Like Corn, We Grew In The Night

“Feels like a different world out here,” Diana said softly, and in her voice I heard the same unease I had felt since we had turned off the main road. I looked over at her. The partially open window was tugging stray strands of hair from the braid I had attempted that morning, and in the tilt of her head and lift of her chin I saw so many echoes of her mother that it caused a physical ache. She was watching the landscape flicker past with a slight frown. The corn had grown old; endless fields of it rose and fell in gentle swells on either side of the car, the stalks and fibrous leaves turned honey-rust and shivery in the October cold. Ahead, the sky was a rapidly spreading panoramic bruise: a gentle blue on either side, darkening into mottled mauve and metallic violet in the center. Hanging plumes of dust kicked up by our passage obscured the way back, closing off retreat.

Though I had followed my father-in-law’s directions to the letter, I was no longer certain that the road we were on was part of the scenic route that he had rhapsodized about. It felt vaguely like we were trespassing, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a house or driveway. I had nearly turned around several times, but I feared getting more ensnared in the maze of these identical corn-lined roads. All I knew was that if we kept south-by-southwest, we should emerge at the county line highway. Trouble was, the road we were on seemed reluctant to meet any others, almost as if bent on funneling us right into the storm that had sprung up without warning from the sea of corn.

Diana shifted her gaze from the passing stalks onto the storm clouds ahead. Gunmetal and indigo roses were blooming across the sky, and she crossed her arms, shrinking into herself.

“Dad, that looks pretty bad up there.”

“It’ll be alright, sweetheart.”

“Are we lost?”

We shouldn’t have been. I knew that it would have been all too easy to make a wrong turn out here, where the names of the roads seemed to have faded with the corn, but I was certain I had been on the right track. Something had gone terribly wrong, and it felt like we were completely off the map. I took Diana’s hand.

“Not a chance, Sundance. Grandpa said that eventually we would climb a tall hill and from the top we would see the broken down barn and the highway.”

“I haven’t seen any barns. There’s nothing out here at all.”

There it was. That delicate tremor that I had been waiting for, creeping into her voice like a drop of ink into a cup of water, small at first, ready to blossom and darken the whole glass. The fear that had been simmering inside me began to froth and spit.

We lapsed into a fraught silence, watching ahead as the lightning began to fracture the sky. My hands whitened on the wheel, and Diana was alert and tense beside me. After a dip into a deep valley, the road crawled upward for almost a mile. A false night dragged over us, blurring the edges of the day, and I began a silent prayer that this was the hill that Grandpa had mentioned. When we reached the top, a beautiful, terrible vista opened before us, a John Martin painting come alive; the storm had broken open the sky. Wraith-like clouds unfurled and cast down viscous swathes of rain, the blood of the storm shedding from bursting veins of lightning. The road led from us directly to the heart of the storm, dividing the corn like a center part on an ancient head of hair. In the foreground, a stout stone barn stood, lights twinkling from its front, the only structure on this vast, bilious landscape. There was no highway in sight.

Diana started crying silently, little sobs hitching her shoulders and chest.

“It’s okay, baby,” I said steadily, aware of my heartbeat and the nervous sweat beading on my brow. “We’re just going to go down there and see if we can park in that barn, and wait out the storm.”

I nosed the car down the hill, going as fast as I dared. The barn came into clearer view, and I saw that the lights hanging from the stone walls were tall lanterns, flickering flames adding a stifled orange to the tempestuous palette. The barn doors were open, and a low, alluring light emanated from within. I pointed the headlights into the interior of the barn, but saw only bales of hay.

Diana turned rigid in her seat. “I don’t want to go in there, Daddy,” she said flatly.

There was a thunk on top of the car, then another, and suddenly the world outside vanished behind a cloak of rain, and the sound inside the car was monstrous.

“I don’t think we have a choice!” I said loudly, and I pulled into the barn. Diana started crying harder than ever, covering her eyes with her hands.

Inside, the sound of the rain diminished, but the thunder caught up to us, like dulled primordial teeth grinding and gnashing from the mouth of the sky. I unbuckled and reached over to cradle Diana. We remained that way for a while, her sobs turning to whimpers and then to hiccups, and finally she quieted. I lifted my head and looked around the barn, taking in the old-fashioned farm tools- scythes, sickles, and pitchforks- that lined the walls. The light inside the barn suddenly bent and the shadows shifted, and I looked around in alarm. An old man with a lantern shuffled up to the car, and he rapped his gnarled knuckles on the window. I rolled it down, smelling the rush of old barn smells and taking in his odd appearance. He wore dark woolen trousers, kept up by a pair of suspenders that lined and criss crossed over the back of a linen shirt. A wide-brimmed, dun-colored boater hat cast a shadow over his face, but his eyes, deeply set in wrinkles, danced in the reflecting lamplight with an oddly merry mischief.

“Some storm, eh?” the man called, and his voice had a peculiar shift in it, not quite an accent, but a lilt or a burr somewhere in there that I couldn’t quite place.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I replied. “Is this your barn?”

“Aye, so it is,” the man said, and he leaned in and grinned at us, showing a mostly toothless mouth. I could feel Diana shrinking back from my window.

“Well, I apologize for trespassing, sir, but would it be alright if my daughter and I waited out the rain here?” Diana’s small hand was tugging on my shirtsleeve now.

“Well, of course!” the old man replied with unmistakable delight. “No need for apologies; this old barn has sheltered travelers for generations. It has withstood stronger squalls than this, I’ll tell you. I have naught to offer but shelter, I’m afraid, unless you’d take a meal of oats and hay with my old nags in the back,” he laughed gaily.

“No, I think we will be just fine,” I replied, feeling perversely discomfited by his good cheer. I wondered for a moment whether we would be better off braving the storm, pushing on to the highway, but that was absurd. Outside, lightning had begun illuminating the corn in syncopated flares and bursts, and the rain was now an impenetrable veil. Instead, thinking that perhaps I should offer the man some sort of recompense for his hospitality, I said, “I wish there was some way to repay you for your kindness.”

He shook his head emphatically and waved his hands, the lantern’s sway making the shadows of the hay bales spike and retreat. “I want for nothing, traveler, but to speed the passage of wanderers through these old hills. If you can give me that pleasure, I’ll feel as carefree as a child.” I felt a brief edge of wariness, like I was missing an important detail, but the man’s eyes were warm, and glimmered like old stars on a faraway sea.

“Well, alright, sounds fair.” I replied reasonably, feeling grateful and much more at ease. “Thank you, sir, we appreciate it.” Diana was pulling my sleeve even more frantically now, so I turned to her, saying, “It’s okay honey, this gentleman is going to let us ride out the storm here. We’re perfectly safe.”

“Daddy, I don’t like it here!” she exclaimed urgently, but I couldn’t understand what was bothering her. I gave her hand a conciliatory squeeze and turned back to the man, but he had gone.

“Did you see-” I asked Diana, looking around and checking my mirrors, but the man was nowhere in sight.

“Daddy, please, we need to go!” she cried, and I was startled to see that she was crying again, staring at me with wide, beseeching eyes.

“Diana, baby, enough with this foolishness. There is no way we are going back out there, not until this weather passes. What’s wrong?”

“This place is…” she paused, sniffling, “There’s something wrong here! We need to leave, right now!”

The smell of the barn was growing stronger; the somnolent perfume of warm hay, dry wood, and rain-wet stone drifted in through the windows, filling the car. The pattering on the roof grew more distant, and my eyes and body were suddenly so very heavy. Diana was trying to roll up the window, but she seemed to be having a difficult time, her movements languid and sluggish.

“Just a quick doze, dear,” I murmured, closing my eyes, dimly hearing Diana’s weak protests, and then I was asleep.

…

Bright, washed sunlight streamed in through the windows, and I struggled into wakefulness, wondering how on earth my body could feel this old and sore, and then remembered where I was. I opened my eyes, startled. Diana was gone from her seat, and the car door was standing wide open. The roof of the barn looked to have blown off in the night.

“Diana!” I croaked, appalled at how hoarse and tender my throat felt. I hobbled out of the car, my muscles feeling loose and shaky, as if I had been bedridden for a long spell. Diana was nowhere in sight. The barn we had sheltered in had been obliterated. The roof was gone, but impossibly, so was most of the upper foundation, and only a tall wall of stones remained, vines and plants scrabbling for purchase in the gaps. What had happened last night? Surely no storm, not even one as cataclysmic as that, could have done this in a single night.

Near the road, a young man was using a scythe to cut down the old corn. As I approached, he stopped his work, lifting the wide-brimmed hat he wore to get a better look at me.

“Morning,” he said, grinning widely. “Some storm, eh?” he said in a lilting voice. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place it. He had a merry, almost mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“Have you seen a little girl anywhere around here?” I asked desperately. “My daughter and I sheltered overnight in that barn, and now she’s gone.”

“Aye, I saw a lady walking up the road apace,” he replied courteously, gesturing.

A lady? I nodded my thanks and walked stiffly up the road, where in the distance I saw a silhouette. A woman was kneeling there, and she looked up as I got near. By the tilt of her head and the lift of her chin, I recognized her, and saw the truth of what everyone had always said would happen: Diana had inherited her mother’s beauty.