The Harvest Read online

  Instead, he took a serious bite into his chaw and said, "You're the man with the book-learning, why don't you tell me?"

  "You can only be taught what is already known. And I don't think this falls into the category of ‘natural phenomena.’"

  "What the hell do we do now? We've hunted down the bastard—and pardon me for giving it credence by calling it an ‘it’—but it ain't the kind of thing you shoot between the eyes and field dress and carry back home to the dinner table."

  Chester was relieved to see that DeWalt's color had faded from beet red back to pink. Maybe the Yankee wouldn’t up and die on him just yet.

  "That creek might explain the green rain I saw," DeWalt said. "It's like that cave is spewing the stuff out. Those roots are spreading out, whatever it is. And the mouth—"

  Chester looked over his shoulder and met DeWalt's eyes. There, DeWalt said it first.

  "Yeah, the mouth," DeWalt repeated. "The mouth goes into the mountain, but it feeds here. Can't you feel it?"

  Chester nodded. He supposed he'd always had what DeWalt called a "kinship with nature," but he didn't want to be kin to whatever this thing was. He had enough fucked-up kin already, with his worthless sons Sylvester and Johnny Mack. Not to mention that liquor-pinching grandson of his, Junior. Now this mouth had squatted on his land, just crawled into the belly of Bear Claw and made itself at home with no respect for property lines.

  "I can sure feel something, DeWalt. Like when you're standing under one of those transfer stations with all the electric cables crisscrossed over your head. Something invisible but strong enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and make your innards tingle. And if you listen close," Chester said, realizing for the first time that they had been whispering, as if the knotholes of the tainted trees were ears, "you can hear a little murmur inside the mouth. Almost like an ass-backward birdsong with a hard wind thrown in for good measure."

  "Yes, I hear it. Sort of like music. The orchestra of the oubliette."

  "Talk plain, you cufflink-wearing Yankee. I'm getting left far enough behind as it is."

  "Something that sounds wrong. And looks wrong. But there it is. We can see it with our own eyes."

  "But what are we going to do about it?" Chester's knees ached from stooping. "I don't think a shovel would do much good, even if we'd have brought one."

  "Time to plan our next step, I suppose."

  "I want all my steps to be backward, away from this damn dirt Mouth that looks like it's ready to suck something in."

  They had scarcely noticed that darkness was settling around them like black ink. The fluorescence from the mouth was so bright that it lit up the pocket of woods like a used car lot. The sound of distant crickets warned Chester that night was pitching its tent. “I see enough. Too much. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  "I'm game," said DeWalt.

  "Don't say that, especially when that Mouth looks like it's ready to do some hunting of its own."

  He led DeWalt back toward the farmhouse, hoping his directional memory and woodsman's instinct held true. They reached the ridge overlooking the farm just as the sky turned from pink to violet. Chester was leading the way down one of his old hunting trails when he heard a twig snap. He spun, lowering his shotgun to waist level and pointing it toward the sound.

  "Uh, pardon me, folks," the man said, stepping from behind a laurel thicket. "I got myself lost here."

  "Stop where you are and open your eyes," Chester said.

  "They are open."

  No green lights. Chester exhaled and let the gun dip. His trigger finger relaxed, but only slightly.

  "What in bluefuck blazes are you doing out in my woods this time of an evening? Trying to break your fool neck?" Chester hoped the man didn't realize how close he'd come to getting himself a new blowhole. He could feel DeWalt at his back, peering over his shoulder.

  "Just out looking, sir," the man said.

  "Trespassing ain't looked on too kindly around here. Ever damn thing and its brother’s took up residence on my property." Chester didn't like the smell of the stranger's cologne. Smelled like sissy stuff. But at least his eyes weren't glowing green and he wasn’t dribbling mush from his face.

  "I apologize, sir,” said the smooth-talking man. “You wouldn't happen to be Chester Mull, by any chance?"

  "Depends on who's asking."

  "Emerland. Kyle Emerland." The stranger stepped out of the shadows and extended his right hand. DeWalt muttered under his breath.

  "That's fine and dandy, Mr. Emerland,” Chester said, ignoring the offered hand. “Can't say as I'm glad to make your acquaintance. You still ain't said why you're out here, and you don't look like a midnight poacher in that fancy suit of yours."

  "I'll be blunt then, sir. You seem like a man who appreciates honesty. I'm here to make a business proposition."

  "I'm not in no business. What have I got that you want?"

  "About four hundred acres of mountaintop, for one thing," DeWalt interrupted. "You're pointing a gun at the man responsible for the development of the Sugarfoot resort. I'll turn my head if you want to shoot him without any witnesses."

  "Herbert DeWalt, is that you?" the stranger said cheerfully. A little too cheerfully, in Chester's opinion. Slick, like. Maybe he’s in on this Earth Mouth deal somehow. Maybe it’s some sort of high-dollar pollution. Or a secret government test of some kind.

  "Yes, it’s me, Emerland,” DeWalt said. “I’m sure you’ve done your homework, so let’s not play games. You're just wasting your time. Chester's not interested in selling."

  "Come now, let's be reasonable. Let Mister Mull decide for himself."

  "Hold on, hold on,” said Chester, irritated. His mind had been forced to make too many leaps already today. He was just coming to grips with a strange unworldly visitation, and now a stranger wanted to talk real estate. "Anybody mind clueing me in, seeing as how I seem to be the bone that the dogs are tugging at?"

  "At least hear me out, Mister Mull,” Emerland said. “Let's sit down and put it all on the table. I think you'll find my offer's extremely generous."

  "Do what?"

  "He wants to buy you out, Chester,” DeWalt said. “He wants Bear Claw so he can fill it in with concrete and steel, shiny glass and ski lifts, and the finest tourists that New Jersey and Florida have to offer.”

  "Come on, DeWalt,” Emerland said. “You know I'm a fair man. And I’m not a cheapskate.”

  “He’s got a bulldozer in place of a heart,” DeWalt said to Chester.

  Chester squinted at the stranger's face. “A little earth moving might not be a bad idea, if this here Emerland’s got a big enough shovel for the job.”

  An early moon had arisen, a crisp wide ball that looked like it would drip milk if squeezed. Chester was uncomfortable standing out here at night, with a forest full of mushbrains and Earth Mouths and Lord only knew what else.

  "Why don't we take this little powwow down to the house?" Chester said. “I don’t trust these woods this time of night. Never know what you might run into.”

  DeWalt was looking at Emerland as if watching a rattlesnake that might decide to strike. Chester headed down the trail, glad he'd shut the flatlanders up enough so he could listen to the trees.

  Because the trees were whispering, and the language was soft and slushy and strange. He picked up speed as he headed downhill, leaving the two men to make their own way back. But they must have experienced the same uneasiness, because they stayed at Chester’s boot heels until the trio reached the forest’s edge.

  Chester breathed a sigh of relief when they stepped out from the canopy of the woods into a meadow. He looked at his farm spread out below, at the dark buildings and the barbed-wire stitching that marked off the fields. Under the stars, it was a beautiful, peaceful place. Except for its unwanted visitors.

  The evening dew soaked into Chester's boots, making his feet heavy. He dug into the pocket of his overalls for his moonshine. DeWalt stepped beside him,
breathing hard.

  "Let me warn you about him, Chester," he said, low enough so that the trailing Emerland couldn't hear.

  "Shoot, pardner." Chester screwed the lid off the jar. He hoped DeWalt didn't launch into his tree-hugger bit. He glanced back at the mountain. He could just make out the green glow in a pocket between two ripples of black land.

  "You know that song ‘This Land is Your Land?’"

  "Sure. Learned it in third grade. My last year of schooling."

  "Well, there's a new version. It goes”—DeWalt drew in a breath and sang in an off-key bass—"This land was your land, this land was my land, now it belongs to . . . that bastard Emerland . . ."

  Chester chuckled. "You couldn't carry a tune in a galvanized washtub. But I get your drift."

  "What's that, gentlemen?" Emerland called.

  Chester stopped and lifted the moonshine jar to his lips. “Oh, just talking about you behind your back, is all.”

  “Don’t believe everything DeWalt says. He’s only protecting his own interests. We’ll top his offer by twenty percent.”

  “Don’t matter none,” Chester said. “I ain’t selling. And I got other problems at the moment.”

  “Mister Mull, we’re talking a high six figures here,” Emerland said. “Maybe bumping seven. And our development will be ergonomically designed to fit the environment and protect the viewshed. The impact on the natural beauty will be minimal. My architects—”

  “You can shelve the twenty-dollar words, Emerland,” Chester said. “Won’t make no difference.”

  “Chester, his idea of ‘low impact’ is a truckload of dynamite,” DeWalt said.

  Chester had lifted the jar for another sip but stopped with the jar inches from his lips. “What’s that?”

  “Emerland likes things that go boom.”

  Chester took the delayed swallow, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and said, “Dyn-ee-fucking-mite.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” DeWalt said.

  “Yeah, but probably in plainer words.”

  “Blow the fucker back to hell?”

  “Can’t get no plainer than that.”

  Emerland's eyes shifted back and forth.

  Probably wondering how he ended up with such a pair of fruitcakes on a cool Appalachian mountain under a grinning moon. Chester grinned.

  "Hey,” Chester said to him. “You got some dynamite over there at the construction site, don't you?"

  "Huh?" Emerland's clean-shaven jaw dropped.

  "Ka-blooey stuff. TNT. Instant avalanche."

  "You're insane." Emerland raised his palms in protest. "That stuff is seriously regulated. It has to be double locked and every damned piece has to be accounted for—"

  "Locked, huh? And I reckon you got the keys, Mister Big Britches?" Chester let his few teeth catch the moon in what he hoped was a crazed grimace. He pointed the shotgun at Emerland to complete the lunatic image. He was pleased to see Emerland gulp frantically.

  "You can't do this. Why, this is . . . it's against the law."

  Chester cackled. He’d discovered that pretending to be insane wasn't much of a character stretch. "There's a new law in town, stranger. And it ain't wrote by the likes of us. Now, get on to the house."

  He let the barrel of the gun flash under the moonlight for emphasis. DeWalt held his arm out like a doorman, indicating that Emerland should go first.

  "Lead on, MacDuff," DeWalt said.

  "Who the hell?" Chester asked.

  "I'll tell you about it someday, after this is all over.”

  But as they walked under the seemingly endless night sky, Chester wondered if it would ever be over.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Driving yourself crazy.

  What else could you call it when your car almost seemed to steer itself, when the road beneath the wheels was predetermined, when God’s skyhook towed you toward an unknown destination?

  No. Tamara wasn’t heading toward craziness. She was either already there or miles from it, saner now than she had ever been. The green light on the ridge above her grew stronger as she approached, and though the curving dirt road often took the glow out of her sight, the electric throb in her head was constant, more intense with each heartbeat.

  She’d slammed some breezy, take-it-easy Jackson Browne into the tape deck, as if mindless melancholy were the proper soundtrack for this unwanted mission. As she ascended, and the road grew more rough and rutted, the forest had taken on a dark look, the canopy hiding quick shadows. The houses had grown sparser along the way, here and there tucked in little glens, gray outbuildings warped with age amid pastures worn low by diseased-looking cattle.

  Tamara downshifted and cut around a particularly steep curve, and for a moment the world fell away at the shoulder of the road, and she could see Windshake below, brick and wood blocks with some sunset lights already on, the uneven highway leading away from town like a black river. Jackson sang something about not being confronted with his failures, as if the mirror didn’t do that to every human being on earth. Then she was between the trees again, and the creeping insistent voice tickled the top of her spine.

  Shu-shaaa tah-mah-raaa.

  The Gloomies were around, floating, seeping, flowing. If she couldn't come to them, they would come to her, or perhaps they would collide with each other. She hadn’t dreamed this part. Or maybe this was a waking dream, one where her own life was the centerpiece, not her father’s or her children’s. This was the forest of night, the oaks surreal and the pines undulating their branches, the tint of the leaves slightly off-kilter, as if viewed through a smudged kaleidoscope.

  She took another curve, skidding on the moist stones where a ditch leaked spring water across the sodden road. The tires spun and caught, but as she straightened the wheel to head deeper up the cut of the mountain, the bank on the far side gave way and a gnarled giant oak fell toward the Toyota.

  She swerved, but the thick branches batted the side of the car in falling, cracking the windshield. The weight of the tree nudged the Toyota into the ditch, bottoming out the car and leaving the left front wheel hanging suspended. She shifted into four-wheel drive, but the mud, the tangled grip of the tree branches, and the grounded oil pan kept the Toyota from doing anything more than quivering in place.

  After a minute of revving the engine, Tamara tried to open her door. It was pinned by a splintered branch as thick as her arm, its new leaves pressed against the glass in greasy smears. Up close, the leaves looked as if they had turgid blue veins, like the varicose veins of an old person.

  She crawled across the seat to the passenger door, opened it, and wriggled out. She stood and looked at the oak, with its gray bark and dark knotholes that seemed to be watchful eyes. The exposed roots, thrust up from the soil, undulated like white worms.

  No. The tree isn’t alive, not in THAT sense of the word.

  She looked past the fallen oak to the forest beyond, which was pocked here and there with granite outcroppings. Other trees lay fallen or bent, almost in a line up the slope. The destruction led in the direction of the glow, and she could see a faint shimmering between the stick figures of the trees.

  Tamara sensed a change in the atmosphere, as if a storm was approaching, but the clouds of sunset were thin and red. The thing, the source, the shu-shaaa, had brought her here, and now she was alone. Now the tide had turned, giving the advantage to whatever strange force haunted the ridge top. The air was electric with it, and the March wind carried its taint.

  She should have gone home. Robert would be sitting at the kitchen table with milk and cookies for himself and the kids, frowning as he watched the hands spin on their wooden owl clock. Then his face would become a rictus of anger as the Six O’clock News came and went on the television. Then he'd put on a mask of studied calm while at the same time trying to reassure the kids by telling them their mother was probably out picking up pizzas. Even though it wasn't like her to just take off without leaving a message and refusing to carry
her cell phone.

  She looked around at the forest shadows that grew long like sharp arms. Small animals chittered in the tangled boughs and tree limbs creaked in brittle agony. Red buds and bright green sprigs fought toward the sinking sun in painful birth. Trees screamed into the sky as if burning alive. Even the loamy soil cried from the harsh clutch of roots.

  The MOUNTAIN—

  is not—

  talking—

  to ME.

  Tamara clasped her hands over her ears as if to block out the unwelcome call of the wild. But the sound was already inside, circling the globe of her brain, spinning its fibrous web in her psyche. She leaned against the Toyota, bright sparks streaking behind her closed eyes. The Gloomies had joined in harmony with the forest’s raging chorus.

  She fell to her knees on the weedy roadside. Among the clatter of bonelike wood and harping briar and babbling brook and frenzied fern, she didn't hear the footsteps kicking leaves as they neared. But she didn't need to hear, because she felt.

  She looked up to see a teenager standing over her. He had dark hair and a Bulls jacket and a wide jaw, a typical teenager who happened to walk out of nowhere—normal, everyday, out-of-the-ordinary—his flesh swollen and moist. Menace flashed in his eyes, which glittered deep and green and empty. Tenderness flashed in his blissful smile, showing petrified teeth. And now he groped her with mental hands.

  Because he was one of the Gloomies, part of whatever had been niggling at her mind like a loose jumper-wire. And she was inside his mind now, only his mind was pulp and mush, a fruity tree made paper. A name, yes, "shu-shaaa" was his name, and it was also "Wade." But that made no sense. Then again, nothing did at the moment. No sense, only a sensing.

  And she was pounded with the impression that she'd better fall beyond his reach, because he wanted to make an offer. An offering. Of her.

  Then his hand was on her shoulder, pulling at the fabric of her blouse, loosening her bra strap and exposing her shoulder to the fading sunlight. He pulled her close, his breath like a dead mist rising over the wooden corpses of a windfall. And in his touch, she felt the parent behind him and inside him. She felt its hunger, its instinct, its will to possess.