Mary Clark - A Cry In The Night

Jenny turned off the radio. Any minute the phone would start to ring. Within hours reporters would be swarming here. Erich would see them, would perhaps hear the broadcast, would know it was over. And he would take his final revenge on Jenny, if he hadn’t already.

Blindly she stumbled out of the kitchen. What could she do? What could she do? Without knowing where she was going, she walked into the parlor. The evening sun was streaming into the room, illuminating Caroline’s portrait. A bleak pity for the woman who had known this same bewildering helplessness made her study the painting: Caroline sitting on the porch, that dark green cape wrapped around her, the tiny tendrils of hair brushing her forehead. The sun setting, the small figure of the boy Erich running toward her.

The figure running toward her…

The sun rays were diffused throughout the room. It would be a brilliant sunset, reds and oranges and purples and charcoal clouds streaked with diamond-tinted light.

The figure running toward her…

Erich was out there somewhere in those woods. Jenny was sure of it. And there was only one way to force him to leave them.

The shawl Rooney had made for her… No, it wasn’t large enough, but if she wore something with it… The army blanket that had been Erich’s father’s in the cedar chest? That was almost the same color as Caroline’s cape.

Racing up the two flights of stairs to the attic, she tore open the cedar chest, reached down into it, pushed aside the old World War Two uniforms. On the bottom was the army blanket, khaki-colored but not unlike the shade of the cape. A scissor? She had scissors in the sewing basket.

The sun was getting lower. In a few minutes it would begin to sink…

Downstairs, with trembling hands she cut a hole in the middle of the blanket, a hole just large enough for her head, and drew it around her. Then she pulled the shawl over her shoulders. The blanket fell around her, draped capelike to the floor.

Her hair. It was longer than Caroline’s now, but in the painting Caroline had it loosely drawn up into a Psyche knot. Jenny stood in front of the kitchen mirror, twisting her hair, curling small tendrils over her fingers, fastening it with the large barrette. Caroline inclined her head a little to one side; she held her hands in her lap, the right hand lying over the left…

Jenny stood at the west door of the porch. I am Caroline, she thought. I will walk like Caroline, sit like her. I am going to watch the sunset as she always did. I am going to watch my little boy come running toward me.

She opened the door and unhurriedly stepped out into the sharp cold air. Closing the door she walked over to the swing, adjusted it so it directly faced the sunset and sat down.

She remembered to shake the shawl so that it folded over the left arm of the swing, as it had in the painting. She tilted her head so that it was at a slight angle to the right. She folded her hands in her lap until the right hand lay encased in the left palm. Then, slowly, very slowly, she began to rock the swing.

The sun slipped out from behind the last cloud. Now it was a fiery ball, low in the heavens, about to slip over the horizon, now it was going down, down, and the sky was diffused with color.

Jenny continued to rock.

Purples, and pinks and crimsons and oranges, and golds, and the occasional clouds billowing like gossamer, the wind just sharp enough to move the clouds, rustle the pines at the edge of the woods…

Rock, back and forth. Study the sunset. All that matters is the sunset. The little boy will soon run out from the woods to join his mother… Come, little boy. Come, Erich.

She heard a high wail, a wail that grew louder and shriller. “Aai… yee… devilll… devilll from the grave… Go away… Go away…”

A figure was stumbling from the woods. A figure holding a rifle. A figure draped in a dark green cape, with long black hair that the wind blew in matted tangles, a figure with staring eyes and a face caught in a grimace of fear…

Jenny stood up. The figure stopped, lifted the gun and aimed it.

“Erich, don’t shoot!” She stumbled to the door, turned the handle. The door was locked. It had snapped locked behind her. Lifting the army blanket, trying not to stumble over its trailing ends, she began to run, zigzagging down the porch steps, across the field, while she heard the sound of shots following her. A burning sensation bit into her shoulder… warmth flooded her arm. She staggered, but there was no place to run.

The strange screaming was behind her. “Devilll, devilll…” The dairy barn loomed to the right. Erich had never gone in there, not since Caroline died. Frantically she wrenched the door open, the door that led into the anteroom where the vats of milk were stored.

He was close behind her. She rushed into the inner area, the barn itself. The cows were in from the pastures, had already been milked. They stood in their stalls, watching with mild interest, grazing at the straw in the troughs before them. She could hear footsteps close behind her.

Blindly she ran to the end of the barn, as far as she could go. The stock tank was there, the pen for the new calves. The tank was dry. She turned to face Erich.

He was only ten feet away. He stopped and began to laugh. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and took aim with the same precision he had shown when he shot Joe’s puppy. They stared at each other, mirror images with the dark green capes, the long dark hair. His hair too had been clumsily pinned up in a knot; his own blond curls escaping from under the wig gave the impression of tendrils on the forehead.

“Devilll… devilll…”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, God…”

She heard the gun going off, then a shriek that gurgled into a moan. But not from her lips. She opened her eyes. It was Erich who was sinking to the ground, Erich who was bleeding from the nose and mouth, Erich whose eyes were glazing, whose wig was matted with blood.

Behind him Rooney lowered a shotgun. “That’s for Arden,” she said quietly.

Jenny sank on her knees. “Erich, the girls, are they alive?”

His eyes were dim but he nodded. “Yes… ”

“Is someone with them?”

“No… Alone…”

“Erich, where are they?”

His lips tried to form words. “They’re…” He reached up for her hand, twisted his fingers around her thumb… “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry, Mommy… I didn’t mean… to… hurt… you.”

His eyes closed. His body gave a last violent shudder and Jenny felt the pressure on her hand released.

The house was crowded but she saw everyone as vague shadows on a screen. Sheriff Gunderson, the people from the coroner’s office who chalked the outline of Erich’s body and took it away, the reporters who swarmed in after the news of the art forgery and stayed for the far bigger story. They’d arrived in time to snap pictures of Erich, the cape draped around him, the wig matted with blood, the curiously peaceful face of death.

They’d been allowed to go to the cabin, to photograph and film Caroline’s beautiful paintings, Erich’s tortured canvases. “The greater the sense of urgency we give to the search, the more people will try to help,” Wendell Gunderson said.

Mark was there. It was he who cut away the blanket and her blouse, bathed the wound, disinfected it, bandaged it. “That will hold it for the present. It’s only a flesh wound, thank God.”

She shivered at the touch of those long, gentle fingers through all the burning pain. If there was help possible it would come through Mark.

They found the car Erich had driven, found it hidden in one of the tractor paths on the farm. He’d rented the car in Duluth, six hours’ drive away. He’d left the children at least thirteen hours ago. Left them where?