cut off access to the borax path and complete the circle of powder. This was the only way to contain the migrators. Without this line, they would just flee back down the path when Bob lit the fire. He began to shake the box. The powder blew in the wind. The gusts didn’t seem to disturb the lines on the ground, but between the box and the ground, the wind dispersed Alan’s effort. He reached his whole arm over the line to move the box even closer to the ground.

  It was finally working. The powder was completing the circle. When the borax touched the line and extended it, it seemed to lock in. The borax locked in.

  “Alan!” Liz yelled.

  He looked up to see his wife looking over her shoulder. He didn’t see anything. He kept pouring.

  The pain hit his pinky and his elbow at the same time. Every instinct told him to jerk his hand back. He didn’t. He kept pouring the powder out of the box, clenching his hand harder as the pain intensified. The circle was almost closed. Six inches, five inches, four inches.

  Alan saw the bones of his own right hand. He saw the skin disappear from the back of his hand where it covered a bulging vein. Blood squirted out into the wind and blew back a fine mist before the vein was sealed by the searing venom of the creature. At his elbow, a tendon sprang from the joint. Alan’s bladder released.

  The box fell from his ruined arm.

  The circle was closed.

  Alan fell backwards, clutching his arm to his chest. The thing tugged at his finger bones as they crossed the line of borax, but it released and Alan fell onto his back.

  Bob reached his torch over the circle. Alan watched through the tears flooding down his face. The fire at the end of the stick went out. Bob kept threading the torch towards the fire, careful to keep his hands on the right side of the borax circle. As soon as the rag was sheltered from the wind behind the pile of wood, the flame sprang back to life. It had barely touched the pile when the bonfire lit.