Countless Haints, Pt. 3

A pair of tire tracks wound around the edge of the forest, leading in one direction towards the highway, and in the other towards the farm.  Wiry grass grew tall and wild between the ruts, and a half-dozen grasshoppers sprang through the brush, leaping ahead of Madi as she made her way home.

The bottoms of her feet felt swollen from briar sticks, and tiny cuts covered her ankles and calves, like a swarm of angry wasps knitted into a pair of stinging socks.  She'd stopped at the creek to clean up as best she could, but her now-tattered dress was covered in mud … and tiny splashes of blood where the thorns had stabbed through the fabric and into her flesh.  She didn't like the way the sodden cloth stuck to her legs.  Her face was hot, and sweat burned her eyes and dribbled down the bridge of her nose.  She mopped damp hair from her face with the back of her left forearm.  Under her right arm, she carried the boy's skin, folded up neat as Sunday wash.

"Be still," she hissed.

The skin felt feverish.  Madi could have sworn it was sweating, too.  It squirmed under the crook of her arm as if trying to shimmy free.

"I said be still, or I swear I'll wrap you round a stone and chuck you in the creek."

The boy's hide stopped moving and, within seconds, grew cool as old leather.

She could hardly believe what she'd found in the woods.

A haint.

And on her birthday, too.

She knew plenty about haints.  The hollows and the salt marshes crawled with them, deathly pale and gravely silent.  Pa didn't like to talk about such things, but 'Riah told stories about the restless ghosts of pirates protecting long-buried treasures … or the wandering specters of confederate soldiers who searched by moonlight for body parts severed by saber or cannonball … or older, darker spirits that had never been alive at all, at least not as people recognized the difference between life or death.

He said nearby Ahmen's Landing was infested with ghosts, sometimes two or three to a house, and no matter where you went in town, spectral eyes followed you.

"And on certain nights," the old man had whispered, "the mists roll in from offshore, thick as cotton, creeping into every crevice and corner, reeking like dead things washed in with the tide.  The breath of drowned men, grown restless in the deeps.  Phantom's breath."

Madi liked the stories.  She liked being scared.  But deep down she'd always known the yarns about ghouls and goblins and phantom's breath were nothing more than buncombe.  But now—

She'd found a haint.  A real, live haint.

She chuckled at herself.  A live haint.  Wasn't that a silly thing to think?

"Wouldn't be much of a ghost," Madi said, "if you were still alive."

The boy's skin did not answer.

As she walked along, she heard something following her in the forest scrub, like a bobcat stalking her, waiting to pounce.  She pretended to ignore the sound, but every now and again she risked a glance at the trees.  She saw nothing, but the sound stopped every time she peered into the brush.  She knew something watched her from the woods.  She could feel wild eyes upon her.  She quickened her pace.

Rounding the bend, she saw her house.  Chickens milled about the yard, pecking up bugs, and Madi felt a hint of guilt for driving the grasshoppers in their direction.  The cows, including the new calf, stood in their fenced pasture, chewing vacantly at grass and weeds.  The vineyard's wire trellises climbed the hill, already heavy with leaves and drooping grape clusters, and the sharp scent of the scuppernongs was thick in the air.  At the summit of the hill stood the old tree in dark silhouette.

Madi saw no sign of her father, but she guessed he was a-wandering through the trellises, inspecting the vines.

She dashed across the yard and up the sagging front porch steps.   When she reached the top step, she paused to watch the tree line.  She discerned no sign of whatever had been shadowing her through the woods, but she figured it was out there even now.  Watching.  She rewarded the watcher's vigilance with a shrug, and she went inside.

The screen door creaked open and snapped shut.  The house was gloomy and stuffy, and dust motes danced in the weak beams of sunlight streaming in from the open windows.  The warm, still air smelled faintly of Pa's pipe smoke, with maybe a hint of the morning's breakfast—pork steaks and scrambled eggs—lingering about for good measure.  The heat and the smells seemed to paw at Madi, and her skin felt greasy and sticky.  During the winter months, she couldn't wait for warmer days, but now that summer was settling down upon the farm, autumn couldn't get here fast enough for Madi's tastes.  The here and now was never good enough for the girl, and she would have been the first to admit it.

Madi went straight to her room, pulled the door closed, and drew the window shade down.  She gently unfolded the skin and spread it out upon the bed.  The skin looked like something out of the funny papers, like a comic strip character who'd been smashed flat by a falling boulder or piano.  Only, in the funny papers, there was never blood.

"I don't know if you can see or not since you don't have eyes."  Madi tugged the covers back from the bed and threw them over the haint's flattened face.   "But I know enough about boys to know that even without eyes, you'd find a way to peek at me if you could."

She quickly changed out of her sweaty, muddied dress and hid the garment under the bed until she could try to wash it proper.  She opened her dresser drawers and chose a fresh, clean pair of denim cut-offs and a tee shirt.  The garments were old, well-worn, and soft, and they hugged her body with a familiarity that only comes from being worn over and over again throughout the years.  Madi pouted a little.  She knew it was a ridiculous idea, but she'd halfway believed the clothes wouldn't wear the same now that she was "all grown up".

As she dressed, she heard the heavy tread of her father's boots on the front porch.  The screen door whined as he wrenched it open.  She quickly grabbed the castoff skin, crumpled it up, and threw it into the dresser.  She closed the drawer and quickly straightened her bedclothes.

Pa was talking to someone.  His voice sounded muffled and hushed, but Madi had a knack for hearing the subtlest sigh or whisper.  She held her breath and listened.

"…of course, I know what it means," he said.  "You think I haven't been expecting this day for the past seventeen years?"

"Well, then you know what has to be done."  Madi recognized the second voice.  Old Man 'Riah.  "You've known since the day you took up in this house."

Madi tiptoed to the door for a better listen.

"But I'm telling you, it ain't like that," Pa said.  "I've been watching her."

"She's growing up."

"But she ain't showing any signs."  Pa raised his voice.  "Not like you and the others said she would."

"She will, though.  That's the way of it."

"Don't act as though you don't care."  Madi could tell from Pa's tone of voice his face was growing red.  "You've watched her grow up, same as me."

"But I still remember the pact," 'Riah said.

"Maybe it's easier for you, because you ain't her father."

Madi nearly squeaked in shock at what 'Riah said next.

"Neither are you."

Madi's heart thudded in her chest.  She couldn't breathe.  The rush of blood in her ears nearly drowned out the conversation between the men.  Madi thought she heard her father snap back at the trader man, but she couldn't make out the words.  What did 'Riah mean?  Surely she had misunderstood him.  The men were arguing, and she caught only a few words here and there—pact and grave and birthing and …

She gasped as if splashed with a bucket of ice water.

Witch.