The Country Life

They worked together in silence, sitting back to back and working across dahlia beds on either side of the path, pulling weeds and tying stems. The peace of the physical work and the satisfaction that came from leaving something better than he found it was balm to Micah, as it always had been.

“Things are pretty much the same here,” she said. “Some new faces, some old ones missing, new children at the spring and fall festivals, new photos on our Memory Table in October for those passed on. I missed you, of course, but I knew I couldn’t make you stay.” She hesitated. “But I still wish you had.”

“Everything changed for me,” he said in response. “I had to find my own way. I don’t regret it.” He hesitated too, then added, “But sometimes I wish I’d stayed.”

He worked along his row of dahlias in silence for a moment, pausing as his hand touched a rare "Tommy Keith" dahlia. He found himself lost in a memory of her hands on his as he tried to open the flower press, two of the rare Tommy Keiths and a Union Jack dahlia in his hand. He must have been about 11. "You know," she said, "I always hang the rarest upside down to dry, or sell them fresh. The press doesn't always work, especially on these big ones that look like pom-poms."

He looked up at her uncertainly. "It's ok," she said. "You didn't know. But with some things, it's better to let them hang in the air. Some things are too precious to press."

Recalling that moment, he remembered with a caught breath that once, before he understood something of her darkness, he had seen her as his safest harbor. “Did you…” his voice faltered. He tried again. “Did you send me a box?”

She stilled, her back to him. He turned to look at her, reading her answer in the set of her shoulders and the preternatural silence radiating from her. Unintentionally, she reacted by not reacting. This was one of the things he’d learned to read about her all those years ago.

“You did. I knew it must have been you. It was the bronze cross that used to sit on my desk in its little stand. Like a woven metal God’s Eye at the center, like the ones you taught me to make with yarn or grass when I was little. With longer arms and a circle around the head – a mix of a God’s Eye and the Celtic crosses you see in jewelry shops.

“It saved my life.”

He said it simply. It was true. He still didn’t know how, but it was true.

That night, the wind had picked up and a forlorn, determined drizzle spread over the city. As he walked down the alley toward the small apartment he shared with his beloved, he felt a chill on the back of his neck, as if a shadow had crossed overhead. He stopped and looked up, but saw nothing. He opened his umbrella and continued on, his frayed boots slapping wetly against the asphalt. There was no traffic here this time of night. He walked right down the middle of the alley cobbles, unconcerned about cars, trying to avoid the tiny rivers streaming down the gutters and the sidewalk.

Again he turned as the feeling of being watched pressed down on him. He knew that things could lurk out there in the dark. Lianna had shown him that. He never ignored that little voice when something seemed to whisper at him from the night. And that little voice was ringing loudly in his head now.

He looked up at the edge of the rooflines above and took several quick steps back, managing to avoid the curb and press his back against the brick of the shop behind him. The windows were shuttered and dark, the patrons and the owners gone home for the night. The street was silent. Against the night sky, hovering just above the roofline, was the figure of a man. Wingless, he hung motionless against the night. Micah couldn’t see his eyes, but he could feel them.

A trench coat billowed around the apparition as he slid soundlessly down the roof and wall, until his feet touched the wet sidewalk. His movements somehow reminded Micah of a snake, wet skin slipping and slithering through shallow waters.

He had seen this apparition before, on the night of his wedding. Then, revelers had surrounded him and his beloved had swept him from the balcony back into the crowded ballroom. He had almost forgotten the watcher on the railing until this moment in the blur of joyful memories. Now, though, it came full force back to him.

“Who are you?” he cried into the night. “What do you want? Why are you following me?”

“Micah?” Her voice brought him back to himself.

“I saw another one,” he said slowly. A creature…” he stopped himself. “Something. Something like you, Lianna.”

Her shoulders slumped, but she hadn’t turned to look at him. “I know.”

That night, a tiny electronic drone hoisting a tinier package had turned the corner and headed steadily toward Micah in a supremely surreal moment. The spell of dread surrounding him was broken as its electronic buzz filled the alley. The little white copter hovered before him. As he held out a hand, it released the package so that it landed in Micah’s palm. Micah reached for it, but it reversed direction with surprising quickness and disappeared back down the alley as quickly as it had come.

Micah dropped the battered brown paper box to disintegrate in the rivulets covering the street. He lifted a small bundle wrapped in red velvet.

Before he could open it, the creature was on him, pressing its clawed hands into either side of Micah’s head, piercing his skin. He cried out, clutching the bundle to his chest. With the sigh of a need fulfilled, the man-thing opened its mouth, stretching his jaw wide. Fangs unfolded from his upper jaw like a snake’s, and like a snake he struck, making contact with Micah’s neck – but he jerked back before the bite could be completed. His chest had made contact with the bundle in Micah’s hands. There were no physical effects that Micah could see, but it winced, and put its hand to its chest as if in pain.

Micah unwrapped the bundle to find his old bronze cross resting in the palm of his hand. Grasping it by the long lower arm, he held it aloft toward the creature. “This feels like a bad vampire movie,” he muttered softly. But listening to the creature hiss as it crouched at a distance, he didn’t much care. It seemed to work. He backed away, picking up the velvet and his umbrella from the sodden street, and turned to run.

The creature was on him almost immediately, but he pressed the bronze cross against its nose as it tried again to bite. It stumbled back, a strange wild sound in its throat, its nose covered by one long hand as the other clawed at him, but missed. There was a strange satisfaction in Micah at the memory of his nose broken by elementary school enemies so long ago, as if this was a bizarre payback years in the making.

He turned and ran again, only steps from his door now. That door would be unlocked, expecting him at any moment. If he could just reach it…

The thing was on him again, its arms wrapped around his throat. “It’s barefoot,” was his odd thought as its feet scrabbled against his back, the sharp nails drawing blood. Again he slapped his cross against the only piece of flesh he could reach, a bare shin where a pantleg pulled back as it tried to wrap around his midsection. It kicked and howled, but didn’t let him go. He reached the door and threw it open. “Hayden,” he cried out, calling for help. As he fell across the threshold, the beast let him go as if clotheslined by an invisible barrier. It fell hard to the street and lay still for a moment.

Nonplussed, Micah looked at it from the floor of his hall, motionless where he’d fallen. After a moment, the creature rolled to a crouch and contemplated him without approaching. His fingers scrabbled on the hall rug for the cross, which had left his hand when he fell. Locating it after a breathless moment, he inched toward the door with it held before him like a shield.

His lips began to move as she had taught him, without conscious thought. He prayed with a fervor he hadn’t felt since his days as a tiny child at his mother’s side. “Brighid, you were voice for the wounded and the weary. Strengthen what is weak within us. Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens. May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body, and spirit.” He repeated the prayer quietly and quickly.

Whether it was the prayer, the cross, or some other force he couldn’t quite grasp, the creature seemed to grow smaller against the night. The rain began to come down harder, the soft drizzle turning to heavy, noisy drops that splashed down around it in the dark. After a few moments it stood with a dignified grace, straightened the lapels of its coat in a curiously civilized motion, and turned to walk away down the street with the easy poise of a businessman heading home from a late meeting. Micah shuddered, and shut the door.

Sitting in the dark by the dahlia bed, Micah shuddered again. Suddenly, he felt her hand on his shoulder.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was me. I knew you’d never consent to see me, but I told you this long ago, when you were a sad little boy looking for meaning. Sometimes you won’t be able to see me, but I will always take care of you. Ok?”

He found a comfort in those words, just as he had as a lonely little boy. “Ok.” Tonight, he was content to let the mystery hang in the air. Some things were too precious to press. In silence, they continued their work in the dahlias until the sun began to lighten the sky.