P. Parrish - South Of Hell

No lights, no movement, no sounds. No signs that anyone had ever lived here. And for a moment, she had the weird thought that maybe even she hadn’t really lived here.

She had to go back to Miss Joe. She’d be so worried.

But the rain was coming down harder now. And she was cold and tired.

She would wait until it was light, and then she would walk back to the Texaco station. It would be open in the morning, and someone would let her call the hotel, and Miss Joe would come and get her.

Amy glanced back at the kitchen. She didn’t want to go back in there. She looked at the barn. She would wait there.

Hoisting the backpack over her shoulder, she jumped off the porch and ran across the yard to the barn. The heavy sliding doors on the bottom level stood open just enough for her to squeeze through.

It was warmer inside but dark.

She picked her way across the dirt floor, trying to make out the shape of the old stalls in the gloom. There was hay, she remembered, and she could sleep there until morning.

She was halfway across the barn when she felt it.

Like the brush of a warm breeze on her cheek. But she knew there was no wind in the barn. It came again, the gentlest of caresses.

“Momma?” she whispered.

No, child.

She stood very still and closed her eyes, her heart hammering, waiting for the feeling. But the only feeling that came was a small constricting of her throat.

There was just her.

And the voice she heard now was her own.

It’s not safe here, John. Come with me.

Amy opened her eyes. The darkness pressed close around her, but she wasn’t afraid. She walked slowly but surely across the barn, moving easily among the rusted tools and rotting bales, into the farthest corner of the barn.

An instinct told her to reach out, and when she did, her hand touched wood. A ladder. She had known it would be there!

The backpack secured on her back now, she began to climb. She couldn’t see anything above, but still, there was no fear for herself now. Just for…

It’s too late. We have to get out another way.

She emerged into a new darkness, but she could feel the boards of a floor, and she pulled herself up. The old hay was scratchy beneath her hands. She knew she was up on the old barn’s second floor now, and a stab of recognition came to her. This was where she had found the kitten! But a different memory was crowding that one out with its urgency.

This way, John!

The old boards groaned as she made her way across the rotted planks, but she kept moving until…

She stopped, knelt down, and brushed the straw away. Her fingers found the cold metal ring of the trapdoor. She pulled, but it wouldn’t move.

Horses… she could hear horses outside!

She pulled in a deep breath and yanked on the trapdoor. It cracked and gave way, falling back on the hay with a thud.

Hurry! Hurry!

Without a second thought, Amy launched herself into the black hole. She landed with a hard jolt in a pile of hay. She was stunned for a second, but then the feel of the rain on her face brought her back. Outside… she was outside.

She was on her feet at once and moving through the darkness, away from the barn, through a thicket of high weeds.

Faster, John, you have to walk faster! Just a little ways more, and you can rest. Here! Here! Let me help you… you can hide here -

Amy stopped suddenly.

The voice was gone.

In front of her was a high thicket of thorny brambles.

Dawn. Coming to him as a sliver of gray in the corner of his eye. He had survived another night. Two now… two nights and two days in this stinking hole.

Owen Brandt ran a dirty hand under his nose and pushed himself to his feet. He wiped his frozen hands on his pants and made his way through the darkness to the steps. Memory spurred him in the right direction. That’s how it was now, depending only on his senses and what he could remember to survive when the darkness closed in.

His hands had told him this place had stone walls and wooden rafters. His feet had told him it was nine feet wide, because he had walked it back and forth in the dark. But he didn’t know how deep it was, because he wouldn’t go back any further than he could see. But sometimes, if the sun was bright enough to bleed around the edges of the old wood door and down the stone steps, then he could make out the dirt pile back there. He was sure the ceiling had caved in, but he wasn’t about to go back there and risk getting himself buried alive.

He staggered to the steps, his head thick from lack of sleep. He’d been too cold and hungry to sleep.

The rotten corn and potatoes left in the cellar had been too hard to eat. Finally, driven by hunger, he had ventured out and crouched in the thorn bushes, watching for cops. He watched for hours, finally figuring out that they came by to check the farmhouse twice a day, in the morning and again toward dusk. The cop would get out and do only a quick walk around the farmhouse and leave, like he was too cold to bother to stay.

Last night, after the cop left, he had sprinted across the field to the house, where he had gathered up what was left of the food Margi had bought — half a package of baloney and some potato chips. And the whiskey. That was best of all, the hot sting of rye on his throat as he sat here, shivering.

But the whiskey was gone now. The food was gone now. It was a different hunger that had brought him out of the hole a second time.

He had emerged into the cold, moonless night and walked the farm. Thirteen times — he’d counted — thirteen times he had walked the fields in the syrupy darkness. Listening for her voice, seeing shadows that drifted away from him as he grew close. Always conscious of the feel of the dirt under his boots, because he didn’t want to step on her.

He hadn’t found her.

Brandt stood, shivering at the bottom of the stone steps, looking up into the thin gray light leaking around the door.

He couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to get out.

He staggered up the stone steps and pushed open the old wooden door. The creak of the hinge sounded like a shriek, and he held his breath. But he didn’t hear anyone, no voices, no cop talk. He pushed aside the thorn bushes and climbed out.

A gray mist hovered over the straw-strewn cornfield. In the distance, the house seemed to float, and the barn seemed to shiver, like neither of them was real but just imaginary fixtures in an imaginary life.

Something moved. Or was his mind so gone now that he was seeing things? He started to withdraw into the hole, but then he froze.

There it was again.

Through the tangle of thorn bushes, he saw something waver, like it had just risen from the ground. A flutter of dark hair and slender build told him it was a woman.

Brandt squinted.

Jean.

And she was coming closer.

His hand went to the knife in his waistband. His throat tightened with the pounding of his pulse as her form took shape in the mist.

No… it wasn’t Jean.

It was the damn girl.

But this didn’t make sense. Why would the girl be here?

Then it came to him. She had come back to meet her whore mother. The girl coming back here now to this place — just like he had! — it had been like some weird gift, like it happened this way for a reason.

He had been right all along. Jean was here somewhere.

He retreated into the root cellar, not wanting the girl to see him. He had to think about this, had to figure out what to do. He crouched on the stone steps behind the half-open door, watching, waiting.

Pink. Something pink. The pink of her jacket moving across the gap in the boards.