Scarecrow (14 page)

I’m not certain what woke me. I sat up with a start, blinking sleepily, trying to remember where I was. The room was bathed in deep shadows—the lamps had burned low, and the flickering fire sent pulsing shapes up the walls, making the little room throb with a repressed life of its own. Seth’s chair was empty; there was no one on the rug beside the hearth. I shook my head, trying to clear it, wondering uneasily why everyone had gone off and left me.

I got up slowly, crossing to the window where the frosty air scraped branches across the glass like groping fingers. The yard was awash with silver, a ghostly moon bobbing among the trees and torn ribbons of clouds. A light fog crept up from the woods like smoke, swirling around the tree trunks and the corners of the house. I hugged myself against the damp and turned around to go.

The eyes were watching me from the darkness.

For one split second my scream caught in my throat—I stumbled over the edge of the rug and flung my arms out for balance, feeling instantly the cold clutch of human fingers on mine…

“Girlie!”

I was shaking so badly I collapsed in a heap on the nearest bench, watching the little figure take human form in a pale circle of firelight. Her eyes were so large and serious that I had the fleeting impression of an owl’s head superimposed on a child’s body, and I stared at her with a strange feeling of unreality.

“Oh, Girlie, you frightened me half to—”

“Ssh…” One tiny finger went to her lips, and my words trailed off into silence. “Ssh,” she whispered again and then motioned that she wanted me to come.

“What the—” I began, but she disappeared into the shadows, and I got up at once to follow. She passed noiselessly through the kitchen, seeming to float, not walk, and as I stumbled along behind, trying to dodge furniture without making a sound, I saw her pause at the back door, her finger still held to her lips. I stopped, straining my ears for a sound from upstairs, but there was nothing, and after another moment she slipped so silently through the door that I wondered crazily if she had passed right through the screen.

I was glad I had warm clothes on. The wind whipped up beneath my skirt, and as I followed Girlie across the yard, my lungs began to ache. Girlie seemed oblivious to the weather, hurrying purposely along without even a candle to guide her, drawn to some destination with curious intensity. With growing uneasiness I wondered what I was doing out here, if it was some sort of trap, and as my feet faltered I glanced around nervously, remembering that terrifying night in the barn. The yard was translucent; even Girlie seemed unreal, wraithlike as she shimmered along ahead of me in her white nightgown, eyes seeing perfectly in the dark, steering us unhesitatingly through shadows…trees…around the sides of the barn…

I hurried breathlessly around the last corner and stopped in confusion.

Girlie had disappeared.

Night shadows clung to the eaves of the old building, shifting shapes all around me, but none of them was Girlie.

I was alone.

Fear gripped me then, the sickening reality of having trusted and been fooled, and as I turned to flee, a little hand came out of nowhere and wrapped around mine like a cold glove.

“Oh, Girlie, you—”

“Ssh.” It was darker here—much darker—yet still I could see her eyes, round and full and knowing, shining through the gloom. I felt a tug on my hand, and then cautiously, reluctantly, I followed her into the barn.

Blackness swallowed us like a living thing. I hung back, braced in the doorway, silently berating myself for being so stupid, when all at once there was a scratch and a hiss, and a lamp sputtered to life. The barn glowed into hazy focus. Girlie held the lantern above her head, stared at me, then beckoned me to follow.

The animals stirred restlessly as we passed. As we neared the far wall I felt my suspicions rising—still I could see nothing that might justify my being spirited from the house in the middle of the night. But just as I was about to demand an explanation, Girlie set the lamp on the floor, dug some straw away with her fingers, and pointed to a spot beside her bare feet.

Puzzled, I went forward, narrowing my eyes in the half-light. And then I saw it. A metal ring. About six inches in diameter, it seemed to be attached to the floor.

I glanced at Girlie uncertainly, the tang of fear in my throat. She made a motion with her hand, indicating that I should pull the ring,

I stared back at her, not moving. Girlie had said she liked me, that I was her friend…surely she hadn’t lured me out here to trick me, to lead me straight into some terrible danger…

I looked at her, unable to move. And then I saw a glimmer in her eyes, a
knowing,
as if she completely understood my reluctance—and as she gave an almost imperceptible nod, she went down on her knees and began tugging at the ring herself. Sheepishly I knelt beside her, and as I gripped the cold metal, she gave me an odd little smile.

The handle was heavier than it looked. I tugged once…twice…and on the third try I finally felt a section of the floor come loose and pull away, raising like a lid from a black hole below.

It looked like a bottomless pit.

As a rush of cold, dank air struck my face, I gasped and closed my eyes. When I looked again, Girlie was disappearing into the hole, taking the lamp with her. “Here,” she whispered, and her voice echoed hollowly throughout the barn. I cast an anxious glance over my shoulder and followed her below, trying to shake off the awful feeling we were being watched.

The room flickered into focus, a tiny space only about six feet square. It was musty and cold, and a thick layer of dust and straw littered the floor. In one corner lay a smelly pile of blankets and rugs. Without the lamp the place would have been totally and hopelessly dark.

“What is this, Girlie? Some sort of cellar?” Yet I didn’t see any windows, any shelves, no jars or kegs to suggest any sort of storage. When she didn’t answer, I glanced over and saw her staring at the clump of blankets. “What, Girlie? What is it?”

I followed her gaze down onto the floor, shivering a little, wondering what it was that had her attention—a rat?—a spider? And still she said nothing, only stared and stared at the untidy heap on the floor.

I watched it for several long moments, making sure it didn’t move. “Girlie, there’s nothing there,” I said.

But I was wrong.

As I moved the lamp closer and began pulling the blankets away from the wall, I saw what she was looking at.

I saw the steel rings protruding from the wall, and the lengths of rusty chain that hung from each, coiling in a tangle upon the straw. And the way some of the straw was matted. And how it looked dark and brown like very old blood that had dried…

“Girlie—” I choked, and when I looked up, her huge, scary eyes throbbed with tears.

“Sometimes Micah has to stay here,” she said. “But not much more—”

“What? What are you saying—”

“Not much more,” her voice wavered, sending a chill straight through my heart, and her whisper echoed emptily in the gloom. “Micah’s going to die.”

B
Y SOME MIRACLE WE
made it back to the house before anyone missed us. Warming my frozen hands at the fire, I was surprised to see the mantel clock had only crept ahead by minutes. I felt half my life had been taken from me in those last heart-stopping seconds. Now Girlie wouldn’t talk to me, not a word, and as she sat on the hearth, I fought to compose myself, hearing Rachel’s familiar step in the hall.

“There you are, Miss Girlie, I’ve been looking all over for you!” Rachel held out her hand, and Girlie obediently took it. “And I see you’re awake now, too!” Rachel patted my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to go off and leave you like that. I went to check on Franny and we talked a while.”

“Is she still upset with me?”

Rachel paused, looking apologetic. “She didn’t tell me what happened between the two of you today. But please don’t worry. I’m sure she just overreacted.”

“I don’t want it to be like this,” I said truthfully. “I like Franny so much—”

“Oh, and she likes you.” Rachel gave me a hug. “Just like we all do. Ready for bed now?”

“I guess we are.” I glanced at Girlie, nodding. “We went out and looked at the moon and told some fine stories, didn’t we, Girlie?”

“Ah, so that’s where you ran off to,” Rachel scolded lovingly, guiding Girlie up the stairs. “Well, now, Pamela, I’m sure you have a friend for life.”

We said our good-nights, and I went to my room, closing the door gratefully. My hands were shaking as I undressed and climbed into bed, and I pulled the covers up snugly, knowing they’d do little to assuage the chill inside me.

Chains! And that clotted mass of straw and blood…

“My God, what’s going on here?” The sound of my own voice helped steady me somewhat, yet I huddled there miserably, racking my brain, trying to make sense of it all.
Micah…going to die?
But why? How? Another of Girlie’s little prophecies—
out of the mouths of babes.
But hadn’t she been right about other things…things she couldn’t possibly,
possibly
have known…things I still didn’t want to believe…didn’t
dare
to believe.
But I have to believe them, how can I not believe them when they’re true…I don’t know how…but they are…

Stop it! I told myself sternly. There had to be an explanation for everything—some logical, albeit strange, explanation for everything that was happening here. I thought of that little room again and shuddered. It was obviously meant to be hidden, and something—some wounded something—had very definitely been chained down there.
Micah?

The whole suggestion seemed preposterous. Micah with his angelic face who was too shy even to look at me straight on; Micah who had promised to help me leave this place, then mysteriously seemed to forget; Micah who was hardly ever around…
“Sometimes Micah has to stay here.”
But
why?
It seemed impossible to me that Micah would ever need to be punished for anything, even more impossible that anyone could have the heart to chain him up.

But of course I knew that there was one person who
could
be capable of such a thing.

Seth.

Sitting up in bed, I clutched my pillow tight against my chest.
Seth.
Yes, he’d surely have the stomach for such a distasteful job—but his
own son?
As obsessively protective of his family as Seth was, it seemed unlikely that he could ever be cruel to Micah. No, it had to be something more, something I was altogether missing. Squeezing my eyes shut, I let my mind race back over the days I’d been here…what I’d seen…what I’d heard…So many times I’d wondered where Micah was, why I hadn’t seen him in the house or at meals or doing some outside job. How everytime I’d brought up his name, I’d been met with some evasive answer, brushed off with excuses of how shy he was. With growing unease I revisualized how specifically reluctant everyone had been to discuss Micah with me. But why? Drawing my legs up, I rested my forehead wearily on my knees. Both Franny and Rachel had said, “
I can’t talk about Micah.”

A shiver convulsed me. I gathered the blankets around me, and huddled there, willing myself to stop shaking, to think clearly. “
I can’t talk about Micah.”
—and what else had Franny said after that—
“Seth wouldn’t like it.”
My fingers plucked nervously at the bedclothes.
Seth wouldn’t like it.
At the time I’d merely passed it off as part of his suspicious nature. But now a different perspective entered my head—was there something about Micah that Seth, that the women were trying to hide? I rocked back and forth, slowly, thinking. Something else was gnawing at me, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. There was something else pushing me to remember—but what?

Thoroughly frustrated, I closed my eyes, picturing the house hidden in its hollow, the black endless hills that enclosed it from the world. A person could disappear forever up here, never be found again. When Micah had warned me behind the house that day, he’d made my being here seem so dangerous and mysterious, and I hadn’t understood.

He’d made it sound as if I had to
escape,
not just leave.

Now I thought back to Rachel’s concern about Dewey, how he should have been here by now, how it wasn’t like him to be off-schedule after all these years. I thought of Girlie’s unsettling announcement that Dewey wasn’t coming. And all the strange things that Girlie had said to me that she couldn’t have known. And now this—that Micah was going to die.

Part of me fought back panic at the thought. Girlie had refused to say any more about it when I’d pressed her for details, just staring at me with her wet, tragic eyes until I’d had to steel myself not to shake her. I didn’t know what to do—say something to Micah? Warn Seth? Tell Rachel? Even if I did, would they even believe me? And what about Micah’s plan to get me out of here—had it been a game? Was he still playing it? Should I encourage him to come with me and escape his fate? Should I even trust him at all?

And that’s when I realized what had been nagging me all this time, what had been slowly curling its icy fingers around my heart.

It had been just this evening, when Franny had flared up in the kitchen, angry with me and Rachel and the whole unfair world—her words as she’d stood there, scraping meat scraps and garbage into the big tin—
“Why you keep trying to protect everybody.”
Meat scraps and garbage so much like the rancid smell in the dirt, in the straw that was dried brown with old blood…

Why you keep trying to protect everybody
—

And I rolled over, breathing deeply of the damp, chilled air…
I can’t talk about Micah…
thinking how Girlie had tried to tell me…thinking of his sweet angelic face…
Sometimes Micah has to stay here…
not wanting to believe…
Micah’s going to die.

“H
AVE YOU CHANGED YOUR
mind about going?” Rachel asked me, glancing over at Seth who was buttering a thick stack of pancakes.

This was the earliest I’d ever been up, but the truth of it was that I hadn’t slept a wink all night. I glanced across at Franny picking listlessly at her food, noting the dark circles beneath her eyes.