NOVEL WEB Over the Fence
Cally didn’t close the chat right away, but she did change the subject, filling Emerald in on Bethany’s accident and all the suspicions she’d had about it since then. Emerald had no insight to offer about this, other than she didn’t believe it was a ghost doing these things, with which theory Cally had to concur.
She logged off and packed up her computer, saying goodnight to Andi who took a break from her balance sheet to come around the counter and give her a hug. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m sure the sheriff will get to the bottom of this whole thing. Meanwhile you be careful, okay?”
Cally was pretty sure the sheriff would only get to the bottom of a very few of the things worrying her at the moment, but she promised Andi she would be careful, and drove down the completely silent street back to Vale House.
The front porch light was still on, and as Cally got out of her car she waved at the Captain sitting on the porch. He did not wave back, so Cally assumed he was asleep. She decided to let him sleep until she returned. Turning, she walked back out the pineapple gate to the fence where Main Street ended and the dirt road into the meadow began.
The metal gate was still warm from the day, she noticed when she put her elbows up on it and peered out into the dark sea of grass. A gibbous moon was just rising beyond the meadow’s horizon, where the dark silhouette of one of the horses could be seen grazing a little way off. The night was warm and windless, and far off to her left she could hear a ringing chorus of crickets and frogs down at the pond.
“Is anyone there?” Cally asked the darkness. Her words sounded ridiculous in her ears, like something right out of one of those ghost investigation shows. “Emerald sent me.” In reply, she heard only laughter, loud and clownish, in the oak trees overhead as three owls emerged to fly on broad, silent wings over her head toward the moon. They sounded like rowdy drunks as they dipped and spun around one another until they were out of sight.
That, she thought, at least explained Andi’s legend of the laughing trees along Bells Road. Only, she realized, it probably didn’t. Not really. Not for her, not anymore. At last she said, “Alright, I’m coming over.” The gate was held shut by a loop of chain over the fence post next to it. She lifted the chain off and dragged the heavy gate across the ground enough to make a space she could squeeze through.
The noise of the frogs and crickets down by the pond seemed to grow silent as soon as she stepped into the grass on the other side. It occurred to her it would be foolhardy to set off across that vast, unmarked meadow even in daylight, but she had never been very good at turning back, and she knew she would not be able to convince herself to turn back now. There was, at least, the dirt road to follow, though it faded after just a few yards to little more than two deep ruts in the grass. She followed them across a flat expanse to the foot of the low, round hill just past where the horse stood grazing. It was hard to tell, in the moonlight, whether it was the black horse or the chestnut.
The wheel-ruts soon became shallow and hard to see in the darkness. Cally turned to look around herself, and was comforted by the sight of Vale House’s front porch light, and the distant lights, beyond, of Woodley’s main street. To her left, Gardens Road glittered in the moonlight, stretching away southward to places she might or might not ever be able to find again on her own. All along the other side of the fence, it seemed to her, the ground looked pale and rutted, as well, almost as if another road ran along it, joining Gardens Road with Bells Road beyond the fields. Cally wondered if there had indeed once been a farm road there, before the grass had grown up and become the parking area in front of Vale House.
Behind her, to the east, the ground rose gently to the round crest of the next hill. She turned to face this, hesitating, but felt fairly secure that once she reached the top of it, she would still be able to turn again and see Vale House. Maybe that would be far enough. She noticed the horse had begun to follow her. It was keeping several steps behind and to her left, dropping its head to graze after every three or four steps, but it was clearly interested in what she was doing, and she found its presence comforting.
The slope was steeper than it had seemed from a distance, and by the time she reached the top, Cally’s calves ached. She turned and was reassured to see the lights of Vale House, smaller now and more distant, but still glowing softly like a night light in a dark room. As she watched, a light in an upstairs window came on, and went out as a different one came on.
The horse stopped when Cally stopped, still keeping its distance, and dropped its head to graze. All around her, the meadow rose and fell like a sea of soft swells, the hills growing higher, and the valleys between them deeper, as they rolled into the distance under the moon. The only sounds to be heard out here were the breeze riffling softly through the grass and the high “peent!” of night hawks calling to one another from hill to hill, interrupted occasionally by the grinding noise of grass between horse’s molars. “This is far enough, I think,” Cally said to the horse, sitting down in the grass facing away from Vale House. “At least, I am certainly not going any farther, not tonight.”
Although, she mused, during the daytime, a horse would certainly be a nice companion to ride in exploration of a grassy field. Might be nice, she corrected herself, as she really had no idea how to ride one. Maybe someday, she thought, she would offer to teach Errin to drive, in exchange for riding lessons. It was the first time she had thought of herself as staying in Woodley for more than a few weeks.
She wondered what she was supposed to do next. She wished she had brought her phone so she could text Emerald for more instructions, but somehow she felt phones would be completely inappropriate in this place, even if a signal were available. It seemed enough, somehow, to just sit here in the warm night air under the moon and listen to the night hawks and the horse grazing. At least, it seemed enough until her backside began to itch from sitting in the grass, which took the romance out of it all.
“Well, I don’t think anyone is coming,” she said at last to the horse and to the general vicinity. She stood to leave, but then she remembered Emerald had said something about bringing a gift to offer. She had seemed very adamant about this, yet Cally had forgotten; she had left her purse and everything else behind in her car.
“Alright, then.” She reached up and plucked three strands of hair from her head and twisted them around the end of a stalk of tall grass. Two of them were gray ones, she realized with some chagrin as they glittered in the moonlight. “I hope this is okay. Goodnight.” She bowed toward the distant hills.
Turning, she started down the hill toward the distant glow of Vale House’s front porch, but before she took the first step she saw someone walking slowly up the slope toward her, bent unsteadily over a cane. “Captain?” she called, hurrying toward the figure. “Hello? Are you alright?”
“Ah, it’s you,” said a voice which, though old and creaky, was not the Captain’s. “Hello!” he called, straightening up and waving his cane.
“Hello... Rum?” Cally thought this must be Ian’s old neighbor, then, and felt relieved, as Rum was clearly much more fit for this sort of thing than the Captain was. And probably not mortal anyway, she recalled from her chat with Emerald. The old man waved his cane over his head at Cally as he continued up the hill, and on the breeze she caught the distinct smell of smoke and barbeque sauce. “No, wait, Jerome?” She was confused. Maybe it was Jerome from Seen’s Mill, as he seemed much taller than she remembered Rum having been, though that still didn’t explain what he was doing here at this hour.
“Just on my way home from work,” he explained. As he approached, he seemed to grow shorter, until the top of his head came up only as high as Cally’s shoulders. He bowed deeply as he arrived to stand with her at the crest of the hill. “I remember you,” he said. “You were at the river with the Siennadair.”
Cally didn’t know what a Siennadair was, but she did remember the river. “So, then, you are Rum during the day,” she guessed, “and at night you are Jerome, and your other job is to make the best ribs east and west of the Appalachians.”
“Some say, some say!” He laughed. “You’re alright, Callaghan McCarthy. I like you! Now, are you sure you want to leave this lying around? It’s very precious.” He planted his cane in the ground and dug in the pocket of his overalls. Reaching up, he showed her three strands of her own hair. They glittered like cool flame flowing across his palm in the moonlight.
“I left it as a gift,” she said. “And anyway I can’t use it anymore. But how did you...” All the breath left her body as she gazed down into his wrinkled face, which looked less human and more like a mossy stump every moment.
“You might not be able to use it anymore,” he interrupted, “but others could. I’ll tell you what: I’ll keep it safe for you. I’ll keep you safe.” He thrust the hairs inside the bib of his overalls. “You have a bright head and a high heart.”
“There are those who might disagree with you,” Cally said.
“Well I didn’t mean you had a lot going on in the brain department,” he chuckled, tapping his own head with a long, crooked finger.
Cally shook herself and took a deep breath to make herself stop staring at him because it seemed the longer she stared, the less clearly she could see him, and besides, it was rude. “Are you one of Emerald’s friends, then?” she asked. “She said I should ask you some questions.”
“I’m your friend now,” he said. “Come on, let me show you.” He plucked his cane out of the ground and walked past her, eastward over the crest of the hill and started down the far slope.
“Um...” Cally cast a nervous look at the lights of Woodley. The horse, however, picked up its head and followed the retreating figure with alacrity. “Oh, I hope I’m not going to regret this,” Cally said under her breath, hurrying to catch up with them, glancing over her shoulder every few steps. The hill rose behind her and gradually its dark bulk blocked her view of the lights of Woodley.
The moon had cleared the horizon and the grass looked silvery in its light. The horse and Rum cast moon-shadows behind them, pointing back toward Vale House, which Cally noted with hope. They also left a wake in the grass that might have been harder to see in the available light, but which could still provide some kind of bread crumb trail back home. She swallowed her misgivings and quickened her pace to catch up with the horse and the walking stump of a figure it followed.
They had paused at the top of a much taller hill ahead, and the horse’s ears were pricked forward. Cally thought she understood why: a sound like distant music was coming from beyond the hill. Rum stood leaning on his cane as he gazed out toward the horizon. By the time Cally reached the top of the hill herself and joined them, she was panting. Below them, a dark stream ran curving across the foot of the hill, glittering in the moonlight as it flowed from north to south, but that was not what they were looking at.
The distant hills beyond were not dark and empty, as Cally had expected. Under the moonlight, glittering cities seemed to crown several crests in the distance. Warm red and yellow lights glowed across the slopes like camp fires, and music hummed from each of the cities in a tuneless harmony that rose and fell on the warm night air. As Cally watched, she was able to see individual buildings more and more clearly. The buildings, though, were oddly shaped, she thought, with rounded walls and curving rooftops. Many of them had bright towers at their corners or spires at their tops. The music emanating from them grew stronger by the moment, and as it did the cities glowed ever brighter, until it seemed even the valleys between the hills were clearly illuminated with warm, dancing light resembling fire. Was it fire, or was it people carrying torches through the valleys – or were they alleys – between the hills?
Cally’s first coherent thought was that this must be what the Captain had seen, as a child, from the gable window of the Yellow House. Then suddenly she was seized with a sinking feeling; the solid ground of the hill beneath her feet seemed to heave like a wave. She understood, somehow, even though she tried very hard not to think about it, that if she should turn around, the Yellow House, and Vale House and Woodley would not be visible any longer behind her. It was not just that they were out of sight – she sensed with growing terror that they were actually not there anymore at all. She put a hand up to her mouth to stop herself crying out in panic.
“Don’t you think it’s beautiful?” Rum asked. She wrapped her arms around herself and nodded, but could not speak. He reached a knobby hand resembling a wooden branch up to her and said “Come, let’s go closer.”
Cally did not dare take her hand away from her mouth to decline his invitation, because she knew if she did, she would sob out loud.
“Really, it’s alright,” said Rum. “When did you start being afraid to set off into the unknown? Come on, let’s go!”
Behind them, the horse snorted. “Alright, alright,” Rum relented. He looked up at Cally and laughed. “Maybe another time, then.” Taking her by the elbow, he turned her around and led her back down to the bottom of the hill, then on up another one ahead of them until the lights of Woodley came back into view. The sound of music faded behind them, and the horse wandered slowly, grazing as it went, back toward the fence next to the barn.
Rum stopped just before the metal gate. He grabbed Cally’s right hand in both of his and pumped it up and down, throwing her off balance. “I meant what I said,” he told her. “I’m your friend now. I’ve miles to go before I sleep, but you just call me, and I’ll be right here. Well, you know: around here somewhere.” He made a whirling gesture over his head with his cane. Then he ducked between the fence rails. “Sweet dreams!” he called, turning to continue on his way, down the hill toward the pond. He seemed to grow smaller with every step until he was out of sight among the willows.