Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.
By
R. Peterson
Melania
raced the truck around a bend in the road, wanting to hurry but also afraid of
what she might see. The farm was on fire! The old truck bounced and lurched
violently the last hundred yards before sliding sideways to a stop in the
smoke-filled barn yard. Melania leaped from the truck and ran toward the house;
here,
a cross of flames blazed, yards from the fire engulfing the porch. Terror
gripped harder as she realized the cross was made of lodge-pole pine logs, and
someone had deliberately planted in front their front yard. Never mind that!
Find Momma!, she told herself fiercely, but then she was blown back by the
blistering heat. “If the water barrels are still next to the garden, bring as
many as you can plus the hand pump,” She yelled at the Momett family staring
wide-eyed at the carnage.
Melania wrapped her
headscarf across her face and tried to search every part of the farm the gypsy
family had acquired and had lived in for the last thirty years. “Momma!” she
sobbed between coughs. Terrified cows bellowed from inside the large barn and
all the farm’s outbuilding were burning. Smoke, embers and flames twisted toward
the gawping moon like a demonic spiral staircase. The skin on Melania’s fingers
sizzled on the barn door’s metal handles, but she held on and slid the doors
open, only to be knocked to the ground by Bessie and Bonnet stampeding to
safety. The flanks of Bessie’s bristly hide were scorched and smoking.
Bolger and Dorothy came
rolling a water-barrel around the side of the barn; Brian carried the garden
pump and hose. Just then, a dozen barrels of corn alcohol hidden in the hay
loft exploded sending the cedar-shake roof upward and outward in all
directions. For a moment the night turned bright as mid-day, and praise heaven,
she’d found Momma. Jesska lay on the ground in the apple orchard under a smoldering
pile of home-sewn broadcloth. Bloody bracelets of charred-rope still dangled
from her wrists where she had freed herself from the burning cross.
“The Ombré,” Jesska
moaned as her frantic daughter rolled her over and lifted her head. “It’s still
in the house … you must bring it out!”
“You’re more important
than any magic box!” Melania shouted. Her mother’s skin blistered before her
eyes, to reveal charred blackened flesh.
“I am the Ombré … and the Ombré is me,”
Jesska gasped. ”Without the recipes that the carved-box holds, the future that was and the future that will be … are both gone forever!”
Melania decided now was
not the time to fight with her mother. The small box, carved from the enchanted
wood of a black Juhar tree and
brought to America from Italy, was her mother’s most cherished possession.
“Attach the pump to the water-barrel and get me as wet as you can!” she told
the wide-eyed Momett crowded around her mother.
After Melania was
thoroughly soaked with the hose she wrapped herself in a tarp and told them to
soak it too. “Keep spraying me with the water … keep me as wet as you can for
as long as possible … but don’t try to follow me inside the house. Jesska needs
you here with her!”
Melania covered her
head with the wet tarp and lunged through the burning doorway. She had walked
from the farmyard into the kitchen a thousand times; still it was different
when everything was on fire! She turned left trying to find the sink. A burning
plank from the ceiling fell and struck her head. For a moment she was
disoriented. The room appeared to be spinning. Melania closed her eyes and
forced her eyes to re-focus. When she opened her eyes again the sink with the
shelf above it was visible through the smoke. There was a crackling sound as
she reached for the box. Melania realized the tarp covering her had caught
fire. There was nothing to do but cast it off. The heat was impossible her wet
clothing was instantly turning to steam. “I tried mother,” Melania whispered.
All she wanted to do before the flames consumed her was touch the box … if she
could do that … if she could touch the sacred wood. Melania stretched out her
hand …. Just as the entire roof collapsed covering her with charred wood and
burning embers.
-------2-------
“You tell anybody what
I gots hid in there and I’ll cut off your legs and skin what’s left,” Lavar
Hicks warned Vern Pool as he caught two squawking chickens from the rusty-wire
pen and carried them by their legs to the dilapidated barn. Hicks left one warped
and splintered door open so they could see in the dim light. Pool could see
something swinging by a rope from the ceiling but couldn’t tell what it was.
Hicks grabbed his ears and forced him to look where he wanted. “There under
them grain sacks in the corner is a door … lift it … but be ready to dance back
real quick if you like your arms!”
Pool lifted a dozen
grain sacks and stacked them to the side and then had to brush-away loose straw
covering the ground with his boots before he saw the trap-door. It looked like
the storm shutter off a fancy house window and Hicks had mounted it to a frame
staked into the ground. “You dig this hole?” Pool said as he lifted the door
and stared into a black pit … the smell made him gag and he couldn’t see the
bottom.
“I had some chinks dig it,” Hicks said. “All them
China-mans knows how to do is jabber sos they ain’t gonna’ be tellin’ nobody
nothin!”
“How deep is it?” Pool
stared at the perfect square dug in the barn floor.
“Ten foot … but I ain’t
been down there to measure!” Hicks laughed. “This is just the in an out …
they’s a whole room down there with a timbered-up roof and walls.”
“How does what’s down
there get ..” Pool didn’t have time to finish his question when Hicks tossed
one of the chickens into the hole. There was two or three squawks and then a
second of silence before the chicken screamed, a sound Pool never before heard,
and hoped never to hear again. He stumbled back as blood-coated guts and
feathers exploded from the hole like a small bomb.
“Damn thing is shore
hungry ain’t he?” Hicks was laughing and doing a little dance. A thundering
howl came from the pit and made the hairs on Vern Pools’ neck stand on end. It
sounded like some kind of animal trying to say … more.
“You’ll get the other
one when your chores are done!” Hicks sounded like he was talking to a young
child as he held up the chicken.
“Chores?” Pool mouth hung
open. He could vaguely see something large with dark hair and monstrous eyes
peering up. In an instant a hairy arm covered with rotting cloth reached up and
clamped clawed fingers onto his leg.
“Not him! Damn-it!”
Hicks stabbed at the hand with a pitch-fork until it let go of Pool’s leg.
Hicks removed a lady’s white bonnet from where it
had been tucked behind his belt and tossed it into the hole. “You sniff it good
and go find. You’ll get another-un … when you brings this un back with blood on
it!”
“Where
did you get that?” Pool watched the white cotton and lace disappear into the
dark.
“Off
from Mrs. White’s clothes line.” Hicks laughed. “She probably thinks the cat
took it.”
Pool swayed gaping and shaking … Hicks smiled and
continued to talk.
“That old bitch thought a hired-man like me wasn’t
good ‘nuf to court her prissy daughter,” Hicks’ voice became a whisper. “Now
let’s see how she likes being courted
by my hired help!”
“It
was you had this … thing … tear up
Sam Smith’s place!” Pool was beginning to understand.
“Too
damn bad Sam wasn’t home,” Hicks said. “Nobody never gonna call me a card-cheat
no more!”
Pool was limping as he followed Hicks out of the
barn. They almost ran to the house. Just before Hicks closed and barred the
door Pool noticed the pulley mounted above a hole in the barn roof and the rope
that lead to the ceiling of the room they were in.
“I
gots me a ladder in the barn hanging over the hole and I can lower or lift it
from right here,” Hicks said as he untied the rope from a hook in the wall.. ‘I
don’t go outside at all … when her chores
is being done!”
“Her?”
“Yup,”
Hicks smiled as he fed out the rope. “It’s a she and I figure it’s knocked-up …
Before three springs comes, I’m hoping to have me a whole herd of help on this farm!”
-------3-------
The
carved box was cold, not just cool but freezing. Melania felt like her blood
had turned to ice and her entire body had become sub-zero packed snow. She was
aware of the burning timbers and glowing embers falling about her but the Ombré
was creating a shield. Nothing touched her … nothing burned. This is what it’s like to be a candle-wick
inside a flame.
The charred table and chairs moved out of her way,
seemingly of their own accord. She looked around the room wondering what else
she should take. Several books flew from the burning shelves into her hands. There
wasn’t much left. Fire is greedy. The Roland
Rolfs’ Tall-Clock in the parlor chimed twelve times and looked strangely
untouched, She dragged it with her one free arm.
Bolger and Dorothy gasped when Melania came out of
the house carrying an armload of treasures and dragging a grandfather clock.
She appeared to be glowing like frosted glass on an oil lamp.
“I
got it, mother!” Melania dropped the clock and books when they were safely away
from the house. “Did you hear what I said?”
The two Momett looked terrified as they huddled over
the crumpled form on the ground. “Mother?”
Melania didn’t notice her mother was cold until her
own hands began to thaw. She appeared to be sleeping. Melania tried to shake
her. “Wake up mother … I got the Ombré!”
Brian
was crying …. for the first time.
“She
left us,” Bolger said. “Just as the clock in the house struck midnight.”
“The
wind came and took her spirit in a small gust,” Dorothy said. “She was like a
white hanky … come loose from a clothes line … flying up over the trees and far
off toward the east.”
-------4-------
The
clock on the dresser had just chimed twelve when Frank Jagger climaxed and
rolled off from Kit Malone. Kit lay on the rumpled bed and stared at the cracked
ceiling as Frank lit a cigarette. Prohibition had been repealed for the last
three years and now the all big time gangsters were all legitimate businessmen.
The last nine years living with Chicago’s most reckless private detective still
had been anything but boring but now in an instant something had changed. Kit
brushed painted fingernails across her lower abdomen. It was no longer just her
and Frank in the hotel room … there was another … she was sure she could feel …
her!”
“I
think I might be pregnant,” she whispered to Frank.
“Don’t
be a snoozle,” Frank laughed. “You’re too good a singer. Besides, no dame gets
knocked up just like that … and knows immediately!”
“I
know,” Kit insisted, with a protective hand on her tummy. “And put that cigarette out … smoking is
supposed to be bad for a baby … girl!”
Frank was too stunned to say anything as he ground
out the butt in an ashtray. Dames! Was this her way of saying she wanted a
ring?
-------5-------
Melania
stood with an arm around Dorothy and the other round Brian as Bolger dug the
grave. “There just isn’t time for a proper funeral,” she whispered. “We must
leave this place tonight!”
“But
why?” Bolger stopped digging.
“The
box whispers that we must leave,” Melania told him. “My mother always said all magia is trouble.”
“Where
will we go?” Dorothy began to cry for the first time and it proved to be
contagious.
“To
town to find my brother,” Melania sobbed, “and then …”
It was much harder to walk away from the farm than
anyone thought. Each step was like a tearing in the heart. A sadness worked its
way into the soul like December frost as they found the road to town. They
could have driven the truck but it didn’t seem right. The dark was fading … but
something was coming. Infinity is a closed structure there is no beginning … and
end.
The
moon slipped below the horizon as the wind and an ever-curious dawn approached.
The sky darkened and rumbled as storm clouds lay siege to the scorched land …
and the tears of the four and the falling rain became as one.
TO BE CONTINUED …
