“Pamela!” Athena took her by the shoulders. “Is there a gun here? Pamela?” She shook her. “Is there a gun?”
A terrible screaming roar ripped through them.
“What is it? Oh Lord!! There ain’t no gun. Oh Lord oh ’Thena.”
Metal wrenched loudly. The whole trailer jolted, tilting, and Athena threw out her arms to block her fall. Some of the candles toppled, went out.
In the gloom, the wall began to bow inward, groaning. “It’s gonna get in! Sweet Jesus, ’Thena, what is it? It’s gonna bend down the wall.”
The window vent shattered. Spinning around, Pamela screeched as a particle of glass struck her cheek. The remaining candles went out with a rainy gust.
Lightning—something like a hand at the window—then blackness.
Pam fell on her face and screamed in static terror with every breath.
Athena groped her way around the other woman, found the small cabinet and clawed through the drawers. Paper, rags, flatware. From the broken vent came scrabbling and a rasping breath.
But when brightness flared again, only rain showed at the window.
“Where’s…?” From the floor, Pam made a noise like gagging. “Where is…it?”
A tremor ran through the walls.
Something rattled overhead. The trailer rocked wildly on its foundation. Athena hit the wall, slid sideways, the knife clattering away from her. Her knee struck the floor. Pamela grabbed at her and hung on as they rolled.
The pounding on the roof merged with the sound of the storm—giant hailstones, beating one after another. Rapid light flashed at the ruined window, and they watched the low ceiling bend, sagging toward them. Athena knelt beside Pam and held her hand. There came a small tearing sound and a splashing, sudden trickle of wetness.
“Oh no, oh no my baby, oh no, no.” Pam wept.
Athena stroked her hair, so long and soft. Pam clutched her, her breath very hot on Athena’s face.
“Maybe if we don’t say nothing, maybe it’ll go away if it don’t think we’re in here. ’Thena?”
Athena raised her head. It had all changed, the one roaring replaced by many growls and snarls. Was the forest alive with them?
Rain muddled the sounds from outside. Something scrabbled overhead, and scufflings blended with ferocious baying in the wind. Barking became shrill yelping, then reverted to snarls.
Moving with numbed calm, she worked herself painfully to her feet and limped to the broken vent.
“’Thena, what?”
She stood quietly at the window while the storm and something else raged outside.
“’Thena?” Pamela peered from between her fingers. A double flicker of lightning showed her an impassive face beneath the dark mass of hair.
“It’s gone.”
“What?” Pam whispered in a voice like a child’s. “What’s the matter, ’Thena?” She crept to the window.
They peered through the twisted metal slats. Intermittent glare afforded them glimpses of the dogs in the clearing, starved and diseased looking beneath wet fur, insane from fresh blood. The chicken coop lay in twisted fragments, and all the mongrels had drenched hens in their jaws, shaking them, crushing them with gushes of black fluid.
“No!” A white hen tried to flee, and Pam made a small wretched sound as she watched.
In silence, the two women stood, now in darkness, now in sudden radiance. They stared. Small rent bodies were tugged apart, and white feathers w ere flung about in the downpour. Small legs kicked amid the mangled flappings. In burning glimpses, through hanging shards of glass, they watched the miserable gray slaughter of the hens.
They watched night fade to shades of dawn, watched the fragmented glass slowly brighten. Outside, it still drizzled.
Athena shifted about, uncomfortable in damp clothes. A blue glimmer came through ruffled chintz, a drowned sort of daylight that made the flowers on the curtains seem to crawl. Knowing she approached nervous collapse, she blinked at the acid-gray horror of the morning. Without comprehension, she watched Pam cheat at solitaire, then glanced at the broken window again. Her eyes felt tight.
Pam put the two of spades on the ace. She’d been playing at that table since before there’d been light enough to see the blunted deck. Her hair had dried plastered to her face, and her movements seemed both jerky and slow, like an old film run in a faulty projector. Every so often she’d mumble something about the rain being a good thing for the woods and all.
“It’s light enough to leave.”
“There sure ain’t no gun here.” Pam kept playing.
“When we get home, I can take care of your cut cheek better.”
“I told Lonny, I said to him, ‘What happened to that gun?’ an’ he asks me what do I want with a gun anyhow, but I told him, ‘I’m scared out here by myself an’ you not home alla time.’ So then he gets mad an’ says…” No ripple of emotion disturbed the perfect calm of her voice.
“We have to go, Pamela.”
“Not yet.” Black queen on red king. “I don’t wanna.”
“We’ve got to make sure Matthew’s all right.” She got up, wobbly with fatigue.
“’Thena?”
“I’m all right. My leg’s asleep.” She saw the knife on the floor, set it on the table in front of Pam. “You take that.”
Pam’s eyes looked bruised. She didn’t touch the knife.
The floor was wet, and cracks in the dented ceiling still dribbled moisture. In the tight closet, Athena found a broomstick and screwed off the mop attachment. Heading for the door, she stumbled. Rug remnants lay several layers thick in places, a quilt of damp, faded colors in the haze. Red rectangle. Blue square. Her own muddy footprints. Maddening hints of pattern. The toe of her shoe slipped under a green L-shaped piece, and she almost pitched forward again, feeling even clumsier, even more disoriented.
“I know it’s still out there.” Pam’s voice sounded listless and flat. “You better not open the door now.” She didn’t glance up from the cards, but her face twisted when she heard the squeak of the latch.
The door stuck, dented into the frame. Athena yanked. A heavy mist of rain blew in. Outside, it was still a little dark. The front of the mobile home seemed to have been repeatedly struck by a car. “Come on, or I’ll leave you.” She stared: beyond the clearing, the woods looked vacant and pure.
“Watch out for these steps. They’re sort of ripped loose. Are you coming, Pamela? I swear, I’ll leave you here by yourself. Are you listening to me?” She took a deep breath. “How long do you think this door will hold if it comes back?”
Once outside, Pam wept again at the sodden piles of bones and feathers, at the petunias flattened in the mud. Looking wildly about, she clutched the little knife with both hands.
The rain fell lightly, so gentle they barely felt it as they moved in silence through the fog-soaked trees. The sand looked churned and lumpy, and the pines possessed a frightening, crawly clarity.
Pam kept looking back, her eyes showing white all around. Suddenly, she began to run.
“Come back! Pamela!” Yelling, Athena pursued her. As she caught up, she saw her dive and make a wild
