by Chris Neeley
He didn't believe that his mother, the nicest person in the world even if she was his mother, could do something to make someone that mad. It had to be someone else.
A tiny voice in his head told him not to neglect the fact that just because she was his mother didn't mean that at sometime she could have pissed the wrong person off. After all, there were still people in the Hollow that held to their superstitions, superstitions that were centuries old.
But even before he could start to investigate his family, he had to find an onion.
He slammed the truck door and hopped the steps into the house. It was dark. He hadn't meant to be gone this long. He heard a faint noise that sounded like a giggle and it was coming from the front yard. His sense raw, he went to the front screen door.
He looked out into the front yard. It was pitch black except for the yellow rectangles of light that spilled through the windows of the house. A light breeze caused the leaves on the old hickory tree to mumble, almost forming words. He cocked his head and listened. Forget it, he told himself, you have work to do.
He backed away from the door and headed on up the stairs. He heard low voices coming from his mother's bedroom.
He walked to his parents' bedroom and looked in the open door.
His father sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Fern and Cliff posed at the foot of the bed, their hands resting on the footboard. Their faces were white, eyes wide. James could hear his mother breathe. It sounded wet and thick. Bubbling. Her lungs must be full.
He took a step into the room.
"What's going on?" he asked, breaking the silence that loomed like a live thing.
Fern turned a tear streaked face to him. "Oh, J-James." She ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. She buried her face on his shoulder and started to cry.
James looked to his father. "Dad?"
Seph stood, turning to him. His father's face was red and blotchy. "So you finally decided to show up?" Seph growled.
James pulled Fern away from him. He took two steps toward the bed. His father stepped in front of him. "Where the hell have you been?" he said, his voice rising to a yell.
"I want to see Mom," James said, trying to get past his father.
"Look at her," Seph said, stepping away, "We called an ambulance. I don't know what's taking them so long." Seph's voice cracked. "Why did you have to take the truck?"
James could hear the pain his father was going through and was surprised by it. Seph hadn't acted like he cared much about anything having to do with the family lately. James stepped up to the bed.
His mother lay with her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling, jerky in its movement. The sound coming from her slack mouth sounded like a bubbling rattle. The feather pillow that her head rested on was fluffed up at the sides of her face, making her look as if she were all ready in a coffin and on her way down.
James had to do something.
The onion.
He had to find the onion.
He pushed past his father and raced out of the room. His father called out behind him, "James, where are you going?", but he didn't have time for that now. That was another battle for later on. He jumped the stairs, two at a time, thinking that the kitchen would be the most likely place to find an onion. It wouldn't be an ordinary onion. There would be something different about it. What would be different, he wasn't sure but he would know when he saw it.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
Wait a minute. Aunt Doll had told him to dig up the onion. That meant it was buried underground.
The garden at the back of the house.
He started for the kitchen again, heading for the back door. He grabbed the flashlight off the top of the refrigerator and went out into the night.
The security light on the front of the barn hardly threw any light past the house. James waded through the gloom to the garden, flashlight sweeping the ground in front of him. He found the row with the onions that his mother had so carefully planted in the spring.
James fell to his knees and started yanking them from the ground, holding each one in the flashlight beam to see if there was anything odd about it. All he was pulling up was regular old onions. He slung them away from him and kept on working his way down the row.
He heard a siren in the distance.
His hands flew.
***
"Shut up that bawling," Seph said, gruffly.
Fern sniffled, holding her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were red, almost swelled shut.
Seph walked to the window that faced toward the road. His shadow fell on the lawn in the yellow rectangle of light that the window cast far below on the grass. He couldn't see the road for the big old hickory tree. Where was the ambulance?
When he had come back in from smoking a cigarette on the porch, he had come straight up here. Chloe had still been asleep. He had sat down in the chair across from the bed and let his eyes close for a minute, just for a minute, then he heard Chloe gasp. His eyes had flown open.
Chloe had her hands to her chest, her eyes wide, like something had surprised her, and she was fighting for air. She slumped then, her eyes going back closed, the whites of them showing through the tiny cracks where they hadn't closed all the way.
Seph had bolted from the chair to her side. Her breathing was heavy, labored. He had hollered for Cliff and Fern. Cliff had gotten there first and he told him call the doctor, no wait, call an ambulance, and Cliff had run from the room.
Now, they waited. Damn, they didn't live that far from Rockside. Stupid little town. All the EMT's were probably volunteers, he had never bothered to keep up with the small town politics, and they had probably had to wait until they all got to wherever they kept the ambulance before they could come out.
Seph's fist struck the window sill. Lord, Chloe could be dead before they got here. Maybe he should tell the kids to leave the room, go on downstairs and watch for the red lights and sirens. If Chloe did happen to die, Seph didn't want the kids to see it. And where had James run off to? That boy was acting mighty weird lately. Seph felt the spot on his jaw where James had sucker punched him. He was glad now that he hadn't said anything to Chloe about that little episode. It would have just upset her.
He turned from the window. "You kids go on downstairs. Watch for the ambulance and make sure that they don't pass the house up."
Fern whimpered. Cliff looked like a scared mouse.
"Go on now," Seph said, shooing them out, "and find out where your brother went to."
The kids ambled out of the bedroom, closing the door behind them.
Seph sat down on the bed next to his wife.
She looked so frail, lying there. The woman who had thrown eggs at him just this morning.
He pushed a curl back from her brow.
"Don't leave me, Chloe," he said, almost choking on the words.
He heard sirens.
He hoped that they weren't too late.
***
Anna was trailing along the edge of the road now that she was farther away from Seph's. She shouldn't be in any danger of being seen by any of the Mayhew’s now. Crow flew ahead, lighting every once in a while in a tree or bush until she caught up, then taking off again. They were two of a kind, her and Crow, she thought. They must be or he wouldn't stay so near to her.
She wondered what was going on back at the Mayhew’s. Her potato sack bounced against her hip as she walked. As soon as she and Crow got back to the shack, she would get out her magic scrying mirror and take a look. She hoped that her spell was working.
Her body was getting weary from all the strain that she had been under. She had put it through its paces that was for sure. She didn't feel young anymore, wasn't young anymore. She was a crone, an old crone. She wrapped the haggard shawl around her head tighter, grasping it together at the neck.
Her feet slapped the pavement.
Crone and Crow, Crone and Crow, a litany played in her mind, matching the beat of her tired fee
t. She smiled in the darkness. Crone and Crow, two of a kind.
She continued down the road, the words sing-songing in her brain, potato sack bouncing in time on her hip. Her smile never dimmed when she heard the sirens, faint at first, getting louder as they came closer.
The ambulance rounded a bend and splashed its bloody lights across the trees, making them dance as the lights twirled round and round and the sirens screamed their warning to get out of the way.
The ambulance whizzed past her, only avoiding her by a fraction of a foot. The wind that the ambulance created whipped Anna's dress around her legs. Gravel that had been scattered on the road peppered her bare legs.
But she smiled.
She couldn't wait to get back to the shack.
The ambulance was heading for Seph's, she knew.
She couldn't wait to see.
***
James was almost to the end of the row. The ambulance silenced its siren. James saw the red lights flashing against the front of the barn.
"In here! It's my Mom!" Cliff yelled from somewhere at the side of the house.
James kept pulling. Nothing, not one of the onions that he had pulled looked like anything but an onion. He didn't realize that a low whine was coming from him until the tears started to fall down his cheeks. He pulled the last onion. James pounded his fists in the dirt. Where was it?
James looked to the stars. They twinkled at him coldly. They weren't going to give him any answers.
Where else should he look?
James heard noises coming from the front of the house.
He got up, legs stiff from kneeling in the dirt and hobbled out front.
The EMT's were maneuvering a stretcher down the front steps. They got it clear of the steps. One of them tripped the catch that let the legs and wheels drop down.
James' vision narrowed, homing in on the stretcher. They were rolling it toward him where he stood in the gravel driveway, toward the open doors of the waiting ambulance. Every movement was slow-motion, slow as cold molasses, as the men in the uniforms came closer. James' eyes zeroed in on what lay on the stretcher. A lumpy mass, covered with a blue blanket. A strap crossed it at the halfway point, holding it in place as the stretcher bounced and fought on the gravel as it traveled oh-so slowly to the ambulance. James turned his head, eyes following the stretcher as it went by, the men hauling it wearing grim masks. That couldn't be Mom under that blanket, couldn't be, couldn't be and James' hand reached out, catching the corner of the blanket, throwing it back as his body walked beside the stretcher now, his feet not feeling the stony ground and he stared, stared into the glassy eyes of his mother, his mother's eyes already dead, no it couldn't be, couldn't be...
"Momma!"
Time went fast forward. His father grabbed his arms from behind, holding him as they loaded his mother into the back of the ambulance. The EMT's closed the doors and one of them said something to his father. James looked over his shoulder at his father and saw him nod his head at the man. Seph's face was wet and his mouth was trembling in a grim frown. James turned his head back around to watch the ambulance pull out of the driveway. It shut its light off before it had pulled completely onto the road, closing down the night back into blackness. James had spots floating in his eyes, ghosts of the flashing lights. The ambulance drove away, in no hurry now. He had failed. He hadn't found the onion. Maybe there never was an onion. Maybe he was losing his mind at the ripe old age of sixteen. He jerked his arms out of his father's grasp and went to sit down on the front porch step.
He flopped down on the bottom step and rested his head in his hands. He hadn't been fast enough, hadn't known enough. He shook his head from side to side as Fern's wailing assaulted his ears.
Something at the side of the steps caught his eye. Something didn't look right.
James reached down, his fingers brushing against dirt that looked as if it had been recently dug up. If felt warm, warmer than it should have.
He dug in the dirt with his fingers.
His fingertips touched something round, a few inches down. He dug it up.
He raised the onion to his face. Tears fell from his eyes. Too late, it was too late now.
He stood and flung the onion with all his might into the darkness.
He started walking, feet slamming into the ground, his chest starting to take on a familiar tightness and he didn't care, didn't care, let the attack come.
He heard his father call him name once, twice, but he didn't follow and James continued beyond the road and on, and on.
James was going to walk until he dropped or until an asthma attack made him drop.
He hadn't found the damn onion in time and his mother had died. He had no idea what the onion had meant, but Aunt Doll's prophecy had been right.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, tears of loss and tears of anger.
He would find out who had done this.
Even if it took the rest of his life.
And he walked on.
Chapter Eight
Anna was biding her days.
She had watched in her mirror, sitting in the crumbling shack, as the woman, Chloe Mayhew, had drawn her last breath on that night a couple weeks ago. Seph had cried. That had surprised Anna. He hadn't cried over Babe Rose. You would think that the loss of his child would have brought tears to his eyes but it hadn't. The death of the woman had hurt him though.
Well, he would get over it.
He would get over it and come back to the shack in the midnight some night and he would tell Anna that he was sorry, that he knew he was wrong, burying their babe like he had and he would make it right. Yes, he would make it right.
Anna had watched in her magic scrying mirror with Crow, who would perch on her shoulder, as Seph made the arrangements to bury the woman Chloe. He'd made big plans. A casket with satin lining, flowers like Anna had never seen, and a nice spot in the town cemetery for the Chloe woman to take her rest.
It was a slap in the face to her Babe Rose.
Anna still had not found the place where Seph had put Babe Rose. Something blocked her vision and her mind went weird every time that she tried to pinpoint it. The name 'Mommadoll' came to her in the night sometimes, when her mind seemed clearer. That wasn't the boy's name, the boy with the electric eyes. Seph's oldest. 'Mommadoll' must be a spirit, had to be. Anna felt that the boy was somehow connected to this spirit. Anna guessed that the spirit 'Mommadoll' and the boy could be very powerful if they ever got together and came after her as one. 'Mommadoll' was the cause of Babe Rose's death. The boy was still unknowing of Anna. She had to see to it that it stayed that way.
From the way things were going, it didn't look as if Seph was going to tell anyone about her.
But he would tell them of Babe Rose, if she had her way about it.
In time, Seph would tell them all.
For now, Anna waited, whiling away the hours, studying her book. Getting educated. She saw fit to give Seph time to come to his senses and come to her.
If he didn't come soon though, she'd have to prove her power to him.
Soon.
It had been a couple of weeks since the woman had died, and Anna was getting mighty tired of waiting already.
***
Seph had buried Chloe, making the arrangements in a haze.
All the people who had come to pay their respects had voiced their disbelief that Chloe, strong southern woman that she was, had died such an untimely death. Seph had nodded, shook their hands and let over-perfumed older women embrace him as he patted their backs and spoke soothing words, comforting them when his heart was empty with his loss.
He had written all the obligatory thank you notes, answered the phone calls and paced the floor at night while he listened to Fern cry herself to sleep in her room. Seph's own tears had dried up the same night that Chloe had left the house for the last time in the back of that ambulance. By the time the morning sun had seared its way down into the Hollow, Seph's eyes were dry. He was numb, feelin
g nothing but emptiness.
He still felt that way when he was alone. The last dregs of August were slipping by now and Seph wandered around the farm, doing his business, taking care of the kids and the hogs and the rest of what was left of his life. Fern missed her mother deeply. Seph would catch her crying sometimes in the middle of the day and he'd put his arm around her and stare off into the distance, not knowing what else to do, until she started to hiccup, Fern's own little sign of saying her crying was done.
The boys were taking it better than Fern. They were stout boys, those two. Cliff had cried at the funeral service, but Seph hadn't seen him cry since. Cliff, it seemed, had grown up a lot over the last few weeks.
But James. James had changed. He had walked off into the dark the night Chloe had died and hadn't come back until the next morning. Seph hadn't asked him where he had gone. It was best not to push the boy, not after that argument in the barn that day. Seph still couldn't believe that James had hit him square in the jaw. Seph had been so shocked that he had just lain there in the floor, in the barn dust, and watched his son, his son that was so close to being a man, walk out the door. Seph was worried about him now. Ever since Chloe's death, James had been acting strange. He was quieter than usual. Seph watched him as he worked around the farm. Sometimes, when James was tilling up the garden, he would suddenly stop, reach down and pick something up from the freshly turned dirt, examine it closely, then turn his head, listening to some distant voice that only he could hear. Seph wondered if James blamed himself for Chloe's death because he had taken the truck that night. Maybe that was the reason for the change in the boy. The rest of the family didn't blame him, Seph knew.
Yes, Seph's life was changing and he didn't like it much.
As the season wore on, the work load had increased. There were so many things that had to be done before school started and cold weather set in. It was already August 23rd and Seph wondered where the time was going.
Seph had thought of taking off, going to Matthew's and getting shit-face, fall on the floor and die, drunk, but he hadn't. He had an inkling that going to Matthew's was what had started this downhill slide. Matthew's 'shine had led him to the girl that had gave him the dead babe, then Chloe had died and Seph--he still wasn't convinced that the girl didn't have something to do with all that.