The December Featured Writer is Mary Fancher
Please feel free to email Mary at: maryfancher0305@gmail.com
THE POTATO FIELD
by Mary Fancher
The dog is growling as he roots about near the edge of the potato field, over where tough grasses sprout unevenly by a thin rivulet of half frozen, muddy water. She hurries over to investigate, afraid he might have found something dead. A skunk or squirrel, perhaps, killed by a coyote. Instead what she discovers are deep scratch marks in the ground, as if someone had slashed at the earth with a scythe. She looks closer, unsure of what she is seeing. There are tracks leading toward—and then away from—the slash marks, but the tracks are old and blurred by rain, so there is little to be learned from them. The only thing evident is that they were left by something extremely large and nothing she is familiar with.
Unnerved, she quickly looks around, afraid that whatever made the tracks might still be near. But nothing meets her gaze but the tips of grass bending against the wind, the mountains in the distance, and the clump of pine trees behind which stands her house. She studies the tracks once more, thinking she must be wrong, as certainly she must. But then she notices something just as disturbing: the tracks appear to have started out of thin air, several yards away in the potato field, as if whatever created them had dropped out of the sky. Then they disappear into the thick underbrush, impossible to follow.
She quickly walks back home, her eyes scanning the frozen wasteland of ruts and furrows, her mind alert for what, she’s not sure. The field is barren this time of year, when all that remains of the harvest are discarded tubers, the hardness of rocks. A heavy November sky presses down on the field as if it would suffocate it if it could, then sulks over the scattering of houses and farms and the cluster of trailers nearby. In the distance, inky clouds weep vapor trails along the rocky crowns of the high peaks. The only living creature to be seen is a crow gliding overhead, gazing down as if she were a trespasser.
On days like this, when there is a chill wind blowing and the cloud cover is especially dense, she sometimes feels overcome by a vague feeling of unease, as if someone or something was watching her. Today is one of those days.
*****
By the time Mike comes home that night, it is too dark and blustery to guide him to where she saw the tracks. And anyway, he laughs her fears away. You saw one thing and thought it was another, he says. Or else it was someone’s idea of a Halloween joke. Which, after all, was only a few days ago.
She has to agree because, after all, what else could it be? Certainly, there are no monsters stalking the Adirondacks. Still she returns to the potato field the next morning, keeping the dog on leash, just in case. But there was a cold, hard rain during the night, and the ground has been beaten to mud. The tracks are gone. She decides to believe that her husband is right: there was nothing and is nothing in the area but a field full of rotting potatoes, the skeletons of barren hardwoods, the screeching of crows.
Two nights later, she wakes as from a bad dream. She sits up in bed, her eyes staring into the darkness as she listens. She believes she heard—thinks she heard—a great roaring sound, as if from the sky itself, but when she glances over at Mike, he is deep in sleep, undisturbed. It must have been a dream, she thinks, a nightmare. But her heart is still pounding and her forehead is damp with sweat as if it had been much more than that.
She peers out the bedroom window, but sees nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to suggest she had experienced anything that was real. The trees, the hills, the car in the driveway—everything is wrapped in silent stillness.
Wide awake now, she pulls on her robe and slippers. She will make herself a cup of tea and read a chapter from a novel in hopes that this will help calm her nerves. But as she leaves the bedroom, she notices the dog isn’t on his bed in the corner where he usually sleeps. She finds him standing rigidly in the middle of the living room floor, as still as a statue, staring toward the kitchen windows.
She wonders if she should wake Mike. Perhaps there’s an intruder, someone in the yard, looking to break in. But in that case, why isn’t the dog barking? Without turning on the lights, she crosses the kitchen floor and looks outside.
The back yard is bathed in the cool blue light of a full moon. Shadows from the pine trees and the leaf bare hardwoods carve intricate silhouettes on the ground. Everything is as still as if it were cast in a bell jar; there is no wind, no movement at all. She glances back at the dog, but he hasn’t moved. He stands intently alert, staring.
She looks into the yard one more time, thinking how she will check the locks on the doors and make the cup of tea. But this time something catches her attention, over by the back fence line, in a corner, under the trees. A glowing orb of light, the size of a tennis ball, moves erratically, barely a foot off the ground. For a moment, it hovers, then moves a few inches to the side and stops again. She stares in disbelief as it repeats the pattern, gradually moving along the perimeter of the yard as if it was searching for something. When it begins to approach the house, she turns on the back floodlight in a panic. The orb disappears.
She watches for several minutes and turns the light off again. Waits and watches some more. When the strange orb fails to reappear, she checks the windows on each side of the house, but all she sees is the deep tranquility of a November night. There is a chill in the air. It may snow tomorrow. She wonders if what she saw actually happened.
When she is finally able to fall asleep, it is nearly dawn, and she sleeps until ten. By then, Mike has long since gone to work. She wonders if she should call him, tell him about the orb, but she knows what he will say. It is what she would say if she were him.
She finishes her coffee and dresses to take the dog for a walk, but the dog will not leave the house. He’s a Doberman and too big to pick up, so she cajoles and tempts him with a treat, but he is steadfast. He will not go. Now she is concerned—almost frightened—and calls Mike to tell him about the glowing orb of the night before and how the dog refuses to go outside. He tries to calm her. I’ll try to get home early, he says. I’ll check out around the house and yard and see what I can see. In the meantime, she should stay inside. Tie the dog to his lead off the deck if he has to go out.
The rest of the morning she works on a website for one of her customers and almost forgets her earlier fears. But when she rises from the desk and peers outside, she sees there is more to be concerned about: It is snowing and snowing hard. By the time she has made herself lunch, gusts of wind have begun to rock the house and rattle the windows. Now she worries about Mike and his trip home up the mountain from Saranac Lake where he works. She turns on the TV for a distraction, but this makes her worry more; the local news station warns of an early winter blizzard and hazardous traveling conditions.
Knowing the weather will only get worse, she takes the dog by the collar and forces him outside, but as soon as she steps out the door, the wind nearly takes her breath away. The dog lifts his leg and does his business, but in a furtive way as if he were afraid the wind and snow will devour him. Or, perhaps, he’s afraid of something else.
As she leads him back inside, she hears her phone ring. She hurries to answer before it goes to voice mail, but the connection is bad, filled with static. Hello, hello? She shouts over the interference. She hears her husband’s voice, but can barely make out what he is saying. Only a word or two comes through. Other voices—mechanical sounding—interrupt, but these, too, emerge in words she can’t understand. She ends the connection and calls Mike back, but now it is worse. Now she can’t hear him at all. But the strange voices are back. Robotic sounding voices coming through the barrage of static, but nothing that makes sense. When she hears one of them speak her name, she turns off the phone and places it on the mantel.
The last bit of daylight is leaking out of the air although the blizzard has made a twilight of the day since noon. From time to time, she has tried again to reach Mike—or anybody—on the cell phone, with no success.
Each time, she hears the metallic voices chittering through the static. Each time, she ends the connection quickly; afraid she will hear her name once more. Now even the television screen is full of static, and she fears the electricity will soon go out as it so often does during storms in the North Country. Then she will be left with candles and fire light, a Coleman stove to brew coffee.
An hour earlier, she trudged to the mobile home park in hopes one of the residents possessed a landline phone that was still working. This was strange. In all the twenty or so homes, someone should have been in at least one of them. Of all the families who live there, someone at least should have been home. Instead, every trailer was dark, every driveway empty. There were no footprints in the snow, no sign of recent activity, and when she knocked on doors, no one answered.
Now, just as she expected, the lights have gone out. She digs out her lighter and the candles they keep for this purpose. In past storms, the lighted candles have given the small house a cozy feeling. Now, the leaping shadows they cast merely increase the sense of unease she has felt all day. She makes a fire in the fireplace, knowing the house will soon turn cold.
It’s eight o’clock, and Mike is still not home. She wonders if he is on his way or perhaps has tried to make it home but gotten stuck in the snow part way. Perhaps he has decided not to try at all and has rented a motel room in Saranac Lake. She hopes he is safe, but she also desperately wants him home with her.
Once more, the dog refuses to go out, and no amount of encouragement or tugging will make him. He’s eaten barely a mouthful of his dinner and remains curled up on the couch by her side, his nose tucked under his flank. She has little appetite either. She drinks coffee to keep herself awake until she hears from Mike, but when that will be, she has no idea.
There are strange noises coming from outside the house. From time to time, underneath the howling of the wind she can hear them. She tries to tell herself it is only limbs of trees that have broken loose in the storm and are now being blown against the house, but she keeps her husband’s baseball bat on the floor by her feet and a butcher knife on the table just in case.
A half hour goes by, and she braves the weather and her fears to step outside. She is determined to find the source of the noises. Perhaps it’s only a loose board or trick of the wind as it wraps itself around the old house. The snow has drifted against the back door, and she has to push hard and shovel the snow away with her hands in order to create a space large enough to squeeze through.
Even dressed in her warmest gear, the bitter cold stuns her. The snow is blowing sideways and every which way, making it nearly impossible to see. She blinks into the snow filled darkness, but even the trees along the fence line are barely visible. Only during brief lulls in the storm can the tall pines be discerned as they sway wildly in the wind.
Out here, the strange noises seem to come from above and all around at the same time. She tells herself this is because of the violent squalls which seem to distort everything, even sound, but she’s not sure. It’s an odd sound she can’t identify, almost like an electrical humming, but not. She’s about to return inside when she sees something moving out by the pines at the end of the yard.
She cups her mittened hands about her eyes to try to block the driving snow and see the better. Whatever is out there bends and rises, bends and rises as if it is worrying something in the snow, something on the ground. When it rises to full height, it stands nearly as high as the broken branch of the middle tree. She knows this is over seven feet from the ground because Mike sawed the branch off last summer and had to use a ladder to do it.
Despite the snow pummeling her face, she feels her mouth go dry. She steps back, feeling for the door handle as she keeps her eyes directed toward the thing, whatever it is. She tries to convince herself it is an illusion caused by the wind moving through the trees—perhaps one of the pines broken by the gale. But then the thing rises to full height and pauses there, turns slightly in her direction. She is overcome with the awful impression that it is gazing at her. She rushes inside and bolts the door, pushes their heavy oak table against it for good measure. On the sofa, the dog has lifted his head and gazes at her in alarm.
She sits down on the couch beside the dog and forces herself to breathe deeply. Even wearing her down parka, she can feel the dog trembling against her. She stares at the door and waits.
When something crashes against the barricaded door, she jumps to her feet and runs into the kitchen with the baseball bat. The dog lets out a series of uncanny howls she’s never heard from him before. Her mind is a blank filled only by fear.
Again the thing hurls itself against the door with the force of a battering ram. The entire house shakes, but this is followed by an ominous silence. She scans the door to see if there’s any sign of its giving way, but so far, it appears to be intact. She tries to think what she should do and comes up with nothing.
Outside the windows, there is nothing to be seen beyond the ice-caked glass, the blustering snow, and her own terror stricken reflection. After what might be ten minutes or twenty, she retreats back into the living room and places another log on the fire. If something breaks into the house, she will fend it off with fire.
When her eyes blink open, it is just coming dawn, and she wakes with a rush, her heart pounding. The fire is out, the house filled with the stench of stale smoke. She can see her breath in the air. She looks around and sees the candles burned to puddles of cold wax, the oak table still pushed against the door. Everything as it was before she fell asleep.
She stands up slowly, her neck and back and legs stiff from sleeping in an awkward position. Her head aches with the cold. She looks back at the sofa, expecting to see the dog, but he’s not there. When she frantically searches the other rooms, he is nowhere to be found.
She goes through the small house twice, calling and calling. As she passes the front door entrance a second time, she notices the door is open a crack. A dribbling of snow from outside has found its way onto the floor. Perplexed, she opens the door wider and peers outside.
Snow is still falling with grim determination, but the wind has died down and an eerie stillness has taken its place. A vast sea of white has rolled over the porch and yard, the trees, everything. Drifts, blown into fantastic shapes, lean against the sides of the house and garage. She can see where the dog has made his way across the porch and down the steps toward Mike’s car.
Mike’s car.
Relief washes over her as she follows the dog’s trail to where the car door has been pushed half-way open into the snow. The keys are still in the ignition, a crumpled candy bar wrapper tossed on the floor. His briefcase on the seat.
She straightens up and looks around, expecting to see her husband at any moment, but all that meets her eyes is a broken trail leading toward the back of the house, a trail made by both dog and husband.
Relief gives way to anxiety as she follows the tracks through the snow, past the house and yard, out toward the potato field. She recalls the sounds from the night before: the noises in the sky, the loud bashing at the door. Fear makes her mouth dry, and she scoops up a handful of snow and eats it.
She struggles up a low hill, the snow in places reaching the tops of her thighs. Even though Mike and the dog have broken a trail, it is still difficult to make headway. She feels she’s in one of those horrible dreams where the faster one tries to move, the slower one goes. Tears stream down her face from both cold and dread. When she reaches the top, she pauses to catch her breath.
The edge of the field begins here, a vast sea of undulating white. She can see the dog in the distance. He is barking frantically at something in the air just above the snow.
As she approaches, she sees a vague disturbance there like the edges of a mirage in the desert. The atmosphere seems to be folding and unfolding upon itself, while in the center, a circle of light begins to appear, not unlike the glowing globe she witnessed two nights before.
She remains riveted to the spot, unable to look away. The globe becomes larger as the atmosphere around it darkens. The light dims and brightens in halting fashion, its contents only gradually becoming clearer. A bizarre landscape is revealed, one of purple meadows, strange, violet trees and sky the color of blood. Towards one edge, she sees a dark figure, but this too materializes in spastic fashion, as if she were viewing an ancient film on an old projector, frame by frame. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the dog lowering its head. The barks have turned to growls.
The figure is closer now, running toward her across the amethyst plain. A familiar figure, but the context makes it strange, almost unrecognizable until, at last, she is sure of what she sees. It is her husband, running in her direction toward the periphery of the globe of light, frantically calling out in soundless screams and waving his arms for her to run away.
She catches her breath, and for a brief moment she is aware of nothing but the steadily falling snow, the tears crusting to ice on her cheeks, the dog breaking its paralysis and backing away in fear.
Mary Fancher is an artist and writer living in Central New York. A graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton, her artwork has been exhibited in a number of galleries and juried shows in New York State, Oregon, and South Carolina.
Her historical fiction novel, The Love Letter of John Henry Holliday, was on the short list for the 2015 Historical Novel Society’s Indie Editor’s Choice Award. A second novel, John Lee, for which she is currently seeking a publisher, was one of the five finalists in the 2014 South Carolina First Novel Award.
For more information or to contact Mary, visit her website HERE
