What Lies In Darkness

Listen (18 min) | Short Story | Magical Realism | Mild language, disturbing imagery

Nothing good happens after dark. Eleanor’s mother had said it a thousand times, and Eleanor found, more often than not it was true. She stood at the open kitchen door, looking out into the June night.

Laurie Brett, brown-haired, wrapped in a black winter coat, five or six months expecting, thrust a peach pie towards Eleanor, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry it’s so late, Ms. Tailor, but I have to see your girl. Please.”

Eleanor didn’t have to see Laurie’s eyes to know she was terrified.

Cradling the pie in one arm, she placed her free hand on her guest’s back, showing her to a seat at the kitchen table, and taking a chair beside her. “Now, you wanted to see my Meggie.”

Laurie dabbed her brow. “Yes, ma’am. As I say, I know it’s late, but I couldn’t risk the neighbor’s seeing where I was headed. I’m sure folks bring you better payment than pies, but I’m a good cook, and I’m sure your girl’ll like it. I picked the peaches myself.”

Eleanor shook her head. “We don’t ask payment. It’s just something people do because they’re grateful.”

Grateful and afraid. Meggie Tailor was a nice, quiet girl, but the citizens of Hopewell knew she had the sight from the time she was in her mother’s arms.

As a baby, her eyes were always darting up and about, looking around and not at the faces in front of her. When Meggie smiled and pointed to the air, everyone knew the person nearest was someone to be trusted. If she wailed and covered her face, they knew what that meant, too.

When she began to speak, it became too much for the townspeople. Eleanor taught her how to read and write from home until she was sure Meggie had learned to hold her tongue.

At five, Meggie began receiving visitors. People had questions for this child who was purported to see spirits—angels and the bad ones she called them—and were willing to pay in eggs, hams, apples, canned goods, and cash to hear her answers. Eleanor, a cleaning woman and a widow, didn’t dare refuse.

Some folk liked what they heard. Some went running down the hill to the church. And some left town, never to be seen again.

Eleanor smiled at Laurie. “Could you give me some idea why you’ve come? I’m sure my daughter’ll speak with you, but there’re a lot of things she can’t do—telling the future, love spells, palm reading, that sort of thing. I’d like to know if yours is a problem she can help with.”

Laurie opened her lips and pressed them back together.

Eleanor patted her hand. “You have my word that nothing you say here will go any farther than these walls.”

Laurie looked into her eyes. “Swear. On your husband’s grave.”

Eleanor glanced at Laurie’s belly. She didn’t have to be a seer to guess what this was about. “On my husband’s grave. That goes for Meggie, too.”

Laurie relaxed her shoulders. “Thank you.”

Clearing her throat, she began. “It’s my husband. Last night he came home real late, later than usual. No drink on his breath or clothes. I ask him where he’s been, and he gets angry and says it’s not my place to ask. I figured he was with one of his women. He—he’s not a faithful man, Ms. Tailor.”

All of Hopewell knew John Brett for a philanderer. A girl in every town roundabout. Many a woman had been taken in by his charms and lived to regret it. Only in appearance was his marriage to Laurie unsurprising. She was the most beautiful woman in town, and he knew he was the best-looking man. Beyond that, the similarities ceased.

Laurie continued. “So, he goes to wash up, and I see that his coat is dirty, so I decide to clean it. That’s when I noticed something in his pocket. I thought it was liquor—I was going to set it in the kitchen. I was half right. It was a bottle, but not that kind.”

Laurie trembled. “It was one of those that comes from Haney Thatch.”

Haney Thatch was a woman known throughout the county as a concoctor of potions. For love, sick cattle, truth telling. She lived in a cabin in Laytonvale five miles east, and many from Hopewell had made the journey for the benefit of her arts.

“As I have your word, Ms. Tailor, I’ve got to tell you the truth.” Laurie touched her belly. “This baby isn’t John’s.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. “I married him to hide it, and now he suspects. I think he wondered when I came to be with child so quickly, but then he found a keepsake of mine from the baby’s father, and ever since he’s been looking at me sideways.

“I know how Haney Thatch’s potions work. I had a friend whose husband put her through the same thing last year. You’ve got to do it during the full moon. The man drinks, then the woman. He goes into a sort of trance, and if he can see the child clearly in her womb, it’s his. If not—.” Tears filled Laurie’s eyes. “There’s going to be a full moon in two days. If I don’t take it, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

Eleanor had a pretty good idea.

Touching Laurie’s arm, she smiled. “Meggie’ll do what she can. The angels may have a word for you, and the bad ones may tip their hand.”

Rising, she went to her daughter’s room.

Meggie was sitting up in bed, holding her doll, a lamp lit beside her showing a mass of freckles on her right cheek. “I heard someone come to visit.”

Eleanor leaned in the doorway, nodding. “It’s Ms. Brett from down the road. She’s in trouble, darlin.’ There may be something you can do, but only if you want to.”

Rubbing her eyes, Meggie climbed out of bed, reaching for her mother’s hand. “I sort of want to. Reverend Giles said I have a gift and I should use it to help folks.” She yawned. “I just wish they’d visit before bedtime.”

Stifling a giggle, Eleanor led her daughter out to the kitchen and sat her down at the table.

Laurie gripped the sides of her chair, watching the girl. “Hi there, Meggie. Did your mama tell you why I’ve come?”

Meggie shrugged. “She told me you needed help.”

Laurie nodded. “Please, will you tell me what you see?”

Sighing, Meggie shut her eyes.

Opening, she began to look into the space beyond Laurie. “I see your angel. He’s got a sword like the angel guarding the garden of Eden. He’s swinging it at the bad ones, coming like a cloud of darkness, closing around you.”

Laurie’s breath caught. “What does that mean? Closing around?”

Meggie watched, cocking her head. “The darkness has a pair of hands, and the hands—,” she looked at her mother and back again, “they’re holding a plain clay bottle, and the bottle and the hands are all covered in blood.”

Tears fell from Laurie’s eyes as she watched the child.

Meggie returned her gaze. “That’s all I see. I’m sorry it’s not nicer.”

Laurie’s bottom lip trembled. “If you see what you claim to, how is it you aren’t frightened?”

Meggie knitted her brow. “It’s not like this place. It’s like looking at the pictures in the Bible. I can see them, but they can’t see me.”

Rising, Meggie embraced her mother and kissed her. “I’m all done mama. I’m gonna go back to bed now.”

Eleanor bid her daughter goodnight and watched her disappear down the hallway.

Turning to Laurie, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know this doesn’t ease your mind.”

Laurie wiped her cheeks. “What does it mean? Blood on the hands and the bottle? I don’t understand.”

Meggie had only seen a blood-soaked bottle once before.

Two years previous, Jim Riley, the local blacksmith, had come asking questions. In that case, it was a bottle of strychnine. Soon after, Jim caught his wife stirring it into his supper.

Eleanor remembered Meggie saying, as she watched the sheriff haul Mrs. Riley away, that she could still see the blood on the woman’s hands.

Eleanor folded her arms. “It means whatever’s in that bottle is meant to do you harm.” Grabbing Laurie’s hand, she squeezed it. “Come on now, think. Is there anything John wants particularly? Anything you’d be in the way of—insurance money or another woman?”

Laurie struggled to speak through the tears. “He’s never let our marriage stop him from chasing women, but there’s no one especially I know of. And there’s no insurance policy. He couldn’t keep enough money to pay the dues.”

Eleanor stood up and walked the length of the kitchen. If it had only been the bottle, it would’ve been easy, but the blood—

Rushing back to the table, she pulled her chair close to Laurie’s. “Now, listen. You tell your husband to bring you here tomorrow night. Say I stopped by with a message, and that he’s not to do anything until he’s spoken to Meggie. Tell him she has the answer to his question.”

“But you promised—.”

“—That’s what you’ll say to get him here. Don’t let him know you’ve been to see us. Just say what I told you. Meggie’s got to look one more time, and she’s got to look at John.”

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John and Laurie Brett appeared the next evening at the Tailor’s back door, and Eleanor invited them into the parlor.

Extending her hand, she offered them a seat, but John refused. “I’ve come to hear what your daughter has to say, Ms. Tailor, and I don’t plan to be sittin’ for that.”

Laurie stood beside him, glancing up at him, wringing her fingers.

Eleanor bowed her head. “As you like. I’ll be just a moment getting Meggie.”

When they were all four in the room, Eleanor stood beside her daughter facing the Bretts. “Alright, darlin,’ tell us what you see.”

Again, Meggie exhaled and closed her eyes, opening them after a moment and looking into the space beyond. “I see the bad ones like darkness all around you, Mr. Brett. And hands. Bloody hands with a bloody clay bottle, trying to give the bottle to you and your wife.”

John went pale. Recovering himself, he put his hands on his hips. “You see a bottle, girl?”

Meggie nodded. “It’s bubbling over with something black, like the tar Mr. Riley uses to mend our roof. It’s not good to drink.”

Knees wobbling, Laurie slumped down into a chair.

John squinted, eyeing the child.

Eleanor put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “And what about Mr. Brett’s hands? Do you see anything strange about them?”

Meggie gazed and shook her head. “No. They’re just hands.”

Releasing her breath, Eleanor squeezed Meggie’s arm. “That’s fine dear, that’s all we need. Go on out to Mr.—,” John tried to interrupt, but Eleanor spoke over him, “go out to Mr. Riley in the shed. See if he needs any help cleaning the gardening tools.”

Glancing at the guests, Meggie turned and hurried out the front door.

Scowling, John Brett planted his feet. “I was promised an answer to my question, Ms. Tailor. Now, what is it?”

Eleanor clasped her fingers together and faced him. “I can tell you what you need to know, Mr. Brett, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Is that so?” Ignoring his wife’s pleas, John dragged her up by the arm. “I knew that bastard weren’t mine.” Pulling her from the room towards the back door, he hissed in her ear. “Don’t think this means divorce, I’m goin’ to work you like a horse—.”

“—Mr. Brett,” Eleanor pulled on the two of them, “it’s nothing to do with the child. You and your wife are in danger.”

Glaring, John Brett shook her off. “What do you mean?”

Eleanor wedged herself between John and Laurie. “I’ll tell you, but first you take your hands off your wife, or I’ll scream for Mr. Riley. He’s sure to have a pitchfork or a scythe in hand just now.”

John’s eyes darted from one woman to the other. Raising his hands, he pushed on his lip with his tongue. “Alright, Misses. I got my hands to myself. Now, you tell me what danger you’re talking about.”

Eleanor straightened. “That bottle you got from Haney Thatch, that’s no potion. It’s poison.”

Starring at her, John crossed his arms and guffawed. “I see now. You and Laurie worked it out so she don’t have to drink, and I go on thinking the kid’s mine.”

“If that’s what you think, go home and drink it.” Eleanor hoped he couldn’t hear the shaking in her voice. “If it’s what Haney said, it won’t do you no harm, and you can always get another.”

John’s smile faltered. He blinked. “Why would Haney want to poison me?”

He was so stupid, Eleanor almost felt sorry for him. “Because women don’t like to be toyed with, and a witch has more ways than most of getting even.”

John breathed a laugh, shrugging his shoulders. “We had some fun is all, she understood.”

Eleanor folded her arms. “Evidently not.”

She watched as the gears ground between his ears, as the equation of Haney and the nights spent in her bed and the clay bottle produced a result he could wrap his mind around.

All pretense of civility drained from his face. “You ever say anything about what’s been talked of here tonight, to anybody, and I’ll come after you and your girl. Ya’ here me, woman?”

Starring daggers at his wife, John Brett strode from the room to the kitchen, yanked the back door open, and disappeared into the night.

The women exhaled, Laurie sobbing into her hands.

Shutting and locking the door, Eleanor rubbed Laurie’s back, leading her further into the house. “You’re going to stay in my room tonight, and I’ll move in with Meggie. I’ve got a nightgown you can use, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea to calm your nerves.”

Throwing her arms around Eleanor, Laurie wept, shaking.

That night, she was asleep before she finished her tea.

The next evening, news came to town of a murder in Laytonvale. Haney Thatch was dead. She was found in her house, strangled, an empty clay bottle beside her, a black tar-like liquid leaking from her mouth.

A man fitting John Brett’s description was seen fleeing the place in the wee hours of the morning. The police searched for days without success.

Laurie moved back in with her mother, and three months later a baby boy came.

After the birth, word started that John Brett had been seen making his way towards town.

Leaving Meggie with Jim Riley, Eleanor marched down to the sheriff’s office to see what was being done about it.

She met the sheriff on his way out the door. An old girlfriend of John Brett’s had just confessed to concealing the fugitive, said he was hiding at her place, that she was afraid of him, how he was railing about seeing Laurie’s child and finally getting the answer to his question, whatever that meant. The sheriff and his men were headed right over.

That afternoon, Eleanor heard the news.

After a grueling chase, the law caught up with John, who decided to try and shoot his way out. The deputies didn’t take kindly to being fired at. They put three bullets in John’s chest for all the trouble he caused them and left his body lying where it fell on the dirt floor of an abandoned barn. There was no interest, the sheriff said, from anyone wanting to claim the body.

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Photo by Julian Rösner on Unsplash