The Harvest

by Sara Clancy

  “Do you think that sounds convincing?”

  She jabbed one manicured finger in the general direction of his pillow. “Sleep. Now. Or no Porsche.”

  Ozzie dramatically leaped for the sheets. While the antics managed to coax a laugh out of her, she still didn’t give him enough time to get comfortable before turning off the overhead light, leaving him to do the rest of his squirming by the glow emitting from the hallway.

  “So you’re aware, I will be randomly checking on you later. If I find you awake again, you will feel my wrath.”

  “Yes, mom.”

  With a last parting smile, she closed the door. Ozzie waited until the sound of her heels had completely faded before getting up. The whole trip to the door left him feeling like an idiot. It didn’t stop him, though. He cracked the door open, almost sagging with relief as a sliver of light broke into his room, turning the darkness into muted shades of gray. Just barely enough for him to make out the outline of the objects filling his room. It eased the knot in his stomach but didn’t take it away completely.

  He padded across the carpet, set his iPhone to charge, and got back into bed. After a few moments of staring at the bar of light, he eventually closed his eyes. Just as he drifted toward sleep, he heard it; the scratching of nails against wood. It trailed along the wall, never crossing close enough to the window for him to catch sight of what was making the sound. His heart stammered when the direction shifted. No longer outside. The long, slow scrape came from within the wall by his head.

  Ozzie’s fingers twisted up the sheets as he listened to it coming closer. Inch by inch. Stopping only when the thin layer of plaster and paint separated them. Then silence. Staring at the ceiling, he held his breath, straining to hear it again. When it came, it was far louder than before. No longer the chipping of wood but the tearing of fabric. It came from the underside of his pillow.

  A scream ripped from his throat as he leaped from the bed. He sprinted across the room, snapping on the light in under a second. Panting hard, he stared at his bed, waiting for something to crawl its way out of the mattress.

  “Master Davis?” Maxwell, the family butler asked from somewhere down the hallway.

  Ozzie couldn’t find his voice to respond. The sound replayed in his mind as he struggled to find some other explanation. But there wasn’t one. He knew what he had heard.

  Maxwell called for him again from just outside his door. Ozzie huffed a breath and wondered just how much he’d cop from his friends if they ever heard about this. Almost sixteen and still afraid of the dark.

  “I’m alright, Max. I didn’t mean to worry you,” Ozzie said, mindlessly swinging one side of the double doors open. “Can you get me some honey tea? I can’t sleep.”

  Leaning back into the hallway, he sought to catch his butler’s eyes. Ozzie’s stomach plummeted. A few feet still separated him from Maxwell. Each pore of the middle-aged man’s body stood out as a pitch-black dot. Every lumbered motion the man took made them split open. Tiny spiders scrambled out of his skin. Millions in number. Birthing only for a new egg to ooze into the vacated pore.

  “Master.” Maxwell rasped the words around the long, thin arachnid legs that flicked and squirmed past his lips.

  The hatchlings flooded across the floor, the walls. They clung to the ceiling and consumed every trace of light as they scurried toward him. Ozzie screamed. The sound barely reached his ears as he turned and sprinted down the hallway. The cool marble floor bit at his feet as he ran. He barreled down the wide, twisting staircase, not daring to touch the railing as the spiders kept pace beside him.

  “Mom! Dad!” The words left him breathless.

  Missing a step sent him tumbling. The sharp edges of the stairs smacked against him as he rolled, hit the wall, and dropped the last of the distance to the foyer. Panic alone got him back up. Presented with the sprawling estate around him, he didn’t know which way to go. Two wings, three levels, and endless corridors. The wrong choice could leave him separated from his parents by a living wall of arachnids.

  “Mom! Dad! Help!”

  “Master Osgood,” Maxwell rattled behind him.

  Tiny spiders scrambled over Ozzie’s feet. All thought was severed. He sprinted for the door, driven by the single desire to flee, to get away from the monster constantly birthing the eight-legged monstrosities. He flung the front door open and instantly smacked into an immovable wall. Arms locked around him. The confinement sent Ozzie into a wild panic. He thrashed and screamed and struck the wall but couldn’t move it.

  “You made your point!” Percival yelled.

  The sharp roar rumbled from the wall against Ozzie. Shock left him breathless as he snapped his head up. What is he doing here? Ozzie pushed the thought aside. It didn’t matter why the old family friend was there. It only mattered that he was. That Ozzie wasn’t alone with Maxwell anymore.

  Percival didn’t look at him. The balding man’s gaze was locked on the staircase, dark eyes burning with hatred as well as fear. Ozzie struggled to get free as the clicking of spider legs echoed in his ears.

  “You made your point, Katrina! He’ll be there! Leave him alone,” Percival continued

  The clicking came to a sudden halt, replaced by the soft ping of a music box. Trembling, Ozzie chanced a glance over his shoulder. Maxwell and the swarm that had crawled from his skin were gone, replaced by a small girl who stood halfway up the staircase. She smiled down at them, cradling a cube of wood and metal between her tiny hands. Ozzie was vaguely aware of his parents coming into the room. Their gasps of shock. Their mad dash to get to him. But the little girl held his attention.

  “Come home, Sewall.” She disappeared but her voice still hovered within the cavernous room. “Come home.”

  Ozzie couldn’t place the exact moment when it happened, but he found himself clutching the box, feeling it twitch as the melody continued to play.

  Numb with shock, dizzy from his fading adrenaline rush, he could only think to mumble, “But I’m not a Sewall.”

  Chapter 5

  Ozzie had no idea why his mother had insisted on making him tea. The only way the beverage was going to calm him down was if he used it for a makeshift lobotomy. Still, she insisted. So he sat in awkward silence with Percival as his father got him an ice pack for his head. It hadn’t even occurred to him he was injured until his dad had started fussing.

  “Ethan,” Ozzie’s mother said as she placed a mug before his father. She handed the second to Percival.

  “Thanks, Ha-Yun,” he smiled weakly.

  She pursed her lips into a tight smile before going to collect her own mug.

  Ethan placed a hand on his son’s shoulder, drawing his attention, “Do you need anything for the pain?”

  “I’m fine, pa. Really. It’s just…” He shivered and tightened his grip on the mug until his fingers ached. “The spiders. You know? Did you see the spiders?”

  “Yeah, I did.” Ethan’s sharp cheekbones pushed uncomfortably against the top of Ozzie’s head as he pulled him into a one-armed hug. “They’re gone, son. I promise, they’re gone.”

  Ozzie leaned into the embrace before the thought hit him. “Maxwell! Did anyone check on him?”

  “He’s okay,” Ha-Yun assured, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “He was a bit confused why I had woken him up, but other than that, he’s perfectly fine.”

  Ozzie nodded absently, barely aware of the motion. “Good. That’s good.”

  It seemed as soon as one fear was eased, another question forced itself to the forefront of his mind. He lifted his eyes to meet Percival’s dark gaze.

  “That thing… Why does it think I’m a Sewall? Was it coming after you? I don’t really see how it could confuse us.”

  He didn’t need to do anything to draw attention to the obvious differences between them, but Ozzie still flopped a hand around for good measure. Aside from the apparent age difference and Ozzie’s evident Korean heritage, Ozzie’s jaw was square but soft, and his eyes carried the
same dark shade as his thick black hair. Percival, on the other hand, was a bald, blue-eyed white man, with a short, graying beard and disproportionally dark eyebrows.

  “Well, maybe we have similar eyebrows,” Ozzie noted.

  Percival wiped a hand over his face, but it didn’t stop his chuckling.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Ozzie continued. “You’re cute for an old guy. If I look like that at your age, I wouldn’t be mad.”

  “Thanks for that,” Percival’s said, his voice gruff but soft at the same time.

  It was the seriousness in his eyes that made Ozzie blurt out. “I’m not a Sewall.”

  “Actually,” Ha-Yun began before sharply clearing her throat.

  Her gaze darted between the two men surrounding Ozzie. Ethan repeated his wife’s throat-clearing maneuver, took a deep breath, and turned to Ethan.

  “I’m a Davis,” Ozzie insisted. “Osgood Davis.”

  “You are,” Ethan said. Reluctantly, he added, “But not biologically.”

  Ozzie stared wide-eyed at his father before whipping around to face his mother. “You cheated on dad?”

  “I would never!” Ha-Yun snapped.

  “They had stopped dating before we got together,” Ethan insisted.

  “How did she end up with his baby then?”

  “Ozzie,” Percival soothed. “It’s true I was with your mother. It was a summer romance, and I loved her. I still do. But we weren’t in love.”

  “So you were happy with her hooking up with your best friend?” Ozzie shrieked.

  “I’m the one who set them up,” Percival chuckled. “Look at them. They’re a perfect match.”

  “And we always told you that ours was a whirlwind marriage,” Ethan continued.

  “Did you know you weren’t my father?”

  “I am your father,” Ethan said sharply. “Percival is your godfather.”

  “Did you decide that, or did you know?”

  Ethan looked to Ha-Yun.

  “We knew there was a possibility,” she said carefully, looking at each man in turn as she continued. “And, after we all sat down and discussed it, we decided we didn’t need to know.”

  “I protested that point.”

  “Percival...”

  “Not because I didn’t think you two would be the best parents for him. Hell, I’d be a horrible father. This is the exact reason why I wanted to do the paternity test.”

  “And it’s the exact reason we didn’t,” Ha-Yun snapped before she caught herself. Deflating with a sigh, she rested her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands.

  “I thought you were insane,” she admitted.

  “In her defense, we both did,” Ethan said. A small smile tipped one corner of his mouth.

  Percival shook his head but couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “Yeah. I must have sounded nuts. If I was a petty man, I’d be pointing out how right I was.”

  Unable to decide what to process first, Ozzie settled for shrieking, “What is going on?!”

  Percival put a hand up to quiet the other two and took the lead.

  “You’re going to have to bear with me here. This is information we tell Sewall children from birth. The only other time I had to tell the whole story to someone outside of the family, it obviously didn’t go all that well. So, just listen to the whole tale first, okay?”

  Ozzie reluctantly nodded, suddenly very grateful to have the mug. It gave him something to latch onto.

  “In the early 1800s...”

  “1800s? You’re starting in the 1800s? How about you just explain what happened eighteen minutes ago?”

  “What did I just say about interrupting?” Percival deadpanned, his dark eyebrows lowering over narrowing eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  Hunching his shoulders, Ozzie bit hard on the inside of his lip and struggled to keep his silence.

  “We’re starting in 1810 in the small Tennessee town of Black River because that’s when the Bell family first ran into Katrina Hamilton.” Percival’s eyes scanned the room as he almost whispered the name, as if he thought the muttering would conjure the girl. “It all started as a property dispute.” He huffed a bitter laugh at that. “Katrina sold the Bells some barren land. They made it work. She declared they had swindled her and demanded they give her a percentage of their profits. Understandably, no one took her seriously. They probably would have if they had known she was a witch.”

  “A witch?” Ozzie blurted out.

  “Did that look like a normal occurrence to you?” Percival challenged.

  “Yeah, but, come on. Witches? It’s just a religion or something, right?”

  “Don’t mix up witch with wiccan, kiddo. We’re not talking about healing herbs or benevolent spirits. What we’re dealing with is dark and satanic.” He paused to take a sobering breath before continuing. “Katrina proceeded to torment the Bell family for two years. She tried everything she could to ruin them. Socially, financially, spiritually. Anything she could do to them, she did. For two years, she raged a war against them. If it wasn’t for the aid of the Winthrop family, the Bells would have been destroyed.”

  “Okay,” Ozzie prompted when Percival fell silent.

  “In 1812, two young girls were helping with the fall harvest. Basheba Bell and Caroline Winthrop. Hearing a baby’s cry, they looked up to see a cloaked figure taking the Bell infant into the woods. They gave chase, raising the alarm for the field hands to follow. The slaves testified they had the girls and the strange figure in sight until they passed the first line of trees. Then, they all just disappeared. Vanished.”

  Percival took a drink before continuing.

  “Two days later, the girls returned. They accused Katrina Hamilton of witchcraft, and declared she had been stealing children from the town and sacrificing them to the devil in the forest. Now, this was two hundred years after Salem, give or take. Folks liked to think they were too smart to believe in witches anymore. And no one wanted the reputation of being the hick town that hanged a poor woman because of suspicion and hysteria. It was a hard sell. And if it had just been the Bell child, no one would have convicted her. It was the Winthrop girl.”

  He chuckled.

  “That eight-year-old had steel in her blood. Many histories believe that it was her testimony that convinced the judge, appropriately enough named Justice Crane, of Katrina’s guilt. She was hanged.”

  “Hanged?” Ozzie cut in despite his best efforts not to interrupt again. “I thought witches were burned at the stake.”

  Percival shook him off while simultaneously taking a sip of his tea. “No, we’re in America, not Europe.”

  Ozzie blinked at him.

  “They were burned in Europe. There were laws against it in America. Witches were hanged.”

  “But, the Salem Witch Trials. They burned two hundred people,” he insisted.

  “No, they didn’t,” Percival said. “Who the hell taught you history? Two hundred were accused. A few died in prison and one man was crushed to death during interrogation, but only nineteen were actually executed. And all of them were hung.”

  “Oh.”

  “The burnings happened in Europe. That was a whole different nightmare and, while Katrina was born in Germany, has nothing to do with what I’m telling you. So please, just shut up for five minutes.”

  Ozzie clamped a hand over his mouth to better illustrate his continued efforts.

  “As I was saying, Katrina was hanged. That’s when things got worse. It started as scratches.”

  He managed to keep from blurting anything out by shooting quick glances to his parents. They both avoided his gaze, guilt evident on their faces. Percival told them it would happen. The realization came with no trace of resentment. He had heard it, seen it right before his eyes. The box was sitting at the center of the kitchen counter to prove it. And yet, he was still having a hard time believing any of it. Ozzie couldn’t imagine what it would have all sounded like for his parents. Just an old friend, an urban le
gend, and a request to jump on board with the insanity.

  Percival continued. “It started on the outside of the farmhouse and, at first, they were convinced it was some kind of animal. Their slaves became concerned it was one of the strange creatures they had reported seeing in the surrounding woods. Then the sound moved inside. I’ve been told you’ve experienced something similar.”

  “Is that why you’re here tonight?” Ozzie asked.

  “I always keep an eye on you around this time of year. I know that sounds a little on the ‘stalker’ side of things, but let me finish and I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  Percival took a deep breath and downed half of his quickly cooling tea before he continued.

  “You’ve witnessed it doesn’t take long for these kinds of things to escalate. For the Bells, it was moving objects, spontaneous fires, physical attacks, disembodied voices. And it wasn’t just them who witnessed it. When word got out, people came from miles around in hopes of seeing proof of a ghost. Like they were some kind of sideshow attraction, like it was entertainment to see a terrified child being thrown across a room. And yes, incidents like that were common and well documented.”

  Seeing his friend struggling to contain his growing anger, Ethan cut in, “And they believed it was this Katrina Hamilton?”

  The question jarred Percival out of his thoughts. “She admitted it. You have to understand the voice they heard wasn’t just some distant, unintelligible whisper. It was clear. She held conversations with different visitors. By all accounts, she was also well versed in profanity, which she hurled at the Bells for hours on end. In time, Katrina’s influence spread. She was still fixated on the Bell family, but the Winthrops, as well as the Cranes, started to report encounters. The torment continued for four years. Then, in the winter of 1821, she was strong enough to kill.”

  Ha-Yun lurched off of her stool and headed to the fridge. “I need a drink.”

  “I don’t get one?” Ozzie asked as he watched her pour a generous amount of red wine into three glasses.

  “You’re fifteen.”

  “So I’m old enough to get haunted but not old enough to drink?” Ozzie ran a hand through his thick black hair, steadying himself to ask, “I still don’t understand why she hates the Sewalls. Or the box.” While the cube had mercifully stopped playing its lullaby, there was still life in it. The walls squirmed. Tiny irregular shapes slithered around each other before falling into a new position with a soft click. “Full disclosure; that box creeps me out.”