The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

The Great House was too near, and the principal bedroom from which the dying woman had scarcely stirred in the two years of her illness now seemed to vibrate its unaccustomed emptiness through the night.

Daylight had not brought a solution, but it had accorded indifference.

The sound of the waves, the delicate rocking of the Scout, the rumble of the engine beneath the hood, and most of all the heat that engorged all creation in that lonely place hypnotized the girl until she had almost forgot her anger.

India’s own black shadow of curiosity stretched across the floor, like a startled residue of the room’s last inhabitant.

India had previously entertained no sympathy for the Southern way of life, with its pervasive friendliness, its offhanded viciousness, its overwhelming lassitude. She had always wanted to punch it into shape, to make it sit up straight and say what it meant—but Beldame proved too much for her.

The fear had clung to Odessa like cobwebs—that

“What’s in that house, child, knows more than you know. What’s in that house don’t come out of your mind.

They were the mechanism of the locks in the doors, they were the rot that destroyed fabrics, and they were the black detritus that gathered in drawers that hadn’t been opened in three decades.