Little Carol had been attacked again. She stood on the porch shivering in her undergarments and clutching the remains of her tattered dress as her mother's pickup bounced through mud puddles and jolted to a stop. Her older brother Harold stared through the screen door as their mother erupted from the truck calling Carol's name.
Marjorie Little was a tall woman, and she cleared the four wood steps up to the porch in one stride. Scooping up her little girl with both arms, she shooed her son out of the way and lowered Little Carol onto the sofa. The girl shivered and laid her head on the armrest as her eyes drifted out the good window, the one overlooking the pasture and the road to the town far below. A black car was approaching.
"I'll get a blanket," Marjorie told her son. "You go make some hot water."
The boy nodded and ran to the kitchen as Maj tried to remove the last pitiful shreds of floral fabric from her daughter's hands. Little Carol wouldn’t budge.
"Okay," Maj smiled at her. She stood and noticed the car winding up the soggy dirt road towards the farmhouse. "Who else did you call?" she asked as she walked to the little closet under the stairs.
Harold appeared in the open arch between the cramped living space and the off-white kitchen. "I called the Mill, but they said I'd have to leave a message."
Maj pulled a blanket from the bottom of a tight stack of linens.
"I know. So who did you call?"
"Mrs. Baker. You said if we were ever in trouble-"
"I know."
"Was that wrong?"
"No." Maj walked to her shaking child, who stared out the window. "Mrs. Baker is a good woman. Just now the whole damned town knows."
Harold nodded and glanced at his sister.
Maj unfolded the blanket and motioned for the water.
"Almost done." Harold turned back into the kitchen.
"Mix it with some milk," Maj called," and the rest of that cocoa your aunt gave us."
"There isn't any more cocoa," Harold called back. "We used it all, last time."
Maj let out a slow breath and wrapped Little Carol in the blanket. She had meant to ask for more, but her relationship with her sister-in-law had deteriorated after Harry Sr.'s death. If not for the children, they both would have cut ties months ago.
"Just the milk, then."
Harold came in with a full glass. "We're almost out of that, too."
Maj took the glass and lifted her daughter's head. The girl sipped the warm liquid, but never took her eyes from the window. Maj looked at the rips in her daughter's undergarments. Three parallel cuts slashed diagonally across her small chest. In the middle shone a single speck of red.
The black car stopped with a creak in front of the house. Doors opened and shut.
"Here, take this," Maj told her son. "Have her finish the whole thing. And make sure she's not still bleeding."
Harold nodded and took the glass from his mother, who walked out the front door and shut it solidly behind her. But the door was old and drafty, and one of the front windows was open, so Harold heard the entire conversation with the men outside.
"How's it going, Marjorie?" It was an old voice, shaky but resolute. That was Mr. Felkin.
"Been better," Harold's mother replied.
"How are the kids?" Mr. Felkin asked.
"Cut the bullshit, Jay. I know you talked to Liza."
"No need for anyone to get upset, Maj. We all want the same thing here. And for your information, I haven't spoken to Mrs. Baker, but my wife did. How's Little Carol?"
"'Bout like you'd expect. What can I do for you gentlemen?"
"Can we see her?" A younger voice, less certain. Reverend Greene.
"Not right now. She's pretty shook up."
"Anything we need to know?" Mr. Felkin asked.
There was a pause. Harold figured his mother was shaking her head.
"Maj," Reverend Greene began, "some folks in town have been saying some pretty disturbing things."
"Well, that's nothing new."
"Now Maj," Mr. Felkin objected. "I told you. There's no need for that."
"Look, we all know I'm not from this town. This was Harry's home town. He wanted the kids raised here."
"God rest his soul," the reverend interjected.
"And so that's what I'm doing. I've told you, I'm not joining your little cult, and neither are my kids. We'll deal with this."
"How?" Mr. Felkin was direct.
A moment passed, and then the reverend spoke in a quiet voice. "If she's been marked, we need to know." There was no response, so he continued. "Marjorie, please. Everyone in town could be in danger. Was she marked or not?"
"Maj," Mr. Felkin encouraged, "please don't make us come back with the sheriff. That's not good for anyone."
"What’s he going to charge us with?"
"Child services then."
"Whoa!" the reverend interjected. "No one's gonna call anyone. Maj, Jay is right. We all want the same thing here."
"Get out. Both of you. Leave my family to me."
Maj walked back into the house, turned, and locked the door. She looked over at the open window and went to lock it as well.
"How is Carol?" Marjorie refused to call her daughter Little Carol, as the rest of the town did. It was a play on their name, and seemed innocent enough, distinguishing her from the only other Carol in town, who was several years older. But, Marjorie never liked what it implied.
"She drank all the milk." Harold motioned to the empty glass on the coffee table. "And she's not bleeding."
"Has she spoken?" Maj sat on the couch next to her daughter and rubbed the girl’s forehead.
Harold shook his head just as Little Carol turned and looked straight at her mother. Her voice was weak, barely more than a whisper.
"She's coming, mommy. She’s coming."
"Thanks for coming." Maj had her unwashed hair pinned behind her head to hide it. She tried her best to sound genuine.
Janice set the fancy cocoa on the kitchen table along with the rest of the groceries she had brought.
"You didn't have to bring all that. The kids just really like that powder."
"It's all for them."
Maj nodded. She got the message.
"What are you doing, Marjorie?"
Maj turned to pour herself another cup of coffee. Her hand shook. "What do you mean?"
"You know damned well what I mean." Janice folded the brown paper bags and set them on top of the refrigerator with the rest. "What did the doctor say?"
"She's shaken up, but there's nothing wrong with her."
"You can't fight this thing by yourself."
"Christ," Maj sighed. "Can we not do this again?"
"This thing is real."
"I don't believe in ghost--"
"There are worse things than ghosts."
"Fine. Or witches. Or magical incantations that keep evil at bay. I'm not gonna dress up in dark robes and dance around the pastu--"
"You can laugh at us all you want."
"I'm not laughing."
"Sure you are. Everyone does. But the rituals keep her in the cave. It works."
"Ooooh." Maj made a face. "The cave." Maj fumbled with the lighter in her pocket.
"Have you seen it?"
"I know what a cave looks like."
Janice noticed Maj’s hands and stepped closer to her sister-in-law. "I heard her clothes were in tatters, three slashes on her chest."
Maj looked her sister-in-law in the eye.
Janice went on. "That's the mark. And Liza Baker says this is the second time."
"Somebody is playing a practical joke."
Janice scowled. "Who would do something like that?"
"Some girls in Carol's class have been giving her trouble all school year. You know what everyone says about Harry's death."
"Teasing is one thing. This is someth--"
"My daughter wasn't attacked by a witch."
Janice turned and began putting the fruit in the fridge. "It's two days to Halloween."
"Exactly. As far as I know, this is someone's sick joke to bring those ghost hunting reality shows back to town, bring in some money.”
“Don’t even.”
“There are a thousand explanations that make more sense."
"And what ab--"
"I've already called the state police. They're coming by tomorrow to take a statement. I've picked up all of Carol's homework. She'll stay here until--"
"Out here? On Halloween? By yourselves?" Janice picked up the can of cocoa and looked at it.
"It's only fifteen minutes to town."
Janice slammed the can down onto the table and shook her head. "You're just like him."
Maj rolled her eyes. "Jan, the kids can hear."
"The kids need to hear the truth! I loved my brother, but he was a moron for buying this place and moving you all here."
"He didn't believe in all tha--"
"And look where it got him!"
"How DARE you! His death was an accident, Janice. You do know what that is, right? They teach about that kind of stuff here?"
Janice threw the can of cocoa at the cupboard next to Maj, just missing her head. The sound echoed through the room as the can bounced and rattled across the floor, spilling half its contents in a puff of brown. Janice put her hand to her face and took a deep breath.
"You're both so damned superior. Your fucking egos can't admit even for a second that maybe, just maybe, there are things going on here that are bigger than you, me, all of us."
Maj let her rant. She'd heard it all before.
"Big city folks with your fancy degrees coming home to laugh at the country bumpkins and their silly voodoo rituals. You think we don't know how crazy it is? You think we get our rocks off—what did you call it—prancing around the forest in dark robes? I hate blood. And I fucking loathe goats. But I fucking take my turn with the sacrifice, the same as everyfuckingone else in this town…except you. And when it's over, I wash my hands and I thank God we're all okay."
"Are you done?"
Janice shook her head and walked out of the kitchen. She called up the narrow stairs and asked the kids to come down and say goodbye. Marjorie stayed in the kitchen and stared at the splatter of powdered cocoa on the floor as the kids’ footsteps creaked down the stairs. She heard Janice ask how they were and about school and apologize for not being able to stay.
Marjorie walked into the living room. "Thank you." She meant it. "I know you're trying to help."
Janice smiled as best she could. She knelt to Little Carol and kissed her cheek. Then she walked to the front door. Marjorie followed and watched her leave. She glanced up the shallow hill, next to the grove of trees that filled the ravine on the other side, at the lone sapling that marked Harry’s grave. Then she closed the door behind her.
"I don't like it when you and Aunt Janice fight," Carol said.
Maj leaned her forehead against the door. "I know, sweetie."
She had her back to them. She couldn't look at them just then. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her sun dress and gripped the lighter again. Harry had given it to her, along with the bong they used to smoke, the one she threw out six months ago, after his death. The kids were old enough to know the smell. Plus, it would never go over well in town. No more smoking. Another sacrifice of the move.
Maj fiddled with the lighter. "Why don't you two go back upstairs and get ready for bed?"
She turned when she heard the kids reach the top of the stairs, watching out the good window as Janice's car bounced down the dirt road back to town. She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and then walked into the kitchen to clean the cocoa off the floor.
She stopped at the arch.
A single word was traced in the powder.
Scratches
Marjorie looked up the stairs to make sure the kids hadn't seen it. Then she marched through the kitchen to the back door and locked it.
"MOMMY!"
Maj leapt from bed and ran across the hall to the kids' room. Little Carol sat up in her bed, clutching her covers and pointing at the window. The latch had been turned.
"Which one of you unlocked the window?"
Harold rubbed his eyes and shook his head in denial.
Maj looked at Carol. The girl was wide-eyed and breathing like a racehorse.
"What happened honey?"
Little Carol shrunk into her covers. "She was opening it, to let the others in."
Maj locked the window and walked over to sit beside her daughter. "Who was?"
"Anne Pickford."
"Carol, sweetie, remember Mommy told you there's no such thing as witches. Some very mean people are trying very hard to scare us."
"They're doing a good job.”
Marjorie laughed. "Yes, they are. But, we're not gonna let them beat us, are we?"
Carol shook her head.
"Besides," Maj explained, "you can't unlock the window from the outside."
"I know." Carol looked at her mother. "The mean lady's not outside."
Marjorie scowled. "She's not?"
"She's in the closet."
Harold sucked in a sharp breath. Maj snapped her head around and looked at the half-open closet door.
The room was silent. The house was silent. The farm was silent.
"Both of you—go in my room. Right now. Get in my bed. Go."
The kids jumped out of bed and ran across the hall. Maj watched as they clambered into her and Harry's king bed. It was crammed half-cocked across a corner of the old farmhouse's master suite, and they had to crawl over the end of it.
Maj turned back to the cracked closet.
There's no such thing as witches. There's no such thing as witches.
She took a deep breath and a step forward. There's no such thing as witches.
This whole town had gone nuts with superstition, fueled by a centuries-old legend, some random mysterious acts, and a whole lot of tabloid television coverage. A town like that could produce, or attract, a person stupid enough to--
Maj stopped a foot from the closet as the door swung shut.
There's no such thing as witches.
She reached for the knob but stopped when she saw her hand was shaking.
There's no such thing as witches. South Dakota crazy town. Things just went too far.
She recalled her social science training. The origin of mass opinion. Failure in group dynamics. Study after study after study debunking magic, witchcraft, ESP. None of those things were real.
Maj raised her hand again and made a fist to control the shaking.
Stop it! She castigated herself. Open the door, Maj. Be an adult. Open the fucking door. For your kids, open the god-damned door.
Marjorie lunged and flung the door open. The force of moving air made the kids' clothes swing on their hangers. Maj pressed the clothes to the side and hit the back wall of the closet with her fist. She looked up. She looked down. Nothing.
She sighed and flexed her fingers open.
A door closed down the hall.
Maj froze. A gust of wind blew outside and the stairs creaked once, right outside the bedroom. Maj felt the hairs on her neck reach for her attention. It felt like someone was in the house.
The stairs creaked again farther down. Then again.
Maj moved towards the hall. Silence.
A toy fell in the living room downstairs. The thud of metal and bells filled the still house. Then nothing.
Outside was black. The entire house had been swallowed by the night. The overcast sky didn't let a sliver of starlight through.
Maj walked barefoot out of the kids’ bedroom, her back upright, her chest out, and stood at the top of the narrow staircase. She missed Harry.
Silence.
Maj wrinkled her nose. She caught a whiff of something, earth and dried leaves, like the smell of camping on your fingers, of something buried.
The old screen door banged shut.
Enough! Maj almost yelped. Now she was angry. This was going to stop.
Maj took four steps down the stairs and froze, foot poised for another fall. A single thought seized her. A crazy, irrational, overpowering thought. It rippled across her skin in gooseflesh before settling in her heart like ice.
She's trying to lead me away from the kids.
Maj spun and sprinted back up the stairs to her bedroom. The bed was empty.
Her heart hammered her chest. Her hands shook. She shouted into the room. "Harold! Carol!"
"Down here.”
Maj dropped to the floor and squinted into the darkness. Her children were clutching each other under the bed, terrified.
Maj squeezed the wash cloth and let the hot water run down her daughter's back. She looked at the three scratches on her side, which were healing, and then at the three on her chest. Six. That was the mark.
"Are you okay, sweetie?"
Little Carol nodded.
Marjorie could hear Harold in the kids' room playing with his action figures. It was raining outside, but at least the sun had risen. It had been a long night with all three of them huddled together. Maj had barely slept. Every time she drifted off, a deep panic gripped her throat and she would wake with a start. Her jerking woke the kids, and she had to coax them back to sleep.
Maj had many silent hours to dwell, and she had felt her heart beat faster and louder than it ever had, faster even than when she got the call.
Harry’s truck had been found in a ditch. Bare tree branches from the blight of the previous year had breached the window and pierced him in four places and covered his skin in scratches. Thankfully, death had been quick.
All night, Maj thought about why they were in South Dakota, about their life in Seattle, about her marriage, about the day Harry showed her the listing for the house. And a whole lot about the first time she heard of Anne Pickford, and of the rituals the townspeople used to keep her, or it, at bay.
Harold, Sr. had told her about it over dinner one night. That’s why he loved this house—it stood four hundred yards outside the municipal boundary. The Littles paid their taxes to the county, even though the county administration was over an hour away. Harry had wanted to make sure that Mr. Felkin and his lot wouldn't have anything to hold over them.
But that meant crimes occurring on the property had to be reported to the state police. The troopers were scheduled to come that morning, and Maj planned to ask for help. She wasn't sure what they could do. She only knew her family couldn't take another night like the one they'd just had.
"Mommy?"
Maj ran more water down her daughter's back and tried not to look at the scratches. She dreaded the thought of having to take pictures for the police report.
"What, sweetie?"
"Who’s Anne Pickford?"
Marjorie took a deep breath. "She was someone who lived a looooong time ago."
"The kids at school say she killed Dad." Harold stood in the bathroom door. "Because he didn't believe."
"Your dad had an accident. It was a horrible, horrible tragedy and I know you miss him. We all do. But I promise—he was not killed by a two-hundred-year-old witch." Maj smiled at her children. "Okay?"
Little Carol nodded. "That's good 'cuz I don't wanna be cursed."
Marjorie held her daughter close. "Oh sweetie, you're not cursed. Everything is going to be okay. No one is going to hurt you."
"I read about her," Harold said. "At school."
Maj pulled the plug from the bathtub drain. "Maybe you can tell me about it later." She knew the story well. It wasn’t something Carol needed to hear.
Harold thought for a moment. "Did the people back then really burn witches alive?"
"Harold Junior!" Marjorie yelled. "Stop it."
"What's a lesbian?"
"HAROLD!" Marjorie stood. She reached for the lighter again. She needed a bowl.
"Whatever." Harold walked away.
Maj heard him trudging down the stairs. She wrapped a towel around Carol, dried her, and dressed her in silence. Then Maj carried her down the stairs and sat next to Harold on the sofa.
"Come here," she said, pulling them both close. "Things were different back then. People believed in all kinds of weird things. Witches. Ghosts. Demonic possession."
"What's that?" Little Carol asked.
Harold jumped at the invitation. "That's when the devil takes over your body and makes you do bad things."
Carol looked at her mom. "Can he really do that?"
"Yes," Harold said.
"No," Maj corrected. "He can't." With a sigh, she ruffled Harold's hair. He was so much like his father, his real father. "It's okay to be scared."
"I'm not scared," Harold said. "Those people did the right thing." The boy toyed with the action figure in his hands.
"What's that?"
"Burning her. That's how you drive a demon out."
Maj squinted at him. "How do you know that?"
"Everybody knows that," Harold snorted.
"Do they?"
Maj looked up at the sound of a car pulling up the driveway. "Harold, I need you to look after your sister while I talk to the police."
Harold didn't respond.
Maj stood. "Harold?"
"Why do I always have to watch her?"
"I'm not going to discuss it with you right now."
"It's not fair."
"No, it's not fair. But you're the oldest, and you need to look after her."
“You care more about her.” Harold stormed off after his sister, who was pulling a pink plastic box from the hall closet. "It's her fault this is happening."
"Harold!" Maj yelled. She scowled at her retreating son, and then took a deep breath, blew it out, and pulled her hair back with both hands. That's twice you've yelled at him, Maj.
She heard a car door close and someone coming up the porch steps. She opened the door before the trooper could knock.
"Hello, ma'am. Are you Marjorie Little?"
"Yes, officer. Thank you for coming."
"Yes, ma'am. Do you know your cellar doors are open?"
Maj frowned. She had padlocked them herself.
"What?"
The officer nodded, gesturing towards the side of the house.
Maj opened the old screen door, walked past the trooper, and hopped off the deck into the cold drizzle. This was embarrassing. Now, she would just get a lecture on how to secure her home. She walked around the corner opposite the good window, glancing for a second at the sapling on the hill, and stopped at the slat-wood doors that opened down to the cellar. They were swung wide.
Maj grabbed the door with the padlock. It was fastened around the open latch. It didn't make any sense. She had shut the latch and closed the padlock around the metal loops in both doors, locking it tight. She was certain of that. And yet here it was, shut only around one side. She turned the cold, wet metal over in her hand as the trooper came up behind her.
"I locked this myself," she said to him, knowing full well it would make no difference. When she stood, she caught the trace of red on the faded paint, right on the edge of the door, as if someone's bloody hands had opened it.
The officer saw it as well. "Have you been down there recently?"
Maj shook her head. "We don't use it. That's why I keep it locked."
"Does anyone besides you have the key?"
Maj shook her head again. "Just family."
"I'll ask you to wait here."
Maj wanted to argue as the officer walked past. This was her house. But some part of her was glad that someone else was there. Not a man, just anyone. She was exhausted. She waited without argument as he climbed down the stairs.
After a moment, he called to her. "Ma'am?"
Maj moved down the steps, nearly hitting her head on the cellar’s low ceiling. It was little more than a coal pit, ten feet wide and dug into the ground. On the far side was a two- by three-foot rectangular opening near the floor that led to the crawlspace around the foundation. The officer shone his flashlight on the black hole. It was rimmed in splotches of red and brown.
The pair walked closer and knelt. The trooper asked Maj to hold the flashlight while he took off his jacket and hung it on a stray nail. The room was stale and dank, and each movement kicked up dirt. Maj sneezed. That's when she caught that distinct smell of sweet iron.
Blood. Stale blood.
The trooper put his hands through the small opening and braced himself on the dirt floor beyond before sliding his body through. Then he asked for the flashlight, which Maj passed with both hands to hide the shaking.
"Smells like something died down here," he said.
"Can you see anything?" Maj asked. She knelt and peered through the hole. The beam of light jerked back and forth as the dark shadow of the officer slid forward toward the far end of the house.
He took a deep breath. "Oh man..."
"What?"
"It looks like a dead goat."
Maj shook her head. "What?"
"Yeah, it's been mutilated. Christ, its guts are draped over a pile of stones."
The floors creaked overhead. Maj shook off the sound as she tried to make sense of the officer's words. It was just the kids playing.
The children!
A wave of panic hit Marjorie.
"I have to check on my children!" she yelled as she bounded up the stairs, nearly hitting her head again.
"Carol? Harold?" she called, as she ran around the side of the house to the back door. Locked. Maj ran the other direction, past the good window, to the front.
"Carol!" She burst through the front door calling their names, saw no one, and bounded up the stairs, nearly tripping over the smiling, wide-eyed dolls left scattered in the hall.
She reached the top and ran from room to room. “Harold? Carol?”
Gone.
Her children were gone.
Maj jumped back down the stairs and gasped so deeply she had to clutch her chest to breathe. Three deep scratches marred the rear of the front door.
She had taken them.
Anne Pickford was an ugly girl. An accident in infancy left her eyes in disarray. She looked at everyone half straight and half sideways.
When she got older, she never took to any of the young men in town. At first she was assumed to be shy on account of her appearance. But when she was sixteen, a distant cousin caught her in the barn pleasuring herself with another woman’s undergarments, stolen right off the line. Anne’s father disowned her on the spot, and she left to live by herself.
For a while, she worked as a laundress and housekeeper in a nearby town, a job which required her to walk four hours each way. But word spreads, and soon she wasn’t welcome there either. No one was quite certain what she did after that.
Several more years of whispers and snickers and stares went by, and Anne became a shadow. Whenever clothes went missing, whenever a wheel broke or a horse came up lame, it was assumed to be Anne.
Her father, Charles Pickford, was neither drunk nor zealot—he was a farmer, as plain as the rocks that speckled the town—so when his body was discovered drowned in a metal wash bin, the hunt for Anne began in earnest. It had not escaped everyone’s attention that her mother, the poor woman, had died in childbirth. Dark tidings, indeed.
But Anne was nowhere to be found. The shack she had once occupied over Warden’s Hill, near the river, had been reclaimed by nature, and no one from any of the nearby parishes had seen her likeness, and it was hard to miss someone like wild-haired, cross-eyed Anne.
Time passed.
But Mother Earth doesn’t forget, and she’s not without a sense of humor. Four decades later, prospectors retreating from the rush farther west discovered a vein of silver in a cave outside of town, along with a menagerie of animal bones. The broken remains of horses, birds, lizards, snakes, dogs, and even a few steers littered the hole in the ground. There was evidence of fire and strange markings on the walls.
Shortly thereafter, the first child was attacked. Juniper Fogarty, age eleven, walked through town as naked as a mole rat, bleeding from three deep gashes in her chest. Three days later her body was found flayed and eaten in the field outside her family home.
Within seven weeks, three more children were killed. Each bore the mark. Folks spoke of a one-eyed hag roaming the woods at night. And everyone knew.
Something had to be done.
Marjorie stood in the bedroom fumbling with the keys to the safe. It had taken her a minute to find them in a kitchen drawer, and now her hands were shaking uncontrollably. Harry had always managed their documents and the gun and the rest. Which key was it?
Her thoughts twisted like spaghetti. She couldn’t straight think. Oh Harry! I need you so bad right now. Please help me!
She scratched the lock several times before she was able to insert the key and remove the shotgun. She cracked it open the way Harry had taught her. It was clean. She grabbed the box of shells, ran to the closet, and stuffed it in the pocket of her thick coat. She pulled the coat over her dress and stormed down the stairs.
Her heavy boots were the only practical thing to wear this time of year, and they pounded the wood floor as she strode to the door, loading the shotgun. She cocked both barrels.
She would kill them. Whoever had taken her children, she would blow them to pieces.
It was raining, had been for hours. There had to be footprints.
Maj charged out the front door and into the rain, which had turned from trickle to patter. It was the only sound. The landscape was still and lit in perpetual dusk. Everything was wet and muddy, but it only took her a moment to see the tracks leading away from the house, away from the road, and up the shallow hill on the east side of the farm, towards the sapling. She was no expert and couldn't tell much from the little pools of water except that they were fresh. The edges were sharp, clean. Marjorie ran.
It was only a moment before she could make out a body. Janice lay waterlogged and face down in the muck.
"Carol!" Marjorie saw her daughter under the little tree they'd planted over Harry's grave. She ran and grasped the girl, dropping the gun. "Oh, baby! I'm so glad you're safe. Where's your brother?"
Little Carol didn't respond. She was in shock—wet and cold and shivering. There were three more scratches on her face, deeper this time. Maj took off her coat and wrapped it around her little girl.
Then she walked back to the body. Janice’s face was buried in mud and she wasn't moving. Maj reached out and turned her over. Her eyes were flat. Her breath was gone. Her throat was angled and swollen. Something was jammed inside.
Maj pulled open her sister-in-law’s mouth and, after a brief pause, stuck her bunched fingers inside. The object was hard, plastic, slippery. She fiddled in disgust and yanked it out. She dropped it immediately.
An action figure.
Harold's action figure.
Two gun blasts erupted from the house. In her panic, Maj had forgotten about the trooper. She ran back to Little Carol.
"What happened?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.
Harold had been in the bedroom when his sister heard someone opening the window. Harold had been by the powder in the kitchen. Harold had access to the cellar. Harold had been watching his sister alone each time she had been attacked.
Maj covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes blurred and her legs shook so bad she could no longer stand. She fell to the mud next to her daughter and sobbed.
The lights in the house went out. And anger blew through her mind.
Maj trudged over to the shotgun and picked it up. It was cold. She turned back to her daughter and for the briefest of moments was unsure what to do with her, but the boy’s tracks stopped at Janice's head, right at the edge of the fresh sod they'd lain over Harry's grave. Reverend Greene had sanctified the ground during the memorial service.
Maj knelt to her catatonic daughter. Little Carol's eyes saw only the horizon. The scratches on her face wept blood. Maj pulled the coat tight around her and laid her against the little tree.
"You stay here, sweetie. Just stay right here. Your daddy will protect you."
Tears mingled with rain on Marjorie's face.
Oh, Harry! Look after our daughter. I have to deal with my son. I'm so sorry I hurt you.
Marjorie Little held the shotgun with both hands and trudged through the mud back to the house. She gave one sorrowful glance at Aunt Janice before screaming at the house.
"Harold! Mommy's coming!"
Maj walked past the trooper's truck, past her own, and up the porch. She heard her son giggling.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
Maj pushed the noisy old screen door open with the barrels of the shotgun. The trooper lay prone on the floor. He had been eviscerated. His intestines ran across the floor. His liver was on the sofa, slashed and shiny. Maj turned and puked. She hadn't eaten since the previous afternoon, so little came out but brown mucus and bile. It ran down her chin and blended with the rainwater that saturated the neck of her dress. The rancid tang of acid burned her nostrils. She swallowed hard and tried not to vomit again.
"Harold?"
Maj stepped carefully into the room. Her boots were wet and the wood floor was slippery with blood. She tried to keep the shotgun level, but it was heavy, and she was already shaking.
"BOO!" Harold popped his head in from the kitchen.
Maj jumped and her finger twitched, pulling the trigger. The recoil from the shotgun's blast knocked her down as bits of wood exploded from the wall.
Harold laughed and ran through the kitchen and out the back door.
Maj struggled to her feet and went after him. Outside the door, tracks went in both directions around the house, to the right toward the good window and to the left towards the cellar. She heard Harold laughing in the distance, but the hum from the rain obscured the direction.
Maj turned right and followed the tracks until they stopped. She looked around. There was the road, the hills, the town in the distance. No Harold.
A cold deeper than rain sank through her. The hairs on her neck tickled her again. Someone was watching her.
Maj turned back towards the house and saw Harold smiling at her from the good window. He had the trooper's revolver pointed straight at her.
"HELLO, 'MOTHER'."
It wasn't his voice.
"Hello. Harold."
He laughed. Then he shot her through the glass. Maj screamed and went down. The bullet punched through her leg. Harold had a boy’s arms and fell back from the recoil. Maj lay in the mud waiting for his wicked face to appear over the sill, smiling, ready to finish the job. She had to protect Carol. Using the shotgun to prop herself, she hobbled around to the front of the house and tip-toed onto the porch. She braced herself against the wall and tried not to think about the searing pain in her thigh.
"I need to protect Carol." Saying it aloud made it real, and she said it again.
And that gave away her location.
A bullet tore through the wood siding near her head. She screamed and fell. Harold was inside laughing. Another shot ripped through the wall. And another. Maj panicked. She rolled in front of the screen door and fired the heavy shotgun. Harold laughed again. Then there was the click click click of an empty revolver.
Maj realized the shotgun was empty. She had fired twice, and the remaining shells were in her coat pocket, tucked warmly around her daughter. She dropped the gun on the porch and hobbled inside the house.
"Harold? You come here this instant, young man!"
Nothing.
Maj limped to the trooper's body. She covered her mouth. The remaining skin of the corpse lay across the ground like a ragged tent flap. Globs of yellow fat clung to his clothes. Maj looked away. She took another step forward and peered in the kitchen. Nothing.
Must be upstairs.
She turned and looked up just as a knife sliced through her good leg. She screamed and collapsed.
The ragged skin of the trooper's body rose to a point. Then it ruptured as the edge of a cooking knife split the skin in one long arch. Harold rose blood-covered from the hollow corpse. He had been hiding inside. He knew she would never check there. He smiled at Maj.
She couldn't stand. She was bleeding from both legs. She could barely breathe.
Harold was giggling.
Maj dragged herself backward toward the little hall by the stairs, pushing her daughter's passive, smiling dolls out of the way and leaving a wake of her own blood. She didn't take her eyes off her son.
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" He giggled.
Maj had no idea. She was panting. Her chest was closing around her lungs. "Why are you doing this?" she gasped.
Harold stepped slowly after her.
"What have you done with my son?"
The creature in the boy laughed. "STUPID WHORE! WE ARE YOUR SON!"
"No—" Maj shook her head as she pulled herself backward little by little. "That's a lie. My son would never do this."
Harold squatted in front of her and held the cooking knife to his face. He cut a long slit from his forehead to his cheek, and then he licked the blade, which split the end of his tongue like a snake’s. "YOU'RE RIGHT. SUCH A SWEET BOY."
"Harold? Can you hear me? I love you, sweetie. You have to help. You have to fi--!"
The creature belched a dark and horrible odor. It rumbled from Harold's belly and filled the room with death. "YOU DID THIS TO HIM."
Maj grimaced from the stench. "No.” She gagged. “Harold is a good boy!"
"LIAR!" The beast laughed as it crept toward her. "HOW DO YOU THINK IT WORKS?"
Maj shook her head. She was faint.
"YOU THINK WE CAN JUST TAKE WHOMEVER WE CHOOSE?"
He leapt forward and put the knife to his mother's face.
"WE NEED A LITTLE TEAR... IN THE CONSCIENCE. A SCRATCH," he nicked her cheek with the blade, "ON THE SOUL. YOUR INFIDELITY, MARJORIE LITTLE, WAS THE SOIL IN WHICH YOUR EVIL WAS SOWN, NURTURED BY YEARS OF GUILT AND NEGLECT OF YOUR SON."
"NO!" Marjorie howled. "I love my son."
"I LOVE MY SON." The creature mocked her in a high voice and pranced around. "I LOVE MY SON. AND HATE HIM, HATE HOW HIS EYES, HIS GAIT, HIS LITTLE MANNERISMS REMIND YOU OF ANOTHER MAN, OF YOUR BETRAYAL."
Maj closed her eyes. "I loved Harry. He was a good man."
"YOU DESPISED HIM," the creature sneered and grabbed her breasts. "HIS FUMBLING HANDS ON YOUR BODY, HIS INCURABLE SNORING, HIS STUPID LITTLE STORIES HE TOLD OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER."
"I LOVED MY HUSBAND!"
"YOU LONGED FOR ANOTHER. AND YOU JUMPED AT THE FIRST REAL CHANCE, YOU SELFISH BITCH."
Maj kept her eyes closed, but she felt the beast's foul breath on her face.
"THAT WAS THE SCRATCH."
Marjorie knew. She knew she had never dealt with her infidelity, not really. She had let it fester. She chose, out of guilt, to give her husband everything he wanted. She gave up her job, her career. She stayed on the farm, near Harry's family, in honor of his memory.
Maj opened her eyes. The thing before her was not her son.
It smiled. "WE NEVER WANTED YOUR DAUGHTER, MARJORIE. OR YOUR SON. WE'RE HERE FOR YOU. WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN HERE FOR YOU. JUST LIKE YOUNG ANNE, YOU WILL BE THE VESSEL."
The creature stretched Harold's mouth impossibly wide. Dark winds howled through the Little home.
Marjorie groped in her pocket out of instinct, fingers feeble with pain. The lighter. She pulled it free and lit it in the creature's face. It snarled and jumped back.
"I know this," she said, glowering at Harold through the pain and pulling herself upright. "My husband already forgave me." She hobbled forward one step. "And I love my children.” Another step. “And if only for their sake… you will have no power over me." She growled the words.
The creature snarled and scurried in a circle on all fours.
Marjorie grabbed a doll from the floor, one of its eyes smeared with blood, and lit its hair on fire. The plastic shrieked.
"This is the fire that purifies the soul. That's how they got you out of Anne Pickford, right? Now get out of my son, you bastard!"
The beast snarled with the boy's face, and Maj dropped a knee on him and held him down. Harold was old enough to shower on his own. She hadn't seen his body in months, maybe longer. She'd been so focused on Little Carol. She had been neglecting him. It was true.
She pulled up his shirt to expose his skin. His back and sides were covered in scratches. They were layered on top of each other in cross-hatched sets of three.
How long had the creature been gnawing at him?
Why had he not said anything?
Why had she not thought to ask?
Maj bit back tears. "Oh, Harold! I'm so sorry." She plunged the burning doll onto his skin.
The creature howled, and Maj pressed harder.
"Get out! I love my son, you bastard. Get out of him!"
The screams melted to a boy's cry, and Maj stomped the doll's head to put it out.
"Harold, sweetie, I'm so sorry." She hugged her son, another man's child, and held him close. "I love you so much.”
Harold coughed and curled in a ball in his mother’s arms. “I went up there.” His voice was weak.
“Don’t try to talk.”
Harold shivered. His face was bleeding. “They were teasing me.” His mouth turned down. His lips shook. “They said Daddy died because he didn’t believe.” Harold’s face twisted in sadness, sadness so deep that even tears were stopped. “I just wanted to see it…”
And then Maj understood. The teasing. The death of his father who wasn’t his father. Harold keeping it all locked tight. He was at that age. And Maj was all too ready to mistake his silence for maturity. She was dealing with plenty on her own. She was so ready for him to be a little man. She had needed it.
She held him close. He was growing up, but he still hadn’t shed the boy inside.
“I let it out, didn’t I?” Harold blubbered his words between sobs. “It’s my fault,” he whined. His body shook. “It’s my fault.”
“It's not your fault.” Maj rubbed his head and rocked him back and forth. “It’s not your fault, baby. I love you so much. I promise, it’s not your fault."
There was a wail, a child’s wail.
"Carol!"
Maj laid her moaning son on the floor and hobbled as fast as she could to the door, but when she reached the deck, her legs gave out. She screamed and collapsed. She couldn't take another step. She would never reach her daughter. “CAROL!” she shrieked and reached into the air. “Oh God, Carol…”
"Mommy!" Carol yelled in the distance.
Maj saw something dark hovering in the rain over the little tree. She didn’t recognize it, but she knew exactly what it was.
Little Carol was standing and waving. "Daddy's protecting me!"
Maj smiled. Her eyes welled in tears. "I know he is, baby. I know he is."
And then it was gone.
"We found the new hole." The sheriff coughed and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. "Damned cold… It's out past the old mine. We'll have it sealed by morning."
Marjorie stood on the deck, right where she had found Little Carol two days before, with her arms around her children. "Thank you."
The sheriff nodded and looked out to the horizon. “A long time ago, this town did something awful to that poor woman, and we let something evil loose. God knows we’ve been paying for it ever since.” He coughed again and turned towards his car. "I'll see you at the funeral?"
Maj nodded. Janice was to be buried the following day. As near as anyone could tell, she'd sacrificed the goat under the house in a miniature version of the ritual used to keep the creature at bay. She'd been watching over the Little children from her car, which was hidden in the grove of trees beyond the hill, and she ran down when she saw Harold chasing Carol. The beast had shoved the toy down her throat, and she’d fallen in the puddle. Because of the water in her lungs, her official cause of death was drowning.
The trooper's death was a different story. There would be an inquest.
"I know you like your privacy, Mrs. Little, but I sure wish you folks would move into town. I could keep a better eye on you there."
"That's very kind of you to say. We'll give it some thought."
The sheriff turned back and tipped up his hat. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because the Maj I know would've hurled a boot at me for suggesting she couldn’t do everything herself."
Maj winced. She deserved that. "What happens next?"
The sheriff looked at the ground for a moment. "Well, that's up to the State Police. There'll be an investigation, of course. We'll just have to wait and see."
"Will I go to prison?"
"It's possible." He nodded. "But with no motive, I doubt it’ll come to that. As far as anyone here is concerned, your home was attacked, and the assailant is still at large. The folks here will back you up."
Maj flushed. She didn't deserve it. They would do it for Harry. And the kids.
"Tell everyone... I want to help."
"Good." The sheriff chuckled. "We could use it. That damned thing takes a lot of fighting!"
"The only people who believe what really happened here are the same people who have every reason to hate me."
The sheriff shook his head and sat in his truck. "We don't hate you, Maj. We hate that thing and the cave it lives in. We hate what it does to good people like you—and the trooper." He took a deep breath. “The best weapon it has is disbelief.”
Maj looked down. “Right,” she sighed.
The sheriff started the car. "You call if you need anything, alright?"
Maj nodded. She straightened the bandages on Harold’s face as the sheriff drove away. Then she looked up at the little tree growing on the hill, keeping watch over the house.
Several miles away, deep inside a yawning crack in the earth, evil waited.