“I can’t believe this is really a town.”
“It’s not,” he said. “Not technically, anyway. It’s a United States Census Designated Place.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“That it has a name,” he said. “And a sign.”
“Welcome to Gossard,” I read aloud as we turned off the highway and onto the county route. “Home of Iowa’s largest underground limestone mine.”
“It’s not,” he said. “Well, technically, it is. The mine closed, jeeze, probably ten years before your dad and I were born.”
“Was it really even the largest,” I said, “or just technically?”
“Supposed to have been over three hundred acres, but the caves go further I reckon.” We crested the hill and could see Gossard in all its glory. Ten houses, maybe eight and some garages, it was hard to tell. A gas station, a couple of brick buildings. And a black barn.
“Huh,” I said, pretending to know how big an acre was. Most of the other people in my program at Northwestern are from the wealthier suburbs of Chicagoland, and they think I’m some kind of hick because I’m from Iowa and went to a county fair one time. The truth is, even though there’s more pigs than people in this state, there are cities too, and I’ve lived my whole life in them.
“Why’d it close?”
He grunted as he slowed to pull into a long gravel drive. “Some kind of accident.”
The house was familiar, but I didn’t remember it. Single level, cheap looking vinyl siding faded to gray blue. Wind chimes hanging from the porch, miniature American flag planted in the unkept flower bed next to a concrete statue of a half-sized horse. My grandmother had lived there since my grandfather had died. Maybe before? I remember Dad taking me to the funeral and then a house like this one afterward. I haven’t really spent any time with that side of the family since then, and that was fifteen years ago.
My uncle’s truck crunched to a stop in front of the garage. “You ready for the grand tour?’
“Can’t wait,” I laughed. He walked over to the back door and took out a key fob with an Iowa Hawkeyes Tigerhawk and “ANF” written on it.
“What’s ‘ANF’ mean again?” I asked.
“Huh?” My uncle paused at the door, then slowly turned the knob and opened it without unlocking the deadbolt. “…America Needs Farmers,” he said. “Hey, uh, maybe wait here a sec, ok?” He went back to the truck and got something out from under the driver’s seat. He came back carrying a pistol.
“Is that a fucking gun?!”
“Yes,” he said, “Stay here a sec.”
He was inside for a couple of minutes. The wind picked up and made the little flag smack against the leg of the cement horse.
“It’s fine, come on in.” He held the door open for me and smiled when I hesitated. “Guns scare you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No. I mean, kind of, yes. Also, what the fuck is going on?”
“It’s fine,” he chuckled. “After mom died, the place got broken into. They raided the medicine cabinet, took some costume jewelry. Hadn’t been back since. Just wanted to make sure. Realtor must’ve forgot to lock up is all.”
The door led to a dusty but otherwise clean kitchen. “There’s pots and pans if you want, but the microwave works fine,” he said, passing through into the next room. It was a living room with a couch, coffee table and empty TV stand. “Yeah, they took that too.” Off that room were two rooms the size of Mom’s closet, one with a single bed in it, the other with an antique roll top desk and a sewing machine on a card table. It wasn’t exactly a shotgun house, but you could pretty much walk from the front door and out the back with your eyes closed. “Bedrooms’ here. Sheets in the closet are clean,” he said, moving back into the kitchen. “Bathrooms’ through there. Water and power are still on, but the phone’s off. You should be able to get decent coverage up here though. Enough to make a call if you need to anyway.”
“What about, uh, like police,” I said, looking at the gun he had left on the kitchen counter.
“Sheriffs’ in Dubois. About fifteen minutes from here. Look, those meth-heads got everything they’d ever want from this place already, they’re not coming back,” he said, picking up the gun. “You got nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, no,” I said. “I know.”
“You ever use one of these?”
“Call of Duty count?”
“They’re just tools,” he said. “Respect them and they’ll respect you. Here.” He handed it to me. “That switch is the safety. Even when it’s on, best not to point that end at anything you wouldn’t want a bullet in. Keep your finger off the trigger unless you’re going to shoot.”
We went back to the truck and got the two bags of groceries I’d bought and my backpack with my laptop, notes, a couple changes of clothes and a Ziplock bag of toiletries.
“You sure about this?” he asked, putting the gun back into its black plastic case.
“Definitely,” I said. “This is actually perfect for what I need.”
“Ok then,” he said. “I’ll be back Sunday. You got my number if you need it.” He set the Hawkeyes key fob on top of the gun case and patted it. “Gonna leave this with you,” he said. “Piece of mind.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said.
“Ok, then,” he said.
“Hey, uh, Uncle Rich,” I said. “Thanks for all of this. I mean, this is really helping me out a lot.”
He shrugged. “You’re family.”
***
I set up my laptop on the kitchen table and spent the rest of the afternoon getting organized and reading over my notes. Made a ham and cheese sandwich and a pot of coffee around six and then wrote until after one. Then I made the bed and crashed. I woke up the next morning around ten, made some toast and ate it while I stared out the window of the back door. There was a little bit of a yard with a bird bath resting on a tree stump and then rows of what I guessed were maybe soybeans covering a field that crested the hill and then went further down. I could see woods behind that, but wasn’t sure how far away they were. An empty field over to the right with nothing in it except that big black barn I’d seen when we arrived.
I stepped outside and stood with my coffee. The echo of a car miles away drifted over the horizon and the tree line stirred gently in the wind. Dad was joking when he said I could spend my Spring Break here, but he stopped laughing when I said yes. I needed a quiet place to finish my thesis, and it’s hard to think of a quieter place than Gossard, Iowa. What I didn’t tell him was that I’m on borrowed time. I fucked up. Chicago is a fun place when you’re twenty-four, especially when your only responsibilities are to sound smart in class for a few hours a day. So much fun, in fact, it’s remarkably easy to lose track of those, admittedly meager, responsibilities and find yourself looking at a blank Word Doc instead of eighty-plus ready for publication pages of original scholarship. It’s due in three weeks. No thesis, no graduation.
Grandma died over the winter. We weren’t close. Dad and Uncle Rich cleaned out the family photo albums and a few other mementos and then put her house up for sale with a plan to auction off whatever was left inside that the new buyer didn’t want. The real estate market in rural Mahigan County isn’t exactly popping off these days, so the house has just been sitting here. There’s no internet, but at this point I just need to read and type. If anything, it’s embarrassing how distractible I am. I got more work done last night than I have all term.
A deer sauntered out of the timber. I watched it casually make its way to the gravel road where it paused and craned its neck to return my gaze. “Morning,” I said, with a nod. The deer stared back in response, then resumed its walk. “Yeah, I got stuff to do too.”
***
It took a while to get back into the groove, but when I got there I ended up writing for six hours solid. I’d noticed a chill had come on in the house, but when I finally looked up I saw that it had started raining. I watched the rain fall out the back window for a minute, and then got the idea that I should probably eat something. Soup sounded good, so I rummaged around in the drawers for a can opener. I found one, and something else. A neat stack of opened envelopes.
Two brittle pages covered in faded writing peeked out of the first one. Obviously a letter, but most of what was written was illegible. Partially due to age, but mostly the ornate cursive handwriting. Occasionally a readable phrase seemed to float up to the surface. “They come with the thaw. We’re all counting on you to take good care of them. I know that you will.” Other than that, I could only make out “Dear Margret” and “Love Sarah.”
***
The next morning, I took my coffee outside again. It was a nice little ritual, I thought. Good way to add a little structure to my day, keep me on task. I scanned the trees for the deer but didn’t see it. Instead, my eyes were drawn to a conspicuous black rectangle on the side of the detached garage. The door was hanging wide open. I could picture the meth-addled redneck waiting in there to ambush me down to his melted teeth and bleach-stained Slipknot t-shirt. I thought, for the first time since I’d seen it, about Uncle Rich’s gun on the kitchen counter. And then I thought about how utterly fucking ridiculous I was being. “Hello?” I called.
I stared at the silent doorway for longer than I’d intended to. I approached the garage like a wasp’s nest and was pissed at myself for being such a pussy. “Hello?” There was dried mud on the bottom of the door frame and most of the concrete floor. A little bit of light filtered in through the fiberglass garage door. Not much, but enough to see the place was empty except for some garden tools and what looked like an all-terrain golf cart. There was also the smell. Oil on dusty cement like most old garages, but something else hanging over it. A fetid, spoiled groceries odor. Not enough to gag you, but plenty enough to make me want to get the fuck out of there. The golf cart had a little storage area in the back like a miniature pick-up truck. It was smeared with deep brown slime, as were the pair of worn gardening gloves that were laying in the corner on top of a half smashed plastic hubcap. I didn’t touch anything, but instinctively went back in the house and washed my hands anyway.
I tried to write, but just stared at my laptop screen. I felt like I could still taste that smell in the back of my mouth. Maybe some fresh air? I grabbed my jacket and locked the door behind me, then headed down the gravel drive to the main road. There were no sidewalks, but the gravel median was wide enough to stay well away from the road. Not like there was traffic to avoid. I made my way towards the brick buildings at the bottom of the hill. The sky was gray and all the houses I passed along the way seemed gray too. Indistinct cottages with the same Walmart garden center tchotchkes filling in the gaps of dead flowerbeds that haven’t come back yet. Shades and curtains all drawn. Impossible to tell if the occasional car resting in a driveway just got there or has been sitting for decades. “Downtown Gossard” had a block’s worth of sidewalk. There was also a post office, which was closed but had a mailbox out front that promised to be collected daily. Another brick building that looked to have most recently been some kind of second-hand store or gift shop. It was dark inside but had a curled piece of paper taped to the glass door announcing new Scentsy oil diffusers were in stock and had a number you could call for a free consultation.
I tried to imagine my grandmother living here. Driving that golf cart down to mail in her water bill or see if there was a new oil diffuser that could cover up the smell in the garage. But I couldn’t do it. She had been a stranger to me, as had most of my family outside of my parents and Uncle Rich, who I usually only saw every other Christmas or so. I stepped off the curb and looked down at the rest of the street and wondered how many of these houses had dead grandmothers in them. How many towns of dead grandparents and great aunts and second cousins were out there. If my grandkids would know me or just an empty house in a place like this.
An air horn blared – I leapt back to the sidewalk and collided with the shop’s door. “Fuck!”
An eighteen-wheeler blew past me and hauled down the road without slowing down. Its trailer rattled loudly against the cracked pavement and the noise hung in the air long after it had passed from view. I stared back up the way it had come, then looked where it went and for a minute couldn’t tell if I’d imagined the whole thing. I walked to where the sidewalk stopped and found a gas station. It had an Iowa Lottery sign in the window that was lit up and a paper sign that said “Yes, we’re open.”
An electric doorbell rang once when I went in. The Bob and Tom radio show, the same one my uncle had on during the drive up, chattered away behind the counter. An overweight woman with thin blond hair looked up from a magazine long enough to be able to describe me to the authorities, if necessary, then went back to her reading. She wore a threadbare pink t-shirt with the scattered remains of an unidentifiable logo flaking off of it. She looked somewhere between thirty and sixty-five. “Hello,” I said.
The aisles were spare, but there was still a decent selection of junk food. I made a few choices and took them up to the counter. The woman was looking out the window at the handful of empty parking spaces. “Where did you come from?” she asked.
“Chicago,” I said. She stared, maybe waiting for the punchline. “My grandma lived here,” I said, gesturing up the road. “I’m staying here for the week. I’m doing uh, I’m working on my thesis for school. It’s like a big research paper. Like a report…”
She rang up the snacks and glanced up at the car that was pulling into the space nearest the door. “Did you maybe know her?” I asked. “Margaret Conelly?”
The door dinged and a red-faced man in a Carhartt hoodie and faded jeans came in. He was covered in pale colored dust that smelled like bird seed. He nodded and made a b-line for the coolers in the back.
“Margaret?” she said. “You want a bag?”
“Uh, yeah, please,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Hey, you remember a Margaret who lived here?” The red-faced guy was standing behind me with two tall boys of Busch Lite and a handful of 5-Hour Energy bottles.
“Roadkill Lady,” he said.
“Oh shit!” she gasped. “Seriously? Your grandma was the roadkill lady?”
“Uh, she was?” I said.
“She mostly kept to herself, but I’d visit with her sometimes,” the guy said, setting down the cans and dumping the mini bottles on the counter. “Anytime an animal would get hit near the road, she’d come and haul it off to the tree line. Said it kept scavengers away from the houses.”
“Was is it, uh,” I thought back to the brown slime and smell of decay from the golf cart. “Was it, like, her job or something?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Did it…help?”
“Guess so,” he said.
The woman rang him up and bagged his items. “I didn’t mean to be like that,” she said. “Talk bad about your grandma, I mean.”
“Its fine. We weren’t –”
“I don’t, didn’t, call her that. To her face or anything. I, you know, just didn’t know her real name.”
“It’s cool,” I said. “I barely knew her.” The guy took his bag and left. “I should be going too, I guess. Need to get back to writing.” The woman nodded and flipped to the next page of her magazine.
***
The road was empty but the memory of the semi pushed me to walk back along the line where the gravel met the grass. It had been overcast when I’d left the house, but the clouds were getting darker and the air smelled damp. The town was as still as ever. Except, it wasn’t. Something had moved, suddenly and just out of view. Did someone just hide behind a tree? Hard to imagine kids living here. I chuckled at the thought of the gas station clerk and the beer-for-breakfast guy playing hide and seek. I took a few steps further into the tall grass of the median and stared out at where I’d seen it, but there was nothing there. I started walking back, still half turned watching the tree and the field behind it. There was just crops, the woods, the black barn – “Shit!”
I fell sprawling into the wet grass, barely catching myself in time to keep from smacking my head on the ground. My palms and shins stung and my ankle was caught on something. It was ribs. “Aw, jeeze,” I groaned, pulling my leg loose. The deer was motionless and practically folded in half. Bones pierced its underside and clawed at my foot. Its glassy black eye staring out at the clouds. My leg ached and my pants were soggy. I heard a car, or maybe a truck, somewhere off in the distance. After I hobbled back to the house, I realized there was blood mixed in the muddy water on my clothes. I stripped in the kitchen to make sure none of it was mine. There was a washing machine, but no detergent. I tossed the jeans in a trash bag and left it outside, then went in and took a shower.
***
Writing the rest of the day felt like pulling teeth, but I kept at it until around sundown. I put some bread in the toaster and idly leafed through the stack of letters while I waited. They were all like the first one. Cramped and faded loops of script that were mostly unreadable save for these weird little lines. “Steer clear of the barn unless you’re bringing a gift.” All from Sarah to Margaret. Did dad say something once about grandma having a sister? Maybe a cousin she was close to or something? I remember him saying the family farm had been close to here.
I smeared some peanut butter on the slices of toast and took them and the letters over to the couch in the other room. My leg was still sore and my shoulders and back were tense from sitting in the kitchen chair all day. The couch was soft and I was feeling drowsy. I tried to read more of the letters, but it just made my eyes tired. After a while I closed them.
I bolted awake, knocking the half-eaten toast and the stack of letters onto the floor. There had been a sound. Loud. Hollow. I stood up, still disoriented. It was pitch dark out the windows. How long had I slept? I’d just turned towards the kitchen when I heard the sound again. It was coming from outside by the garage. I looked through the window over the sink, but couldn’t make out much in the darkness other than the gravel driveway. I crept over to the back door and looked out through the screen. The sky was deep blue against the pure black silhouette of the tree line. No moon. No stars. I held my breath and listened.
The night air was still and quiet. I counted to ten, then slowly opened the back door with one hand and fumbled for the light switch with the other. Suddenly the backyard was bathed in dim yellow light. I heard the gravel crunch. “Who’s There?!” I called out. I heard the gravel again, and thought I heard soft breathing from around the corner of the house. “I said who’s there!”
There was no response. My mouth was dry and my heart was pounding. “I’ve got a gun!” I yelled. “You need to get the fuck out of here, whoever the fuck you are!”
My pulse was racing. “Ok, you asked for it!” I backed into the kitchen letting the door slam closed. I moved towards Uncle Rich’s gun case without taking my eyes off the back yard. I thought I saw something move towards the trees – a shadow. A breeze on the grass. I fumbled the gun case open, then hesitated. “You are being ridiculous,” I mumbled. I took a deep breath and walked straight through the back door and around the corner.
The big Rubbermaid garbage can was turned over, the garbage bag that I’d stuffed my clothes in was torn open and they were strewn across the drive along with a few scraps of trash. I looked around some more and listened, but there was nothing. “Scavengers…” I quickly threw the stuff into the can and turned it back upright then went back into the house. I washed my hands and splashed some water on my face. Then I locked the doors and cleaned up the mess in the other room. The letters had strewn all over the floor and as I gathered them up another passage of girlish handwriting caught my eye: “They know why the soil is black. They know when the floods will come. If you have something to offer, they may trade you a secret. If you offer nothing, they’ll take what they want.”
***
The next morning, I decided I needed to get some exercise. Sitting alone in that house was making me jumpy and stir crazy. I planned to walk down to the gas station and get a cup of coffee there. Along the way, I passed where I’d tripped over the dead deer. There was only a trampled patch of underbrush with a few stray clumps of light brown fur and dried blood stuck to the long grass. The rest of the town was just as it had been though. Not quite abandoned, maybe, but on its way there. No people that I could see, maybe a car in a drive that wasn’t there yesterday. It looked moderately familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It might have been the one the red-faced guy from the gas station had been driving, or it could have been any used car filling in the background of any parking lot I’d been in over the last twenty years. It was empty except for an ice scraper and a crumpled Mc Donald’s bag. The driver’s side door was ajar.
I crossed the road by the post office and headed for the gas station, but I could tell something was different right away. The lottery sign was dark, as was the rest of the place. The paper sign still said “Yes, we’re open,” but the locked doors disagreed. I poked around a little, but didn’t see any sign of anybody, so I gave up. I crossed the main road and wandered up and over to a wide dirt and gravel path that seemed to lead back in the general direction of grandma’s house. It took me past a dusty corrugated metal building with an old mattress leaning against the door. A camper trailer with a “beware of dog” sign duct taped to a broken window. A long “L” shaped field where the dirt had been turned into neat furled rows like one of those Zen gardens and another smaller field full of knee high sickly yellow brown grass. And then finally, a spare, hard-packed dirt hill with a big black barn resting on top.
Up this close, the barn looked much rougher than it had from a distance. The roof sagged. Timbers were cracked and planks had warped in spots, pulling loose the nails that held them in place. But even so, it looked like it could stand another hundred years. Only a few scant weeds grew anywhere near it. Its two large doors hung on rusty rollers, open about half a foot, teasing a tantalizing peek inside. I couldn’t resist.
I don’t know what I expected to see. A tractor maybe. Bales of hay stacked high. Some cows or stables or something. But the barn was empty. The dirt floor was packed hard and swept clean. In the center of the floor was a pair of windowless wooden doors. There was a musty smell to the place, and the smell got stronger the closer I got to the doors. They were old, at least as old as the barn, and seemed to cover a hatch or cellar. I reached for one of the handles, but paused to look at a tuft of light brown hairs that were stuck to a splintered edge of one of the boards. Suddenly I heard a scratching sound behind me. I spun around and saw the barn door sliding closed. “Hey!” I rushed the door just as it had shut and threw my weight into pulling it back open. “Hey, I’m in here!” There was no one outside, or around the corner. Or anywhere else that I could see. The clouds were darkening, so I headed back the way I’d come and went straight on to the house, looking over my shoulder the whole way. When I reached the driveway, I froze. The front door was hanging open.
My stomach convulsed and sent a splash of bile up my throat. I was barely able to keep it down. I tried to measure my breath as I reached for my phone but found only my wallet and the keys to the house. “Fuck.” I’d left it charging next to my laptop inside. I stood there, staring at the open door, trying to get a look through the windows to see the intruders inside, for what felt like several minutes. I didn’t see anything. I started down the drive and the wind began to pick up. I felt the first drops of rain as I approached the front door. I could see straight through the house to the back door, which was open too. Scraps of paper were stuck in the door jamb and the bushes in front of the house. I bent down to pick one up, it was a torn piece of one of the old letters. “They’re like any animal. They don’t want to hurt us, but they will if you’re not careful.” I could see more torn paper blowing around inside. “Ah, fuck – My notes!” Without thinking, I charged inside.
I ran to the kitchen, my laptop was still there, so was my phone. “Thank god,” I panted. I rushed around the house, there was no one there, and nothing seemed to be missing. Some of my books were splayed on the floor. The kitchen trash was knocked over and the fridge was hanging open.
***
“Are you sure you locked ‘um? You know these old houses settle and fall out of plumb so their doors don’t really close right. Wind coulda blown them open. Maybe a squirrel or something smelled the food and got in.”
“Yeah, I mean, I locked ‘um,” I said. I’d thought calling my uncle would make me feel better, but listening to myself I was starting to feel like a homesick kid trying to leave summer camp early. “I really think, like maybe whoever broke in before came back.”
“That laptop of yours would be in a pawn shop in Dubois by now if it was,” said Uncle Rich. “But look, you’re obviously shook up by all this. You want me to come and get you?”
I, um…” Break wasn’t even half over and I was still a long way from being finished with my work. My advisor had made it clear there would be no more extensions. “No,” I said. “No, you’re probably right. Just a squirrel or something.”
“Alright. If you’re sure,” he said. “You know, why don’t I just plan on coming down there Friday? I gotta take some pictures of the furniture and the stuff in the garage for the auctioneer. I’d stay out of your hair during the day, then if you’re up for a real thrill, I’ll take you over to the Pizza Ranch in Blackburn.”
“Wow, Pizza Ranch?” I smiled. “I don’t know, sounds pretty wild Uncle Rich.”
“Couple Bud Lites and a pizza buffet is about as wild as I get these days, kid.”
I laughed. “Well that sounds pretty great.”
“Ok then,” he said. “I’ll be by Friday. Lock those doors!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”
***
Calling Uncle Rich had put my mind at ease, but I still couldn’t concentrate. After I’d cleaned up the kitchen and double checked the locks and latches on both doors, I’d challenged my laptop to a staring contest. It was winning. I figured some work was better than no work, so I went to my hand-written notes for what was going to be the last section. In my haste to clear the floor, I’d shuffled those old letters into the pile of my annotated print outs and half-full notebooks. While reorganizing the pile, one stood out: “Sometimes I wonder about where they came from. If they followed the first people who settled here, or if they were here to meet them when they did. Sometimes I wish we never had to see them. That our family could all move far away. But the land has a cost, and we have to pay it.”
“You had the weirdest fucking pen pal, grandma,” I muttered aloud, shuffling the brittle pages to the bottom of the pile.
The rest of the night was a slog. I managed to re-outline the last third of the thesis and felt like I had a decent enough plan of attack for the morning. If I wrote non-stop all day tomorrow and the next day, I might just be done revising in time for a celebratory draft beer and all the pizza I can stomach when Uncle Rich got here. Definitely not going to light the academic world on fire, but should be enough for me to pass at least. I checked the back door again, then the front. I plugged in my phone and left it on the kitchen counter and hesitated. Maybe it would be a good idea to leave the back porch light on tonight. I flipped the switch, then went to the front to do the same there. Just before I turned all the way into the bedroom, the light out back blinked off.
I froze, staring across the small house to the blackness framed in the kitchen door window. My mouth went dry and my heart started pounding. I drifted towards the kitchen. I could see my reflection in the window as I approached, but everything outside was hidden. Slowly, I reached for the switch and snapped off the kitchen light. My eyes struggled to adjust but there was something – had been something – out there. It had slipped out of view, darting around the corner of the house. The front door rattled behind me slightly as the knob gently turned as far as it could. Then the whole door shook in its frame as something on the other side angrily pounded and pulled. I ducked down to the kitchen floor breathing heavy. My mouth filled with the thick taste of bile. I was halfway to my phone, and a sheriff’s department on the other side of the county, and halfway to Uncle Rich’s pistol.
I scraped my skin against the edge of the hard black plastic lid that I opened just wide enough for my hand. The gun was heavy, but not as heavy as I thought it should be. I flipped the little safety switch like my uncle had shown me, being careful to point it at the door. I tried to stand, but couldn’t. “Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled. I moved over to the table and grabbed my phone with my free hand. The banging on the door stopped, and then there was another sound. A scratchy, scraping sound against the house’s flimsy vinyl siding. But there was another sound too. I’d heard it before and it nagged at me. “I fucking mean it!” I shouted. “Quit fucking with me! I’ve got a fucking gun in here!”
The strange sound seemed to be getting closer. I felt my leg starting to cramp and forced myself up into a crouched stance in the corner. I could hear it moving around out there. It sounded like a dog rooting around the spot in a fence where a cat had just slipped through.
I edged closer to the doorway that led to the living room and craned my neck around the corner to look at the front door. The knob had stopped moving. I took a tentative step into the room. Suddenly an explosion of shattering glass came from the bedroom followed by a crash that shook the whole house. My feeble scream was drowned out by the firecracker pop that echoed through the kitchen.
I scrambled backwards staring in confusion at the hole I’d just shot in the ceiling, and then I saw the sinewy arm with skin the color of spoiled butter spreading out of the bedroom doorway. Black tipped fingers, much longer than they should be, grasped at the carpet and pulled, heaving whatever had crashed through that smashed window further into the house. My own numb fingers fumbled with the latches on the back door as the ragged wet breathing behind me got louder.
At last the door opened and I nearly fell out of the house. I ran, blindly, into the dark. The sky was moonless and I could only make out the barest impression of the woods and the field behind the house. I stumbled and tripped, landing hard on my hip and knocking the wind out of me. From the ground, I looked back at the house just in time to see the lit rectangle of the kitchen door eclipsed by the silhouette of a lean figure. Its coiled muscles glistened as it passed through the light. It moved almost like a person, but not enough.
I stared, hypnotized as it crawled through space like someone walking underwater. Like a video played in reverse. The shadowed face turned sharply, and for an instant its eyes flashed cold yellow. They were the eyes of a hidden animal by the side of the road at night.
I lifted the gun and fired. Then fired again. As I struggled to my feet I pulled the trigger another time, but I’d somehow lost track of where my hand was pointing.
The pain from the bullet was excruciating. It felt like everything below my knee had been sheared off the bone. I fell again, catching myself on my hands but jammed my finger between the trigger guard of the gun and hard dirt. Somehow the waves of raw panic pushed me back up and away from the house. I only had one thought, and my brain screamed it: Get. Away.
I don’t know how long I ran, or where, but when I hit the splintered wooden wall of the barn, I didn’t stop to consider my options. I just went inside. I needed to get anything between me and whatever had gotten into the house. There was nowhere to hide. Except maybe those doors in the floor. I pawed at the handle with my injured hand, noticing for the first time that I’d lost the gun somewhere along the way but still clutched my phone. There were wooden stairs leading down. I hobbled in as quietly as I could, and pulled the door closed behind me.
Feeling my way in the darkness, I managed to slide to the bottom of the stairs. The air was thick and silent, it smelled of cold stone and decay. I swiped my phone with my aching fingers to activate the flashlight feature, and suddenly the path ahead of me was bathed in pale light. A dirt floor and walls of chiseled rock on either side. I stumbled forward, wincing at every other step. I moved the light to examine my leg and almost fainted at the bloody mess. There seemed to be a room or something just around the corner. I pushed myself forward into it, then slumped against the rocky wall. I took a deep shuddering breath, then dialed 911.
I stared dumbly at the phone. Nothing happened. Eventually, my eyes found the corner of the screen where three friendly bars were usually displayed. They were gone. I groaned, sinking against the wall into a sitting position, tears running freely down my face. I probed my leg and felt my numb calf muscle, slick with blood. I tried to angle the phone’s light to get a better look, when a flash reflected back at me. It was a smashed glass jar. I paned the light around the room and found dozens more. Some with mildewed labels peeling loose, many more bearing faded blue silk ribbons embossed with the words “Mahigan County Fair.” There were scratched pie tins, empty metal milk cans, moth-eaten quits, bundles of dried flowers. A saddle, its leather cracked with age, rested next to a dust covered steel toolbox with “Waterloo Industries Inc. Key to Quality” stamped on the front. A porcelain headed doll in a delicate lace shift slept on a pair of unworn bibbed overalls. Countless other things. Small treasures. Some obvious antiques and some no more than a few years old.
Bags of seed corn were stacked nearby and I leaned on them to catch my breath. The bags looked almost new and were made of heavy paper emblazoned with a logo like an infinity symbol sprouting leaves. I heard a sound from behind me and forced myself deeper into the cavern, using the stacked bags as support. The further I went, the more the design of the bags changed. Paper gave way to heavy canvas printed with blocky letters spelling “Pioneer,” then rough spun cloth marked “Hi-Bred Corn Company Grimes, Iowa,” and finally unmarked burlap. I lost my footing and slipped, crashing through a pile of something that rattled and echoed through the cave walls. As I struggled to get back up, I pushed my free hand through something cold and damp. The smell of decay wafted into my nostrils as I pointed the phone’s light at the bloated organs of a dead deer. Instinctively, I knew it was the one I’d tripped over yesterday. Its spine had been severed and the back half of its body was missing. I wiped my hand futilely against its remaining fur. Standing, I could see the carcass laid at the base of a huge spilled pile of bones. Some were small, most were large. I’d knocked over one pile, but there were dozens more. Skulls, teeth, antlers, horns and hides of all kinds piled knee high and deep into the chambers beyond.
I heard a sound. A timid, tentative scratch from deeper into the cavern. I snapped the light off and pushed myself back against the limestone wall.
In that last moment before the darkness, I saw a sea of cold yellow eyes.