Gathering Dark, The: An Anthology of Folk Horror

Stay

by Erica Waters

GRANNY THINKS THERE ARE WORMS LIVING BENEATH HER SKIN. It started when the doctor changed up her medications and she started complaining she was itchy. I bought her lotions and ointments and prescription-strength creams, but nothing helped.

Now she scratches all day long, until her arms are covered in red, bleeding sores. She swears the sores are from the worms tunneling through. I trimmed her nails down to the quick, so she found a pair of tweezers. For hours at a time, she’ll sit staring at her skin under the lamplight, tweezers at the ready. Her dearest desire is to catch one and prove to me that she’s not a senile old lady.

She glances up when I come into the living room, then goes right back to staring at her arm. They take cover when they hear other people, she mutters. They’re always listening.

Ask them if they know where I put my boots, I mutter back. Granny hears and snaps her head in my direction, suddenly as ferocious as the fat old Chihuahua who used to sit beside her all day. She made me give him away for fear she might transfer the worms to him.

Sorry, Granny, but I’m late for work, I say.

Your boots are under the recliner, she says in a sour voice. You wouldn’t lose them if you’d put them in your bedroom where they belong.

Yes, ma’am, I say, relieved to see some of my old granny peeking through. She hasn’t surrendered completely to the delusion of the worms. I dig my work boots out from beneath the chair where Papa used to sit every evening, watching reruns of Bonanza.

Melissa, I think I see one! Granny yells.

I gotta go to work, Granny, I say, trying not to sigh.

Just come look, you little shit, she says excitedly.

Fine. I climb up off the floor and stand over her.

You’re blocking the light—move over there, she chides.

Her show of crankiness seems like a good sign, so I do as she asks and peer down at her arm. She points with the tweezers at her wrist, just below a blue-green vein. There, do you see it? Do you see it moving under the skin? Lean down closer.

I lower my face closer to her arm, close enough that I can feel her breath on my hair. And then I do see something: the barest tremor of her wrinkled flesh, like a ripple on the surface of a pond. I swear and slap a hand over my mouth as I stumble away from her.

Granny cackles, gleeful in her triumph. I told you! You said I was getting dementia, but I told you! I was right. Then her voice breaks off into a sob. All these weeks I’ve told you, and I’ve told you, and you wouldn’t listen. There are worms in my skin. There are worms! Granny weeps, her soft shoulders trembling, tears flowing down her face and onto her housedress.

I don’t know what to say, what to think. There was something there, something moving beneath her skin. But maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’ve listened to her for so long, I’m becoming deluded too. Maybe it was just her pulse beating. I don’t know what to believe. But my own skin crawls sympathetically.

I smooth down my grandmother’s hair. I’ll take you back to the doctor on Monday, I promise. I’ll tell him what I saw.

Granny wipes her eyes. Thank you, baby. Now get on. You’re gon’ be late for work, and then they’re gonna fire your lazy, hardheaded behind, she says.

I pull on my boots and grab my bag on my way out the door. I back my truck out of the yard with its knee-high grass and onto the worn drive beneath the arching branches of the oak trees. It’s a gloomy day, rain already drizzling. Under the hanging Spanish moss, the morning feels shadowy, shifting, slightly unreal. I drive slowly past the horse pasture, where my cousin’s dappled Appaloosa stands at the fence looking sullen.

Not my problem, not my problem, not my problem, I chant to myself. If Daniel can’t get up early enough to feed his horse, that’s not my problem. That horse is mean as the devil anyway.

Damn it. I stop the truck and dig an apple out of my lunch and toss it into the pasture. Not that you deserve it, I say as Mountain picks it up and bites into the fruit, one eye still on me. He’s as watchful and bad-tempered as Granny.

When I near the gravel turn into the family cemetery, I bite my lip. It’s raining and I’m already late for work. But I haven’t tended the graves in a long while. The dead are starting to get restless. I can feel them, just under my skin, like one of Granny’s phantom worms. I shudder. But when I look at the time on the old radio clock, I decide the dead are gonna have to wait.

I’ll do it this afternoon, I promise them.

I’ll go to the cemetery after work. I’ll take Granny to the doctor on Monday. I’ll go wake Daniel up from his drug haze and yell at him about his horse sometime in between. All the things waiting for me to deal with them, waiting sullen and restless and resentful, are just going to have to keep on waiting.

I drive past the cemetery with its white wooden fence, lichen-spotted, graying all over, dandelions pushing through the slats. The oaks and pines rise up around it in a semicircle like watchful gods. I don’t look at the gravestones, which I know are covered in moss and mold and tree sap, their little whiskey bottles dirty, their pennies green with oxidation, their plastic flowers rotting. It’s been too long since I’ve visited, too long since I’ve cleaned. Granny used to take care of it before the arthritis in her feet and knees got too bad. Now it’s my job, and I’m failing.

I’m only one person, one girl, seventeen and still in high school. I ought to be doing my homework and falling in love. I ought to be dreaming of college and life after this place, but I can barely get past the mailbox at the end of our drive.

How much can you give to a place before it swallows you whole?

I drive the ten miles of flat, relentless highway, all green fields and skinny pines, cows in their pastures, trailers on their plots of land. And half a dozen family cemeteries just like mine, each one as potent as a preacher in his pulpit, wagging his finger at me.

In Lagerty, we bury our own dead and tend our own graves. We’ve done it so long, most people probably don’t even know why anymore. But you learn grave lore right alongside the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. Tending your dead is as sacred as baptism.

This afternoon, I promise mine. You’ll have to keep till then.

The second I see the welcome sign for the next town, I gun my engine, as if the border between here and there can defy limestone and soil and roots, can defy my restless dead and a hungry horse and an old woman with cracked and broken skin.

When I drive past the sign, I feel a pain in my forearm, like strong fingers pressing into my skin, trying to yank me back home. I squeeze the steering wheel harder and continue on, ignoring the sensation.

Just a tired mind imagining things, same as Granny.

When I pull into the gravel parking lot of the garden store, I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve got eight whole hours away from home, eight whole hours of work. And tomorrow I’ll have eight more.

The big iron gate is already rolled up, leaving the storefront open for customers. When I walk in, I’m hit with the scents of potting soil and fertilizers, chemical and caustic, the scent of false power. This smell tells customers they can control the natural world—that they can kill the weeds and keep the rot at bay, that aphids won’t destroy their prize roses and slugs won’t decimate their lettuces. That they can wield power over their lawns and gardens, over all the agents of decay. This smell is a lie.

But it’s a lie I love, a reprieve. Sixteen hours of reprieve.

Hey, Melissa, my boss, Lula, calls, not caring that I’m fifteen minutes late for my shift. She’s a chubby middle-aged woman with permanently red cheeks and dirt-ringed fingernails. Can you go help Shelly unload the truck?

Shelly’s here? I ask, stopping in my tracks. Lula winks at me and nods toward the back. I guess my crush on her daughter has not gone unnoticed.

Shelly is yanking potted dogwood saplings out of the back of the truck with alarming speed, her midriff tank showing off her biceps and abs and making me swoon a little where I stand. Thoughts of home and Granny and the cemetery fade away as I watch her work.

She catches sight of me. You gonna help me or what? she asks with a laugh, and I feel my cheeks burn as red as Lula’s. I wish I could think of something witty to say, but I just scramble forward and start pulling down trees too.

Shelly is eighteen and a freshman at UF. She comes in sometimes on the weekends to help out her mom. She never says much when she’s here.

We work in silence for a long while, just an occasional grunt or muttered curse at a too-heavy pot. Soon, sweat is rolling down my back, so I push up my sleeves.

Just as I reach up for another sapling, Shelly grabs my hand. What the hell is this? she asks—suddenly, inexplicably angry. I glance over my shoulder, thinking I must have damaged one of the trees I unloaded, but then I realize she’s looking at my arm. There are deep, angry bruises in the shape of fingerprints on my forearm, the bruised image of a large and powerful hand.

I—I don’t know, I stammer, taking in the damage. It wasn’t like this … I trail off as I remember the sensation of being grabbed when I drove over the Lagerty border. The feeling of someone trying to yank me back.

Who did that to you? she asks.

I don’t know, I say. Shelly raises her thick, dark eyebrows.

I mean … no one. I must have run into something, I mumble. I pull my sleeve back down. Looks like we’re almost done here. I’m gonna go see if your mom needs help up front. I heave down one last potted tree before I walk away.

I know what Shelly’s imagining—that some man has been yanking me around. That’s all too common where I’m from. Hell, where anybody’s from. She’s probably imagining an abusive dad or an angry boyfriend. She doesn’t know me well enough to know I’ve got neither.

It’s just me. Just me and Granny and Daniel, which means it’s just me.

Lula puts me to work pruning the plants in the greenhouse, which is a one-person job, so I get an hour to myself trimming dead brown bits off tropical plants with enormous fragrant blossoms and delicate lacelike fronds. Sweat drips into my eyes and makes my skin clammy, and after a while the smell of the flowers turns sickly sweet. By the time I finish, I’m dizzy and nauseous and have to stagger to the water cooler.

You all right? Lula asks, and I can see in her face that Shelly mentioned the bruises. Her eyes flit to my arms, even though my sleeves are covering them. She tilts her head slightly in concern.

Just a little dehydrated, I think, I say between gulps of water. I’ll be fine.

Take your lunch early, honey. There’s an apple pie in the kitchen. Shelly made it. She gives me a gentle smile.

Yes, ma’am, I say.

I’m halfway through a slice of pie when Shelly comes into the kitchen, dirt smudged across her forehead, her long curly ponytail over one shoulder.

Good pie, I say around a mouthful. I swallow. Wouldn’t have figured you for a baker.

She gives me half a smile and pulls an enormous Tupperware container from the fridge and starts downing her lunch. Shelly eats every meal like it’s the first one she’s had in days and the last one she’ll ever have.

I’m sorry about earlier. I overreacted, she says, leaning down to cut herself a slice of pie. It’s just … She clears her throat. My dad was …

I nod. It’s no problem.

For a few minutes, we make conversation about school and college, funny customers who’ve come into the store. It feels ordinary, easy, and for the first time in a long while I don’t feel so alone.

The rest of the day passes faster than I’d like. I linger over my closing duties longer than I need to, finding fiddly little things I can pretend need done. But pretty soon I’ve run out of reasons not to go home. I say good night to Lula and Shelly, and I feel their concerned eyes on me as I walk back to my truck.

It’s nearly five by the time I pull up the drive toward home. I put my foot on the brake beside the cemetery and let the truck idle while I think. Those fingerprints on my skin have me worried. But is it worse to face what made them or to put it off awhile longer?

I decide I’ll at least go eat dinner and check on Granny. See if Daniel has fed that damn horse yet. Don’t you owe more to the living than to the dead? Yet all the hairs on my nape stand on end as I drive by the gate, chill bumps running up my arms and torso.

Granny is right where I left her, peering down through her glasses at her arm, which looks worse than ever, yellow pus oozing from the sores. I’ll bandage them tonight, but first I’ll find Daniel and deal with him.

My cousin sits on the floor of his room, leaning against the bed rail, playing video games. He glances up at me, his eyes glazed.

Did you feed Mountain? I ask.

He shrugs.

That horse is all you’ve got left of your mama, I say.

His expression remains blank, his eyes glassy. He’s still stoned.

Daniel is a year younger than me, and his mother died last year. That’s when he came to live here with me and Granny. We’re a pair of orphans, or as good as. But he’s sunk so far into grief or apathy or whatever it is that he’s quit going to school. He won’t even speak to me now.

That’s what I’ve got for company out here. Worms and silence.

I’ve had enough of it. I lean behind the TV and yank a handful of cords from the wall. The screen goes black, but Daniel keeps hitting the buttons on his controller for a few seconds, as if he’s on a delay. When he finally looks up, his eyes are so empty, it makes me shiver.

Go feed your damn horse, Daniel, before I sell it for glue, I say, making my tone as mean as I can manage. The boy doesn’t respond to gentleness.

He ducks his head and leaves the room, and I follow him to the front door to make sure he’s heading to the barn.

Daniel’s doing bad, Granny, I say. I think he might need help. More than I can give.

Who? Granny asks.

Daniel, your grandson.

Granny bunches up her mouth, thinking. But I can tell she has no idea who I’m talking about.

Your little Danny, I say. Laura’s boy.

Melissa, when are you taking me to the doctor? she asks, losing interest in the topic.

In two days, I say, loneliness washing over me. I lean across the back of her chair to hug her neck. She gives me a single pat on my hand.

Good girl, she says. Good girl.

By the time I make dinner and clean the dishes, I’m exhausted. I think of the homework waiting in my bedroom, chapters and chapters of history, long sets of complicated equations, an essay on Cormac McCarthy.

I rub my arm where the phantom fingertips dug in. It hurts, each fingerprint throbbing slightly. And I know what I have to do.

I go to the linen closet and pull down a heavy box from the top shelf. I carry it out to my truck and drive down to the cemetery. It’s twilight, but it hardly looks different from this morning. The rain has stopped, but the sky is a sullen slate gray, no sign of stars. There’s a cold breeze stirring the trees, setting the Spanish moss swaying. The moon is nearly full, but it’s a low, indistinct haze of putrid yellow that gives no light.

Still, there’s enough daylight left in between the drifting shadows for me to see the gravestones. I heft the box to my hip and open the creaky gate. The moment my foot touches the ground inside the cemetery, I can feel them. They churn around me like batter, responding to the beat of my blood, the warmth of my breath. They are cold and they are hungry, and I am life.

I think of all the places I’d rather be than here. Like with Shelly, on a date. Or even at the garden store with her, yanking down saplings from a truck. But this is where I belong, isn’t it? Isn’t this what it means to be born of the people who lie in this cemetery, born of the sweat and blood and soil of this town? Isn’t birth just another name for destiny? Your family name the border between you and the rest of the