Scarecrow (20 page)

A much smaller shape drew back nearer the house, lost momentarily from my view.

“He fell! He wasn’t being careful, and he fell! That’s all it was! It didn’t have anything to do with me!”

A murmur, so soft and wispy, that it floated through the mist like a lost echo. “He didn’t fall,” Girlie said.

“He fell! He did! He was always forgetting to be careful, and you
know
it!”

“He didn’t fall,” Girlie said again.

I couldn’t see Franny’s expression, but her body went rigid and she fell back a step as if she’d been struck. The silence dragged on for so long that I could hardly resist the temptation to call out, but at last Franny’s voice sounded a croak.

“I…didn’t…I—”

“You did,” Girlie said sadly. “I know you did.”

Something about the tone of her voice chilled me as I hid there—chilled me all the way to my soul. I pressed my palms flat against the wall to keep from shaking.

“She shouldn’t have tried to leave,” Franny said, more angry now than frightened. “She should have taken me
with
her! I asked her to, and she should have listened to me!”

“You told,” was all that Girlie said, but Franny must have grabbed her, for her voice gave a sudden jolt.

“Micah couldn’t take it, that’s all—he was never as strong as the rest of us, you know that—he just couldn’t take it anymore! It’s not a surprise, is it? It’s not a surprise at all, Micah being the way he was, it would have happened sooner or later anyhow. I didn’t
make
it happen—it just
did
—”

“You,” repeated Girlie dully.

“Not me! Not me, Girlie,
listen
! You could bring him back!” Franny’s voice was taut now, insistent, and I could feel perspiration on my brow as I strained to hear. “You could bring him back again. It wouldn’t be anything for you! Think how happy Rachel would be if you did that. Why, she’d love you more than anybody!” Franny’s voice broke, her words tumbling out in a senseless mixture of wheedling and tears. “Damn you, Girlie, you bring him back, you hear? I didn’t mean for this to happen. I never wanted Micah to die! Now you do what I say—just bring him back right now!”

There was a soft scuffle, as if they had pushed at each other, bodies struggling against the side of the house. I heard a whimper, and then Girlie’s voice came out of the darkness, eerie and detached—

“All right, I will bring something back,” she said, and the strange tinny sound of her voice quivered on a breath of cold wind.

“Girlie—” Franny began, and another voice came out of the darkness, calling wearily from the back porch—

“Girlie! Franny! Time for supper now!”

But I couldn’t stop shaking.

Even after the confrontation ended, I stood there in my hiding place, trying to repiece the conversation I’d just heard, phrase by phrase, sound by sound. At the interruption of Rachel’s voice I’d heard Franny’s feet running off into the woods, but Girlie had stayed where she was for some time, hovering there below my window like an indecisive spirit, mumbling things I couldn’t make out. Unnerved, I sank onto the bed, lost in thought.
He didn’t fall. There was no rockslide.
And it kept stamping itself into my mind, new implications looming dark and ugly and insane—
he didn’t fall…he just couldn’t take it anymore…it would have happened sooner or later.

“Oh, Micah,” I whispered. And maybe it wasn’t so insane after all, maybe it made perfect sense that someone in torment for so long should at last take his own destiny in hand, put himself beyond the reach of suffering. My eyes swelled with tears; in the lonely darkness I tried to hold off the relentless visions but couldn’t. How many times, I wondered, had Micah realized what he’d done…how many times after how many murders had he been touched with a moment of complete and utter awareness, felt the horror and tragedy of what he’d done? Like a time bomb, I thought numbly…a slow, steady clock ticking madly away in his brain, until at last—

“You told.”

I stiffened and stared blindly into the shadows. Somehow—somehow—Franny must have found out about Micah’s thwarted attempt to kill me. She must have guessed that I was hoping to escape that night, which could only have made her angrier, since I’d already refused to take her with me. Poor Franny…Groaning, I lowered my head to my hands, shaking it sadly at what must have followed. Seth had told me that Micah probably wouldn’t remember asking me to meet him in the barn that night—that he’d probably have no recollection afterward of plotting—and failing—to kill me. Again I remembered Seth’s prophecy. It would kill Micah if he knew what he really was, Seth had said…he’d never be able to forgive himself…

“Oh, Franny,” I mumbled, “what have you done…”

“You told.”

She must have gone to him. Deliberately. Still hurting from my unintended slight, she must have gone straight to Micah and told him what he’d almost done. When had Franny told him, accused him to his face, shared the awful knowledge of a secret his whole family had kept from him? I shook my head, trying not to see Micah’s face, but it came back to me—again—again—so innocent, so pure. How had he looked when Franny told him the truth? Disbelief at first? Hurt? Anger? And then—finally—a creeping kind of horror and repulsion as he realized what it all meant?

“No…no…” Tears trailed down my cheeks as the images kept coming, as I tried uselessly to hold them at bay. How many hours had he thought about it—dwelled upon it—the reality of it taking tighter and tighter hold until he couldn’t bear the truth of it any longer? I hit my fists against the bed, moaning into the blankets so nobody would hear. And still I saw that dark room under the barn floor…the chains…the scars on Micah’s scrawny wrist…Micah’s limp body in Seth’s arms….

“Why,
Franny? Why’d you do it?” I sobbed into my pillow, for Micah, for Rachel’s grief and for my own.

I caught my breath, listening.

From downstairs came the shuffle of feet, the scraping of chairs, the clatter of pans sending up warm aromas of food. I heard Rachel call me to supper, the deep undercurrent of Seth’s voice, the squeal of the pump gushing water outside the back door. Yet those weren’t the sounds that made me sit up now, that made me steal a furtive glance toward my window, to the night drifting in like a black fog.
What was that noise?

Slowly I rose and moved to the window, holding my breath as I gazed down into the moonless yard. A clump of damp leaves, hurled by the wind, exploded against the house, causing me to jump back in alarm—and as I did, I sensed a movement through the trees at one edge of the woods.

That was the direction of the smokehouse.

Tensing, I stood there for several minutes more, my eyes riveted on the swaying branches, the shapeless mass of shadows beneath. Only the wind, I argued with myself—that and my increasingly paranoid imagination.

I forced myself to turn away and go down for supper. The meal, as so many had been since Micah’s death, was quiet and strained. There was no laughter. The food seemed strangely tasteless. Franny said nothing. Seth and Rachel ate across from each other without lifting their eyes. Even Girlie kept her head down, only looking at me once when she drank from her cup and glanced around. I saw her eyes linger on Micah’s empty chair, and I looked away.

We cleaned up the kitchen in silence. Rachel, looking exhausted, took Girlie and herself off to bed. I followed not long after, then heard Franny go to her room. I lay awake a long while, listening to the sounds of Seth extinguishing the lamps, lowering the windows against a possible shower. Normally comforting sounds, they brought no comfort.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the argument I’d heard beneath my window. That Franny had ultimately been responsible for Micah’s suicide was tragic enough, but haunting me so mercilessly were Franny’s demands to Girlie—
“You could bring him back…just bring him back right now.”

The whole idea was so shocking—so
unbelievable,
as absurd as the suggestions that Girlie had saved my life or healed Franny’s burns. I wished I could just laugh at the total ridiculousness of it all—but instead I felt a curious and terrible dread. Franny’s insistence had been much too passionate.

As if she truly believed that Girlie could grant her request.

Yet Girlie’s answer had frightened me even more.

“All right, I will bring something back.”

Why was I so cold? Micah was dead, and with him the terrible family secret that had plagued them all for so long.

Micah was dead, and Girlie was just a child.

There was nothing to worry about now.

Yet sleep didn’t come so easily. I tossed and turned through the night, slipping at last into a fitful doze, when something jarred me awake again.

A child’s voice …not so far away…whispering on the other side of my wall.

Murmuring…over and over…as if reciting a favorite nursery rhyme.

“Something…something…something back.”

“T
HE BRIDGE IS OUT,
” Seth announced grimly at dinner the next day. I looked up from my coffee in time to see the weary lines deepen around Rachel’s eyes.

“Oh, no—can it be fixed?”

“Not till the rain lets up.” He finished off a slab of pork and gravy and gave his plate an impatient shove. “Damn thing’s busted all to hell—”

“Micah could have fixed it in no time,” Rachel said dreamily. “He was good at building things. It was never any trouble to him.”

I stared at her in mild surprise, then caught Seth staring at her in the same way. On his way out the door he paused and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You look tired,” he said.

They were the first kind words I’d ever heard him speak to her.

As the door banged behind him we all turned at the sound of the rain. It had started up again in the night and kept up steadily all morning. By the looks of the leaden sky it would probably be with us for a long time.

“Does that mean Dewey can’t get here?” I asked uneasily.

Rachel gazed at me as it my words weren’t quite sinking in. At last she moved her head as if to clear it. “It’s the only way in from the outside. Unless he walks from his place to ours through the hills.”

I nodded halfheartedly, listening to the strains of organ music that floated eerily from the parlor as Franny and Girlie began a song.

“I…wish you wouldn’t leave now,” Rachel said softly.

I watched her go through the slow motions of drying dishes, her eyes fixed, staring at nothing.

“You’ve been a comfort to me, Pamela. A real comfort, what with Micah and all. I know you want to go home, but I wish—” She focused on me at last, then broke off at the unhappy look on my face. “It’s wrong of me to ask you Pamela. I’m sorry.”

I looked away quickly, guilt and shame stabbing through my heart, not wanting her to see the self-loathing I felt everytime she was kind to me. It was true—my presence had seemed to comfort her since Micah’s death, though I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was my own loss, my own grief that she sensed and reached out for and clung to—the instinct of a drowning woman reaching for a lifeline. I was glad I could be there for her, yet still mortified by my terrible secret. I could never ever let her know—and the shameful burden made me want to avoid her even as I wanted to be close to her.

“I think I’ll just lay down for a spell,” Rachel said quietly, and I watched her as she floated listlessly from the kitchen. I ached for her.

Sighing, I stood at the open door, staring out into the yard. When I’d first come here, there had been patches of grass and a few clumps of fading flowers, but since the rains had started, the yard had turned into a soggy mess. Someone had laid wide planks here and there to serve as stepping stones through the mud, but now I could see the water creeping up over the boards. The day was as gloomy as my mood. I pressed my nose to the screen and wondered what day it was, if anyone had missed me by now, if anyone cared…

I jumped as something small and clammy wormed its way into my hand.

Girlie was standing there, looking up at me, her eyes round, frowning.

“What is it?” I asked her, sensing something was wrong.

She gave a sharp tug on my arm and used her other hand to push open the screen, still regarding me soberly over her shoulder. “Come,” she whispered.

“Where? Can’t you tell me where?”

A firm shake of her head. Another tug on my arm, more insistent. Reluctantly, I gave in.

“All right, then, show me.”

The wind pelted us as soon as we stepped outside. I wrestled my wet hair back from my face, trying to see. The farm was drenched. The world was drenched. As we made our way laboriously across the yard I put up an arm to shield my face, but Girlie was still pulling me along, apparently unconcerned about the weather lashing us from all sides. It was with relief that I finally spotted the outline of the barn through the downpour; with both of us pushing, the door finally gave and we fell inside.

The barn had held its fill of terrors for me before, but now it seemed wonderfully cozy. Warm and dry, it surrounded us with gentle murmuring sounds and musty memories of summer days. I shook out my hair and plucked my wet clothes away from my skin, while Girlie took down some lanterns and gave us a little more light. Her expression was blank, and I rubbed at the chill on my arms.

“What is it?” I said now, moving toward her. “What do you want me to see?”

Without a word she turned and headed for the rear of the barn, moving in and out of the shadows as if she were one of them and knew their ways. As the lamplight bobbed deeper and deeper into the darkness, I had the fleeting sensation of pursuing something not quite real. For one second I lost sight of her and a prick of apprehension stopped me in my tracks—then there she was again, bending over, and as she set the lantern on the floor, her shadow shot up the wall, a monstrous thing.

I saw now what she had in mind, and every nerve in my body went painfully erect, hair rising slowly along my neck and arms.

She was trying to lift that trapdoor in the floor.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I watched with widening eyes as Girlie raked her feet back and forth along the floor, trying to clear away the straw, as she knelt and began to pull…to pull…the heavy door not quite budging but instead sending out a moan that echoed into the farthest corners of the barn…