Bloodstained Oz (4 page)

      That made her feel a little better.

      As she began to look away, the sun
glinted off of something on the ground and the gleam caught her eye. Gayle
paused, then veered in that direction. The need to visit the outhouse had
abated a little now that her attention was elsewhere.

      On the ground, covered in a layer of
dried dirt, was a doll with red hair and a pretty pink dress.

      Gayle squealed with surprise and bent to
pick up the doll, gleeful as though it was Christmas morning. After the terror
of the storm, this was better than Christmas.

      She brushed off the doll’s dress and
then touched its face. The head of the doll was porcelain and when she traced
her finger across it, she found that the enamel gleamed. The doll’s eyes and
smile made her so happy that she hugged it to her, and even as she did, she saw
the others.

      Scattered across the yard in front of
her were other dolls, dozens of porcelain figures, some of them almost a foot
long but others tiny things small enough to fit into the palm of her hand.
This time, Gayle did not squeal. She held her breath and stared in utter
astonishment. Wherever these dolls had come from, a twister must have sucked
them up and then dropped them down right here on her property.

      Her mind raced as she walked over to
pick up the next one, with pretty blond hair, and then the next, a little baby
doll with the widest blue eyes. This was someone’s collection, somewhere. If
they ever found out where the dolls had landed, they’d want to take them away.

      Heat touched her cheeks and her eyes
threatened tears when she thought of someone taking the dolls away. Gayle
wasn’t greedy. She wouldn’t need to keep them all. There were so many she
couldn’t count, dozens of them. But even if she could keep a few—the
prettiest ones—her daddy might be able to sell the others and make a
little money. That would help the whole family. It would be terrible if they
had to give them back.

      She crouched to look at a doll whose
porcelain face looked different, darker. In her brown dress, the doll was
almost like an Indian squaw, and Gayle decided that was exactly what she was.

      Maybe, if she was lucky, no one would
ever come looking. Whoever had collected them would think the storm had taken
them away and that was that. After all, who would have thought all of these
dolls could be carried away by a twister without the violence of the storm
breaking their porcelain heads. Not one of them was damaged. Dirty, yes, but
unbroken.

      Her arms were already full, so she did
not pick up the squaw doll. She would have to collect them all and bring them
up to the house to show her mother.

Gayle stood up and glanced around, and again the scarecrow in the
cornfield caught her eye. She was nearer to it now, and something made her
frown and stare harder. It was the hat, she decided. It was black and pointed
and didn’t look right. In fact, she was sure it was not the same hat that the
scarecrow had always worn.

      Slowly, dolls clutched in her hands, she
walked across the yard to the cornfield and made her way to the scarecrow.
There wasn’t a bird in sight, so it must have been doing its job. The dolls
felt strangely heavy in her arms and, where their porcelain faces touched her
bare skin, they were cold.

      At first, Gayle stood and blinked at the
scarecrow. It didn’t look right at all. Their scarecrow had a brown jacket,
faded from the sun, and green pants. This one wore different
clothes—clothes that had never belonged to her daddy. It was a different
scarecrow altogether.

      And where the other scarecrow, the one
that had broken off and blown away, had been hung on its post, arms pinned to
the crossbar, this one had no crossbar at all. Its arms hung down by its
sides. Instead of being hung to the post, the enormous wooden
stake—possibly a piece of broken fence, now that she looked at
it—had been driven right down through its body so it stuck through the
scarecrow’s chest and up out of its back, right between the shoulder blades.

      It had an old burlap sack for a face,
with a slit for the mouth, stitched at the edges. Gayle was afraid of the
scarecrow, now that she’d had a closer look. Its eyes weren’t sewn or drawn
on—they were closed. What kind of bird was going to be afraid of a
scarecrow that looked asleep.

     
Or
dead
, she thought.
It looks dead
.

      The scarecrow opened its eyes, and it
screamed. Its limbs splayed wide as it twisted on the post, a shriek of terror
and agony coming from its burlap mouth. For several seconds it jerked and
flailed on the post and then the sudden burst of life seemed to dwindle. Its
limbs fell with a flaccid slap and then it seemed to notice her.

      “It’ll spread here now, little girl . .
. the darkness . . . just like Oz, the blood will spill and it’s never enough .
. . the monsters are here . . .”

      Inside the burlap face, the eyes were
wide and white as a man’s. Then they fluttered and closed again. The
scarecrow twitched once, and then blood began to trickle from the corners of
its eyes and from its mouth, and to spread in a stain across its shirt.

      The blood dried in a moment, and then it
all began to fall apart. The burlap, the fabric of the clothes, crumbled like
a withered beehive, falling to dust. Red-stained straw spilled out onto the
ground, and soon that was all that remained of the scarecrow.

      Gayle had forgotten how badly she had
needed to pee. She had been holding her breath, and now she gasped, and a hot
stream of it ran down her leg.

      At last she could scream.

      It echoed out across the fields. No
birds were disturbed. Not a single one. The storm had kept them away, or
something had. When the echo of her scream died, Gayle backed away from the
post that jutted from the ground and then at last turned and ran for home, the
porcelain dolls still clutched in her arms.

      The others, she would come back for
later, with her momma to help her gather them.

      Not alone.

      Elisa felt like crawling out of her
skin.

      The wagon sat at a crossroads, just off
onto the grass so as not to block anyone coming along the way. Stefan was
setting up a table just at the crux where the two roads met, about half a mile
outside of the center of Hawley. Just about every farmer in the area who
wanted to go into town today for supplies or just to find someone to share the
tale of the dirt storm with would have to come this way to get there.

      Stefan had a plan. He had gone through
his new pitch with her all morning. “If you’re parched, Romany Elixir will
take away your thirst, and if you’re ailing, it’ll perk you up. But this old
country concoction is not merely a tonic for your health, it’s the salvation of
your crops as well. Now I don’t have a great deal of it, and it don’t come
cheap, but sprinkle a bit of this into the ground around the roots, and Romany
Elixir will revive your plantings just as it would your own spirits.”

      Her husband had been so excited when he
shared this with her. Now she watched him, the cut of his handsome face, dark
with stubble, the strength in his powerful arms with the sleeves rolled up, and
the unruly thatch of his dark hair as he began to set bottles onto the table,
and Elisa knew she loved him.

      But she was ashamed of him as well.

      This was no life for her. It had seemed
so romantic when he had first proposed it to her. They had come from the old
country to Boston, but he had not settled easily into city life. His heart had
wanted to wander. They could not afford an automobile, and so the
old-fashioned cart had become their transport, and too often their shelter for
the night.

      Elisa had left the life of the Rom
behind and come to the new world for a new beginning. And now it was as though
they had never left. All across America, they were seen as “gypsies,” a hated
name. And they were treated accordingly. But what had they done to shake that
image from people’s minds?

      Sold them an elixir with promises of
miracles that would never come.

      She held her darling child in her arms
and sang to him. Jeremiah gazed up at her with his laughing eyes, but they
were growing heavy. He had just fed and needed to sleep now for a time.

      So she sang to him, and watched Stefan
at work, and dreaded the next car or truck or wagon to come along the road.

      The baby was growing and Elisa had to
shift him on her lap, still singing softly. As she moved, she glanced
northward, toward the trees across the road, and she saw something moving in
the high grass.

      She froze.

      It could not be.

      But as it trotted toward them and the
grass parted, the sun shone off of its golden fur, muscles rippling beneath the
skin. The wind ruffled its mane. It paused and cocked its head, staring at
her as though evaluating her somehow.

      A lion.

     
Impossible
,
a tiny voice said in her mind.

      But there it was, real and solid, a
massive, murderous predator. The intelligence in its eyes made her heart
clench in terror. It stared at her hungrily.

      Somehow, she had kept singing, not even
aware of it. Now she ceased. After a moment, Stefan frowned and glanced up at
her, wondering why she had stopped. From the corner of her eye she saw him
look at her, but she could not take her gaze from the lion. The sight of the
beast riveted her.

      In her arms, Jeremiah began to cry.

      Stefan swore in the language of their
people. He had seen the lion. Elisa almost screamed to him to stay still, to
do nothing, afraid that he would bring the monster down upon them.

      Then her husband ran to the back of the
wagon and she could hear pots and crates shoved aside as he reached for his
rifle.

      The lion took its eyes off of Elisa and
she knew it was watching for Stefan’s return. It glanced at her again, and for
some reason the great beast seemed weary to her, then. Weary, and sad.

      It turned and ambled back into the
trees.

      By the time Stefan ran to the road with
his rifle, the lion was gone.

      The prisoners of Guilford had spent the
night huddled against walls and praying that they would live to see the dawn.
Now as the sun reached its zenith, most of them were once again praying for the
night to come and save them from the blistering heat.

Hank scraped his shovel blade through the ash-fine dust that had filled
in half of the irrigation ditches they’d been digging and held his breath as he
tossed it to the side. Days, maybe weeks worth of work undone by the storm.
But what difference did it make, really? There was no reward for progress. To
Hank, and the other prisoners, one ditch was as good as the next.

No one spoke about what had happened to Terry Pritcher the day before.
No one had to. The guards seemed at ease today, and Hank understood why. They
could relax for a bit. No one in their right mind would consider running the
day after another inmate’s head had been used as fertilizer. Hank’s brain
might be boiling in his skull, but it was still working well enough to make
sure he used his common sense.

He paused a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his
hand and then licked the salty fluids into his mouth. Any moisture would do in
a pinch. At least he’d never had to try drinking piss.

The shovel went down again, and instead of catching loose soil, struck
something that gave a bright, almost musical note. The noise was faint enough
that no one else heard it, but distinctly different from the usual thump.

Hank stood up and stretched, pushing his hands into his lower back. He
used the time to scan the area around him and notice where the guards were and
who they had their eyes on. None of them were spying him just then, so he
reached down and brushed what passed for soil out of his way.

Silver glinted at him in the sunlight. Without missing a beat, he
leaned forward enough to make sure his shadow covered the reflected glare. He
dropped his shovel to the ground and picked it up as quickly as he could while
catching the metal in his free hand. Experienced fingers told him the metal
he’d glimpsed was only a small part of something larger and he closed his hand
around it.

Fine links of chain and a larger metal piece that felt like it had
stones imbedded into the design. Hank kept his face expressionless, but felt
his heart speed up a bit at the thought of what might be in his hand. Could be
nothing more than costume jewelry, but after the storms from the night before,
it could have blown all the way from Europe as far as he was concerned.

He wanted to sneak a look at his find, but wasn't sure if he dared.