Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

“Years ago, reading a history book about the settlement of the American West, I learned that in spring, as the ground thawed, snakes sometimes fell from the sod roofs of farmhouses, landing inside, startling the inhabitants. That image stayed with me, insisting to be used in a story. The original text didn’t specify what kind of snakes, but I knew they needed to be rattlesnakes, and I knew they’d appear at the beginning of the story, the prelude to something worse that the story’s pioneer family would encounter. But what would that further horror be?

“As the decades passed, the answer kept eluding me until a recent December when a snow storm hit the New Mexico valley where I live. Normally, I see mountains in every direction. But on that blizzard-swept evening, visibility was reduced to almost nothing. With a fireplace crackling next to me, I peered out my living-room window. As dusk made the snowfall seem thicker, I suddenly saw quick movement outside, a fleeting shadow, then another and another. At once, the movement was gone.

“Perhaps I’d only imagined it. Even so, the experience unnerved me, and at that instant, a complex chain of association inspired me to imagine the further horror that my pioneer family – and especially a brave little girl – would face.”

PAPA WAS CLEVER. In the spring, when the sod roof thawed and the snakes fell through, he hooked blankets to the ceiling and caught them. Usually, they were bull snakes, but sometimes, they were rattlers. They sounded like somebody shaking a package of seeds. Papa said they were still sleepy from hibernating, which was why he wasn’t worried about going near them. He made a sack out of each blanket and carried their squirming weight to the far edge of the pasture, where he dumped them into our creek. The snowmelt from the mountains made the water high and swift and took them away. Just to be safe, papa warned us never to go downstream past where he dumped them. Mama wanted to kill them, but papa said they were too sleepy to mean us harm and we shouldn’t kill what we didn’t need to.

The snakes dropped from the ceiling because papa dug the back of the cabin into a slope. He piled the dirt over the sod on the roof beams. It kept us cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and shielded us from the wind that shrieked through the valley during bad weather. In time, grass grew up there, but while the dirt was soft, snakes burrowed into it. We always heard them moving before they fell, so we had warning, and it wasn’t many, and it was only for a few weeks in the spring.

Papa was so clever, he made the best soap in the valley. Everybody knew how to make the soft kind. Pour water over wood ashes to dissolve the potash in them. Strain the water through a layer of straw to get rid of dirt. Add the potash water to boiling animal fat. Let the two of them cool and use the scummy stuff at the top. That was the soap. But we had an outcrop of salt on our property, and papa experimented by adding salt to the boiling water and fat. When the mixture cooled, it got hard. Papa also put sand in his soap, and everybody thought that was his secret, but they could never get their soap hard because his real secret was the salt, and he made us promise not to tell.

We had ten chickens, a horse, a cow, a sheep, a dog, and a cat. The dog was a collie. It and the cat showed up a day apart. We never knew where they came from. We planted lettuce, peas, carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, and squash. We had to build a solid fence around the garden to keep rabbits away. But birds kept trying to eat the seed, so papa traded his hard soap for sheets and tented them over the ground. The birds got discouraged. The rabbits that kept trying, papa shot them. He said they needed to be killed to save the garden and besides they made a good stew.

We were never hungry. Papa dug a root cellar under the cabin. It kept the carrots, potatoes, and squash through the winter. Mama made preserves of the peas and beans, using wax to seal the lids the way papa showed her. We even had an old apple tree that was there when we came, and mama made the best pies, and we stored the apples, too. All of us worked. Papa showed us what to do.

Hot summer nights, while he and mama taught us how to read from the Bible, we sometimes heard them howling in the hills. Yip, yip, yip, yip . Baying at the moon. God’s dogs, papa said. That’s what the Indians call them. Why? Judith asked. Because they’re practically invisible, papa said. Only God can see them.

What do they look like? Daniel asked. Silly, I said. If only God can see them, how can anybody know what they look like? Well, a couple of times people have seen them, papa said. They’re brown. They’ve got pointy ears and black tips on their tails.

How big are they? Judith asked, snuggling in his arms. A little bigger than Chester, papa said. Chester was our dog. They weigh about thirty pounds, papa said. They look a little like a dog, but you can tell them from a dog because they run with their tails down while a dog runs with its tail up .

Sure sounds like somebody got a good look at one, I said. Papa nodded. I saw one a long time ago, he said. Before I met your mother. I was alone at a campfire. It came out of the darkness and stared from the edge of the light. It must have smelled the rabbit I was cooking. After a while, it turned away. Just before it disappeared into the darkness, it looked over its shoulder, as if it blamed me for something.

Were you scared? Daniel asked. Time for you to go to sleep, mama said. She gave papa a look. No, papa said, I wasn’t scared.

The harvest moon was full. They howled in the hills for several hours.

The next year, the rains held off. The other farmers lost their wells and had to move on. But the drainage from the snow in the mountains kept water in our creek, enough for the garden. The aspens on the slopes had it hard, though. They got so dry, lightning sparked fires. At night, parts of the hills shimmered. Smoke drifted into the valley. Judith had trouble breathing.

At last, we had a storm. God’s mercy, mama said, watching the rain chase the smoke and put out the flames in the hills. The morning after the first hard freeze, Daniel ran into the cabin. His face was white. Papa, come quick, he said.

Our sheep lay in the middle of the pasture. Its neck was torn. Its stomach was chewed. Blood and chunks of wool lay everywhere. The other animals shivered, keeping a distance.

I saw the veins in papa’s neck pulse as he stared toward the hills. At night, we’ll fence the cow and the horse next to the cabin, he said. There’s meat on the carcass. Ruth, he told me, get the axe and the knife. Daniel and I need to butcher the sheep. Get the shears, he told mama. We’ll take the wool that’s left.

The morning after that, papa made us stay inside while he went outside to check the rest of the animals. He was gone quite awhile. Mama kept walking to the only window we had. I heard papa digging. When he came back, his face looked tight. The chickens, he said. They’re all killed. He turned toward mama. Heads and feathers. Nothing else left. Not enough meat for you even to make soup from. I buried it all. What about eggs? mama asked. No, he said.

That night, papa loaded his rifle, put on his coat, and went out to the shed beside where the horse and cow were fenced. Yip, yip, yip, yip . I stared at the ceiling and listened to them howl. But they were far away, their echo shifting from one part of the valley to another. When papa came inside the next morning, the breeze was cold. Snow dusted the ground. His eyes looked strained, but he sounded relieved. Seems they moved on, he said, putting his rifle on a shelf. We’ll trade soap for more chickens, mama told him, and gave him a cup of coffee.