Solom

by Scott Nicholson

  Today she was busy feeding the two goats she kept in a pen on her two-acre property. Her place was bordered by two large stretches of pasture but couldn’t rightly be considered a farm, though she had numerous flower gardens, with strawberries, blueberries, gooseberries, and a couple of dozen apple trees. She was a postal carrier in the next county, and had to work most Saturdays, though she claimed the federal holidays made up for the aggravation. David rested against his pitchfork and watched her sprinkling hay into the pen.

  The animals mashed their faces against the wire fencing, greedy for food. One of the goats reared up on its hind legs and nipped her hand.

  “Ouch,” Lillian said, yanking her hand back. David could see the blood even from fifty feet away. He jammed his pitchfork into the remaining heap of mulch in his truck bed and jogged to her side. Lillian’s blue eyes were wide and startled.

  “You okay?” David asked. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket, thinking he would wrap her wound, but the cloth was sweaty and stiff.

  “Blamed creature about took my whole hand off,” she said. The skin was broken on three of her knuckles, blood dripping onto her canvas sneakers.

  “We’d better get that inside and washed,” David said. The goat that had bitten Lillian stood by the fence, chewing hay with a twist of its bearded jaw.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “I think he’s just worked up because he knows I’m going to geld him.”

  “Geld him?”

  She pulled a circular iron band from her back pocket. There was a clip at one end of the hinged band that allowed it to be opened and closed. “You reach under the billy boy and grab that sack and yank down like this”—Lillian gave a demonstration that looked like she was plucking grapes from an ornery vine—“and snap this little puppy up above the twins. The sack rots off in a few weeks, and that musky odor gets a lot more bearable.”

  David blanched at the thought of having that band clamped on his own testicles. He’d been raised in the ways of farm life, but somehow castration seemed far crueler than slaughtering for meat. Back in his youth, there had been few goats in Solom. It seemed the past few years either the goats had been breeding like rabbits or everyone had simultaneously developed an affinity for the stubborn creatures.

  “Well, I can see why he got a little testy,” David said.

  “Odus Hampton told me you can’t trust goats this time of year.”

  David wondered what else Kyle had told her and if he should mention his own encounter on the trail above the Smith place. “They’ve been acting strange lately. Tell me, why did you get yours?”

  The goats pressed against the sides of the pen, stomping the dirt with their hooves, as if they were trying to bust out. Lillian wiped her hand on her jeans, then inspected the ragged skin. “Gordon Smith gave them to me. Said I could eat them, milk them, or breed them. Said goats made good pets and that everybody in Solom should have some.”

  “I don’t guess they carry rabies.”

  “Probably could, if they got bit by a bat or bobcat that was infected.”

  The goats retreated to the center of the pen, where Lillian had constructed a makeshift shelter. The billy that Lillian planned to geld lowered its head and ran full-tilt at the fence, denting the wire and jiggling the the fence posts. The other goat, the female, which looked pregnant with its swollen belly and dangling teats, bleated frantically. The billy backed up a few steps and hurled itself at the fence again.

  “Jesus,” Lillian said. “He’s gone crazy.”

  David put an arm around her and pulled her away from the pen. David felt silly fleeing a goat, but something about the mad shine of its eldritch eyes gave him the creeps. Lillian’s house was two hundred feet away, so they retreated to David’s pick-up as the goat continued to batter the fence.

  They slid into the cab just as the fence gave way and the billy came staggering over the tangled mesh. David expected it to make a direct line to the truck and ram its horns into the sheet metal. Instead, it stopped where Lillian’s blood had dripped and began licking at the ground.

  “It wanted my blood?” Lillian said, examining the gash on her hand. “What the hell’s going on here, David?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself.” He looked in the rear-view mirror. He could probably grab the pitchfork before the goat reached him. But then what would he do? Stick it in the creature’s ribs? The billy lifted its head from the ground and sniffed the air, then looked directly at David.

  “David?” Lillian’s tone chilled him.

  “He’s staying where he is.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” She nudged his elbow and he looked through the front windshield. A dozen goats from the neighboring pasture had come down to the barbed-wire boundary and were watching the encounter. David wondered if they had smelled the blood, too, and thought of sharks in the water being thrown into a frenzy.

  But these were goats, for God’s sake. Livestock. Food. They were technically herbivores, but had a reputation for eating tin cans, wool blankets, newsprint, anything they could squeeze down their gullets. As far as David knew, they had never been carniverous. Then why was he so afraid that the goats would break through the barbed wire and surround the truck?

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked Lillian.

  “In the house. A little .22 pistol to scare off burglars.”

  “I suggest we head for the house, then.”

  He turned the ignition key, half expecting the engine to grind over and over without firing, like a scene in a B-grade horror movie. Instead the engine roared to life, he jammed the gear shift into first, and peeled up two strips of mud as he popped out the clutch and spun the rear wheels.

  David fought an urge to plow over the billy, which stared at him with those oblate pupils boring holes in David’s face, as if marking him for later revenge. David brought the truck to a halt beside the porch, then he and Lillian scrambled inside and slammed the door.

  David peeked through the curtains while Lillian retrieved the pistol from her bedroom. The goats in the neighboring pasture had lost interest and scattered across the grass, grazing as before. The billy took a tentative nibble at an apple sapling, then went back to the pen where its mate waited by the shelter. They lay together in the afternoon sunlight, shaking their ears to drive away flies.

  “Did what I think happened really happen, or am I going crazy?” Lillian said.

  David suddenly felt foolish. Looking out, the scene was almost pastoral, with the dark green grass, the beds of plants and hibernating flowers, the far mountains stippled with gray trees. He imagined himself picking up the phone and calling the Sheriff’s Department to report a wild animal attack. He could almost hear the dispatcher’s voice: “What kind of animal? Bear? Dog? Treed raccoon?” He would bet his truck that “Goat” wouldn’t make the list.

  “Let’s get your hand patched up,” he said, dropping the curtain on the bizarre world outside, wondering what the Book of Revelation had to say about the role of goats in the apocalypse.

  ***

  Jett managed to stay straight most of the day. She didn’t like stoning at school, especially alone. She wasn’t close to any of the other kids, and getting totally roped wasn’t as much fun with nobody else in class giggling along. But home had gotten so weird, she couldn’t imagine trying to get through the evenings without sneaking a puff or two.

  Gordon must have had an argument with Mom, because she had slept on the couch. When Mom and Dad were together, Dad was always the one who got thrown out of the bedroom. That must mean Gordon had some sort of power over Mom.

  When Jett got off the bus and walked the quarter mile up the gravel road, neither Mom nor Gordon were home. That was strange, because Mom had been practically glued to the kitchen for the past couple of weeks. But having the house to herself meant she could light up without worrying about getting caught. She went to her room, put her books away, and took a couple of tokes.

  Then she put on some tunes—Tommy Keene, “Songs Fro
m The Film,” from her mother’s ‘80s collection—and laid back on her bed, grooving to Keene’s harmonious and jangling guitar pop. At school, she was all about hard-core Goth glam, but secretly she’d decided songs that basically said “Let’s fuck and die” could only get you so far. In fact, the whole Goth thing was getting a little old, and she would probably have outgrown it already if they were still in Charlotte. Here in Solom, though, the look was still an aberration that drew sidelong glances consigning her to an eternity in hell. Plus, it really rammed sand up Gordon’s ass, and that was worth a little extra time applying black eyeliner.

  Keene was just reaching one of Jett’s favorites, “My Mother Looked Like Marilyn Monroe,” and her stoned mind adapted it into “My Mother Looked Like Marilyn Manson.” Maybe Weird Al Yankovich could do that one sometime. She reached over to turn the CD player up a notch when she saw the man in the black hat through her window, standing by the barn. He motioned to her, his waxy fingers stiff. The hat shaded his face, but the lower part of his chin showed over the collar of his wool jacket. His skin was the color of clabbered milk.

  Jett thought the best plan of action was to get in bed and hide her head under the pillows. If Gordon were here, she could point out the man and say, “See, I told you I wasn’t losing it.” Except part of her was afraid that Gordon, like the kids in her class, wouldn’t be able to see him. That would serve as proof to Gordon that Jett needed a good, long stretch in the nutter wing of Faith Hospital in Boone. Lock-down wouldn’t keep away the man in the black hat, though; hallucinations had a way of ignoring doors and windows.

  Jett was about to turn away when the man tilted his head to look up at the window. More of the face was revealed, a dark line of lips, sunken cheeks. The fingers moved again, beckoning. Jett shook her head.

  The man began walking toward the house, moving with brittle steps. The grass wilted where his shadow fell. When he reached the fence, he didn’t climb over or slow down. Instead, he seemed to pass through the wire, though at no time did he appear transparent.

  Jett turned over her racing thoughts, trying to find something important. She hadn’t locked the front door. But who was she kidding? If it passed through wire, a door would be no problem. She could dial 9-1-1, but then what would she say? A cheese-faced dude in creepy clothes was breaking into the house?

  She could hide. But where? The house was old and rambling, but it didn’t have any hidden passageways or book cases disguising secret rooms. She could hide in the linen closet, but that would be the first place he would look.

  The attic. When they’d moved in, Gordon had asked her to put some of her summer clothes away. She and Mom had sorted them, stuck a few stinky mothballs in the boxes, and tucked them into the dusty space above the linen closet. Jett hadn’t gone into the attic, just set the boxes around the edges of the access hole. But she’d gotten the vague impression of a large, cluttered space, with old furniture and stacks of boxes. If the man went up there and found her, she’d be trapped, but she was trapped now, unless she made a run for the back door. The man moved like an arthritic puppet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make his boots drum if necessary.

  She hurried down the hall to the closet, the energetic pop music providing an incongruous soundtrack. She climbed the shelves and tugged the string that led to the access, and a little folded ladder appeared as the small door swung open.

  Jett straightened the ladder and scrambled up, closing the ladder behind her as she went. The access door slammed shut with a creak of springs. The attic was dark, with the only light leaking from ventilation slats at each gabled end of the house.

  Jett’s heart thudded in her chest, and the marijuana made her aware of the blood pulsing through her body. She paused and listened, wondering if the man had reached the front door yet, and if he was going to enter. All she could hear was the muffled backbeat of the music. She crept deeper into the attic, ducking under the ceiling joists until she came to a cluster of furniture.

  There she found a pine box that was nearly the size of a coffin, but was obviously a shipping crate of some kind. She lifted the lid, then scooted it to the side, taking care not to make scraping sounds. Any noise she made would likely be audible to the man if he was on the second floor.

  When the gap in the lid was wide enough, she felt through the opening to see if the box was empty. Her hand brushed against coarse cloth. There appeared to be room inside, so she climbed in and slid the lid back into place, hoping the stirred dust didn’t make her sneeze. In the blackness of the crate, she could hear the rasping of her breath. It sounded as if she had emphysema, but that must have been an acoustic trick of the confined space.

  She closed her mouth, forcing stale air through her nose. Still the rasping continued. In her bedroom, the CD ended, and the house was quiet. She wondered if the man’s boots would make footsteps, or if he somehow floated over the floor in the same way he drifted through the fence.

  Despite her fear, she was still buzzed, and her brain raced frantically. Pot sometimes gave her anxiety, and she thought this would be a real bad time to get claustrophobic. She was wondering how long she would have to hide before the man would give up. He didn’t look like the giving-up kind.

  Something wriggled beside her, in the pile of clothes. It was probably just the cloth settling from her moving it. Probably. Certainly it wasn’t rats.

  It wriggled again.

  She held her breath, but the rasping went on. A hand touched her arm, or what felt like a hand, though the surface was abrasive. Like a scratchy piece of wool. Her heart jumped against her rib cage and she kicked the lid off.

  Jett scrambled out of the crate as the hand grabbed at her leg. She kicked backwards in the darkness, and the rasping changed pitch into a low chuckle. A chest of drawers with a mirror was beside her, reflecting the scant light. In the mirror, she saw a shape rising out of the crate.

  She screamed and ran for the access door, banging her shoulder hard against one of the joists. When she reached the access, she climbed onto it, and the door swung open under her weight, pitching her into the closet. Sparks of pain shot up from her ankle, but she rose to her feet and opened the closet door, fully expecting to come face-to-face with the man in the black hat. But he couldn’t be as scary as that chuckling creature in the attic.

  The hallway was clear, and Jett made a run for it, hobbling on her gimpy leg.

  “Jett?”

  Mom was downstairs. Jett ran to the head of the stairs. Mom stood below her, a paper grocery bag in her hand.

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked.

  “Nothing, I was just ...”

  Hiding from a hallucination.

  “Your face is pale. Are you running a fever?”

  Sure, Mom. Boogieman fever. “No, I’m okay.”

  “Did you know you left the front door open?”

  I didn’t. HE did. “Sorry.”

  “Come on down and help me make dinner. I got a new recipe to try.”

  Jett descended the stairs, using the banister to keep the weight off her injured ankle. She checked rooms as she passed, wondering if the man in the black hat was going to get two people for the price of one. But he wasn’t in the house. Assuming he’d even existed in the first place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sue Norwood had spent the morning doing inventory. Winter was not a big merchandise deal in Solom, and the kayak rentals all but died as the weather got colder. She normally took December off, though she’d thought about starting up a cross-country skiing racket and see if she could get the Floridians to bite. Trouble was, most of them took off at the first frost. Besides, the end of the year was a time to start lining up tax deductions.

  Today she’d only had three customers: a scruffy college kid who purchased a North Face sleeping bag, a housewife who popped in for a two-dollar tube of Wounded Warrior all-purpose healing salve, and a big-boobed blond with a flat tire on her ten-speed. Sue noted that the Everharts hadn’t turned in their rental bikes
during the night.

  She was patching a split seam in a kayak with fiberglass and epoxy when the bell over the door rang. She figured it was the Everharts, limping in sore and tired. “Hello?” she called from her work area in the corner of the shop.

  “Miss Norwood?”

  “Odus? Come on back, I’ve got mess on my hands.”

  Odus Hampton wasn’t really a regular, though he occasionally bought some fishing hooks or monofilament line. She sometimes hired him for heavy work if big shipments came in, and he was happy to work for store credit. He had taught her a lot about the river, and she’d taken him out in a canoe a few times so he could show her the currents, falls, and rough patches.

  She had offered to hire him as a river guide, but he wasn’t interested in steady work, though he’d filled in a few times when Sue was under the weather. She trusted his outdoor experience, partly because he camped out for most of the summer, even though he did it on the cheap, without a Coleman lantern, mosquito netting, or a pair of steel-toed Herman Survivor boots.

  “Busted a boat?” Odus said. “You ain’t been crazy enough to take that out on the river? The water’s probably forty degrees.”

  “I’m getting it ready for spring. This is the only time I have to catch up. Did you go fishing today?”

  Odus shook his head, his full beard brushing the tops of his overalls. “The fish won’t be biting.”

  “I thought they always bit for you.” The fumes from the epoxy were giving her a headache.

  “Not when the water’s tainted.”

  “What’s wrong with the water? Did it get contaminated?” The Blackburn River had been designated a national scenic river, and President Clinton had even given a speech there. No factories or major commercial farms lay along its banks, and the headwaters sluiced down from largely undeveloped mountains. If Sue had suspected problems with water quality, she’d have screamed for Greenpeace, the Southern Environmental Defense League, the local branch of the Democrat Party, such as it was, and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.