The Rains Page 2

  Early the next morning, McCafferty awoke and threw off the sheets. His belly was distended. Not ribs-and-coleslaw-at-a-Fourth-of-July-party swollen, but bulging like a pregnant woman five months in. His wife stirred at his side, pulling the pillow over her head. Ignoring the cramps, he trudged to the closet and dressed as he did every morning. The overalls stretched across his bulging gut, but he managed to wiggle them up and snap the straps into place. He had work to do, and the hired hands weren’t gonna pay themselves.

  As the sun climbed the sky, the pain in his stomach worsened. He sat on the motionless tractor, mopping his forehead. He could still taste that bitter pollen, feel it in the lining of his gut, even sense it creeping up the back of his throat into his head.

  He knocked off early, a luxury he had not indulged in since his wedding day, and dragged himself upstairs and into a cold shower. His bloated stomach pushed out so far that his arms could barely encircle it. Streaks fissured the skin on his sides just like the stretch marks that had appeared at Lucille’s hips during her pregnancies. The cramping came constantly now, throbbing knots of pain.

  The water beat at him, and he felt himself grow foggy. He leaned against the wall of the shower stall, his vision smearing the tiles, and he sensed that pollen in his skull, burrowing into his brain.

  He remembered nothing else.

  He did not remember stepping from the shower.

  Or his wife calling up to him that dinner was on the table.

  Or the screams of his children as he descended naked to the first floor, the added weight of his belly creaking each stair.

  He couldn’t hear his wife shouting, asking what was wrong, was he in pain, that they had to get him to a doctor.

  He was unaware as he stumbled out into the night and scanned the dusk-dimmed horizon, searching out the highest point.

  The water tower at the edge of Franklin’s land.

  Without thought or sensation, McCafferty ambled across the fields, walking straight over crops, husks cutting at his legs and arms, sticks stabbing his bare feet. By the time he reached the tower, his ribboned skin was leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

  With nicked-up limbs, he pulled himself off the ground and onto the ladder. He made his painstaking ascent. From time to time, a blood-slick hand or a tattered foot slipped from a rung, but he kept on until he reached the top.

  He crawled to the middle of the giant tank’s roof, his elbows and knees knocking the metal, sending out deep echoes. And then he rolled onto his back, pointing that giant belly at the moon. His eyes remained dark, unseeing.

  His chest heaved and heaved and then was still.

  For a long time, he lay there, motionless.

  There came a churning sound from deep within his gut. It grew louder and louder.

  And then his body split open.

  The massive pod of his gut simply erupted, sending up a cloud of fine, red-tinted particles. They rose into the wind, scattering through the air, riding the current toward his house and the town beyond.

  What happened to Hank McCafferty was terrible.

  What was coming for us was far, far worse.

  ENTRY 4

  It was later that same night when Patrick came to get me in the barn.

  Gripping the baling hooks at my sides, I stepped through the rolled-back door into the night. My brother’s face was turned to the east. That bitter breeze kept blowing in across the fields.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Patrick raised a hand for silence.

  A shift of the wind brought distant noises. Hammering sounds. And then, barely audible, the squeals of children.

  “McCafferty’s place?” I asked.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Do we wake Uncle Jim?”

  Patrick turned his gaze at me. “And if it’s just the kids messing around, playing a game? You wanna be the one to tell Jim sorry for dragging him outta bed, knowing the workday he’s got tomorrow?”

  I spit to clear the bitter taste from my mouth. “Then why do we need the shotgun?”

  Patrick headed along the side of our ranch house toward the McCafferty place. “’Cuz what if we see a buck along the way?”

  I didn’t smile.

  As we passed the rows of cozy crates lining the outside wall, our seven remaining ridgies stirred, a few of the boys sniffing the air and starting to growl. All at once they went crazy, snapping at the scent on the wind and howling. When they were riled up, you could hear the hound in them.

  “Quiet,” Patrick hissed. “Quiet!” Then to me, “Make them shut up before they wake Jim and Sue-Anne.”

  I said, “Hush,” and the dogs fell silent, though Cassius whimpered with impatience.

  Weeds grew tough and fast out here, so Uncle Jim let a few hungry goats roam the acre beyond our doorstep to keep the view. A few bleated as we passed them by and cut through the pasture. Some of the cows stirred as we drifted by. As we neared the McCafferty place, the cries got louder and my mouth dryer. The air tasted so vile I choked on it.

  “You think something’s burning?”

  Patrick shook his head. “No. That’s something else.”

  A dot of yellow illuminated the McCafferty porch, the light glowing next to the front screen. The door was laid open, the house’s interior black as pitch.

  We heard the kids clearly now through that screen door. This was no game. They weren’t squealing.

  They were screaming.

  A slow, steady banging echoed out at us.

  Maybe Hank was drunk again, trying to kick down the kids’ door. Maybe there was an escapee from the state pen one county over. Maybe a homicidal psychopath had hitchhiked to our quiet little town and decided to have some fun.

  The terrible banging continued from inside the house.

  I whispered, “Should we go back and get Uncle Jim?”

  “And leave JoJo and Rocky to whatever’s happening?” Patrick said.

  The question required no answer. I shrank back behind Patrick. Despite the cold, I could see sweat sparkling on the nape of his neck. He quickened his pace. When we were about twenty yards away, he stopped and called out, “Whoever’s causing trouble in there, I got a shotgun!”

  The banging ceased at once.

  The McCafferty kids inside—JoJo and Rocky—stopped screaming, but we could still hear them sobbing. Patrick and I stood side by side, his shotgun raised, my grip growing tighter on the baling hooks.

  JoJo’s wails tailed off into silence.

  From inside the house came a creak. Then another. Someone descending the stairs?

  The footsteps continued, maddeningly slow, growing nearer.

  Then we sensed a dark form behind the mesh of the screen. Just standing there. Staring ahead. We couldn’t make out anything more than a silhouette of shoulders and a head, shadow against darkness.

  Breaths clouded through the screen, quick puffs of mist in the cold night air. A sound carried out to us—shallow pants, as if from someone who had just learned to breathe.

  Patrick jacked the pump of the Winchester, the shuck-shuck loud enough to make my scalp crawl.

  The breaths continued. The wind blew cold and steady.

  It went down so fast we could barely register it.

  The screen banged open. A woman in a nightgown flew out, a clawed hand jerking up to shatter the porch light, the front of the house falling into darkness. Bare feet hammered across the boards, and then the form leapt over the railing, moonlit, limbs spread like a cat’s. She landed on all fours, bounded up onto her feet, and scampered toward the grain silo.

  A hatch opened on rusty hinges, then banged shut.

  Patrick and I stood there in the night for a moment, breathing. My undershirt clung to me, and I realized I’d sweated right through it. Slowly, Patrick lowered his shoulders.

  “What … was that thing?” I said.

  “A woman, I expect. We better check it out.”

  My heart did something weird in my chest. “Shoul
dn’t we check on JoJo and Rocky instead?”

  “And let her escape?” Patrick said. “We got her cornered in the silo. What if she gets out and circles behind us? Or heads back for Jim and Sue-Anne?”

  He started walking through the gloom toward the grain silo. He was my brother. I had to follow.

  Plus, being alone with that thing out here didn’t sound much better.

  The side hatch was loose, swaying in the wind. The latches clicked against the metal wall.

  Patrick readied the shotgun with one hand as he reached for the handle. His fingers might have been steady, but my whole body was shaking.

  The hatch creaked open, and Patrick stepped back, pointing the shotgun barrel at the black square. We waited for something to fly out at us.

  But nothing came.

  We blinked, let our eyes acclimate to the darkness.

  Uneven mounds of barley rose head-high.

  The woman stood at the far side of the silo behind one of the mounds, facing away so we could make out only a shoulder and the back of a head.

  She half turned, and we caught a silhouette. Her skin looked pale, and her nightgown was torn and ragged at the shoulder, as if chewed.

  Patrick lowered the shotgun. “Mrs. McCafferty?” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She twitched a few times, her head jerking to the side. Moonlight from the open hatch cast her in an otherworldly glow.

  “Did someone hurt you?” Patrick asked. “Is something in there with you?”

  He lifted one leg and started to step into the hatch, ducking down to get the Stetson through. I grabbed his shoulder. “Patrick,” I said. “No.”

  “I have to make sure she’s okay,” he said, shaking me off.

  He entered, stepping over the arm of the sweep auger. It was like a giant clock hand that rotated around the floor, sweeping the barley toward a center vertical auger that carried the grain up through the roof and into a chute for loading trucks. It wasn’t moving now, shut down for the day.

  I armed sweat from my forehead and watched my brother approach Mrs. McCafferty. I could see directly over his shoulder. She remained partly turned toward us, twitching and slightly hunched. Her rhythmic breathing continued, bellows without the wheeze.

  “Mrs. McCafferty?” Patrick said. “Whatever happened to you, it’s over now. You’re okay.”

  She turned and looked at us.

  For a moment I didn’t believe what I was seeing.

  In place of eyes, two tunnels ran straight through her skull. The beam of illumination from the flashlight cast twin glowing dots on the silo wall behind her. There was no blood at all on her face.

  Those cored-out holes seemed to look right at us.

  And then she lunged.

  Patrick stumbled back, his ankle catching on the thick metal auger arm, and he went down, his hat tumbling off. She scrambled over the mound, her bare feet fighting for traction, rivulets of grain spilling beneath her heels. Her face was blank, devoid of any emotion, even as she reached the top of the mound and leapt for Patrick, limbs spread as they’d been when she’d sprung over the porch railing.

  The sound of the shotgun inside the silo was deafening. The blast hit her in the stomach, knocking her back onto the mound of grain and embedding her in the side like a snow angel, arms thrown wide. The echo kept on, cycling in the metal walls and in my own head, crashing like cymbals.

  Patrick pulled himself up, his face bloodless. He staggered over to the open hatch.

  My mouth was working but could find no words. Although I couldn’t hear anything yet, I saw his lips moving.

  And then the percussive crash lessened and his words came clear. “Chance. Chance. We gotta get help. We gotta get the sheriff.”

  I tried to nod.

  Behind him, I sensed movement.

  Mrs. McCafferty, pulling herself stiffly up out of the mound of barley. Her torso and head rose as one. A few strands of hair swept across the back of her head, making the light through her eyeholes flicker. And then she tilted forward onto her feet, grain showering off her like sand.

  She was right there, visible over Patrick’s shoulder.

  I didn’t have time to yell, so I grabbed him to yank him through the hatch. I caught both his arms, the shotgun flying to land on the ground beyond me. I tugged his head through when she grabbed him from behind and ripped him into the silo with enough force to throw me off my feet. My forehead banged the hatch, and I fell into the soft mud outside the silo.

  Somewhere Patrick was yelling, his shouts amplified inside the giant metal drum.

  I willed myself not to black out. Grabbing the sill of the hatch, I pulled myself to my feet and forced myself to look.

  Bleeding freely from her gut, Mrs. McCafferty had pinned Patrick to the floor on his stomach. He looked stunned and semiconscious; he must have struck the floor hard, or he would have overpowered her. She was crouched on his back like some feral animal, one knee between his shoulder blades. She ripped out a hank of her own long hair, and it came free with a plug of skin riding the end. Using her hair as rope, she started to bind Patrick’s wrists at the small of his back.

  Drooling blood, my brother blinked at me languidly.

  I started to climb in after him, but he was yelling for me to stay out.

  “No!” I yelled. “I’m not leaving you!”

  Terrified, I swung one leg through the hatch, straddling the metal lip.

  That’s when his words finally registered: “Turn on the sweep auger!”

  Mrs. McCafferty’s clawlike hands secured the hair in a knot, Patrick’s wrists cinched tight.

  Then her head snapped up, those eyeless eyes pinning me to my spot.

  I jerked back out of the hatch, stumbling to keep my feet beneath me. Mrs. McCafferty popped upright so quickly it seemed like she’d been jerked by a string. Then she flew toward me.

  Panicked, I reached for the mounted box next to me, flipped open the guard lid, and hammered the big red button that turned it on.

  The sweep auger roared to life inside the silo.

  Mrs. McCafferty stopped midway between Patrick and me, her head cocked at the sudden commotion.

  The auger began its rotation around the floor, the drive hooks raking through the mounds of barley, then skittering across the bare spots that provided no friction. Husk particles whirled up, filling the space inside.

  Patrick rolled onto his knees, then stood, fighting his hands free. Dust clouded the air, bits of barley beating against him, blinding him. I raised an arm against the onslaught to block my eyes.

  The metal arm rotated around the floor, a giant clock arm sweeping toward Patrick.

  I yelled as loud as I could into the roar, “Jump, Patrick!”

  Blindly, he leapt up, bringing his knees high as the drive hooks whipped beneath him. He caught a heel on the edge and fell, safe for now on the silo’s floor as the arm swung away into its next rotation.

  Mrs. McCafferty started for me again. Sheets of barley rippled underfoot, slowing her progress. But still she came.

  I fought my instinct to slam the hatch door; I couldn’t lock Patrick in there with her. Particles flecked my face, my eyes. My boots felt rooted to the ground.

  Through the holes bored in her head, I could see my brother find his feet again, shaking his hands free of the restraint Mrs. McCafferty had fashioned from her ripped-out hair. Shielding his eyes from the flurry of hulls and spikelets, he took his bearings.

  He’d never get to me in time.

  Mrs. McCafferty reached for me, both hands tensed to yank me through the hatch.

  But just as her fingers brushed my chest, she was ripped backward, her arms flying up over her head, her legs snared on the thick drive hooks of the sweep auger. The sturdy arm whipped her around the circumference of the silo, sucking her in toward the vertical auger in the middle.

  Her lower half met the junction first. The drive belt squealed as the powerful teeth ground flesh and bone. She was still alive, clawing
haplessly at the floor, her fingernails snapping.

  Finally able to see, Patrick whisked his cowboy hat off the floor and jumped over the arm again as it flew at him. He sprinted for me and dove through the hatch.

  We heard Mrs. McCafferty shriek as she was siphoned up into the vertical auger, too narrow for a human form. A crimson spray painted the swarming barley hulls and metal walls, and then Patrick’s muscular arm reached past me and slammed the hatch door shut.

  He banged the big red button with the heel of his hand, and all of a sudden there was quiet in the world again. We both leaned against the closed hatch door, breathing hard.

  We stayed like that for a long time.

  Then Patrick bent over, picked up his shotgun, and headed for the house. “The kids,” he said.

  ENTRY 5

  Patrick and I stood side by side outside the kids’ bedroom upstairs. The door was locked. At the edge by the knob, fingernail marks marred the wood. The bottom panels were splintered from where Mrs. McCafferty had tried to kick them in.

  “Hey, JoJo? Rocky?” my brother called. “It’s Patrick and Chance. Everything’s clear out here now. You’re safe.”

  Silence.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “It’s me.”

  Rocky finally answered, “Chance?”

  I was closer with the McCafferty kids than Patrick was. They came over to play with the dogs. I even let them watch the litters being born if it wasn’t a school night. Rocky was ten years old, JoJo only eight, so they couldn’t afford being up late if they had school the next day.

  “Yep,” I said. “Come on out now and let us help you.”

  “Our stepmom,” Rocky said through the door. “She tried to kill us. Except…” His voice quavered.

  I said, “Except it wasn’t your stepmom.”

  A moment later we heard the click of the door unlocking. It swung in to reveal two tearstained faces. Rocky held a baseball bat, and JoJo clutched Bunny, her worn yellow stuffed animal, to her chest.

  At the sight of me, JoJo held up her arms like a little kid wanting to be picked up. I let the baling hooks drop so they dangled from my forearms on their nylon loops, freeing my hands. When I lifted her, she clung to me and started crying again, her long brown hair brushing against my face.