A Bite of Sanity

“Don’t be outside the house after sundown.”

The staccato of her father’s mantra tumbled through the mind of young Madeline Summers like acorns through the branches of the tall, sprawling tree behind her home several hundred feet away. Over the years, she heard it so many times she allowed it to pass over her without the effect it really should have. It had entered into the trite rotation of expressions drummed out every day to her.

“Eat your vegetables.”

“Wipe your feet.”

“Clean your room.”

“Don’t be outside the house after sundown.”

“Say your prayers every night.”

It was a set of commandments you would not forget under the roof of Pastor Summers for fear of spending your entire Sunday afternoon sweeping the church after service.

The door creaked open slowly, almost painfully, as if it was actively fighting the forces against its hinges. In front of her, just left of her center view, only a sliver of the protective yellow globe remained in the increasingly orange sky. The cramped interior of the woodshed didn’t allow Madeline to get a running start. She reached up and grasped the trinket hanging from her neck, squeezing it until she winced in pain. The one thing Madeline hoped for as she approached the threshold of the woodshed, more than anything, was an answer to her latest prayer. Without that, tomorrow afternoon’s church cleaning would be the least of her concerns. Under her breath, so soft she couldn’t hear herself, a final plea wispily fell away from her lips before she leaped over the stairs.

The land was flat, deceivingly so. The nearly level perspective often made things seem so much further away than they really were. She wondered if this was the case again here or if the house really was so desperately far away. She ran steadily but not at her best speed. She knew even though she needed to get to the house soon, but burning all her energy in the first third of the run would be a sure death sentence.

As if it had disconnected from the rest of her being, her mind started recalling scenes with her father when she was a little girl. She remembered being in her father’s loving arms but also remembered his stern warnings and frightening stories. He told her about how the darkness had been after the Summers family since they moved to this tiny, time-warped Midwest town nobody outside the county had heard of. He always reminded her there was and always would be safety in daytime, God, and family — in that order.

In a moment of reconnection, her eyes refocused, one on the house and the other on the setting sun. The thin dime in her pocket would have eclipsed the remaining rays of safety were it held flat to the horizon. Had she bothered to glance to her right she would have seen she the family well representing the halfway mark between the house and the woodshed. Such measurements of progress were not important — “she made it halfway” would be hollow and patronizing words on a tombstone. She pushed herself to pick up the pace a little, knowing well she had very little time left.

She remembered her father’s continuous and stubborn refusal to move away. He refused to move away despite the many nights they’ve gone without sleep from the tapping on the roof. He refused to move away after his cattle were slaughtered during the first winter. He refused to move away after the second year’s crop mysteriously died. He refused to move away when the parish offered him a way out of his commitment. He refused to move away after his wife Lynne was lost to the darkness four summers ago while gathering water from the well. He simply refused to yield to evil, even if it ended up costing everything dear to him.

She realized, without the need for markers, she was definitely closer to the house than the woodshed. Her chest could barely contain her heart, pounding from a combination of nerves and exertion. Her lungs burned, begging for more air than she was capable of giving them. Her legs ached, nearly numb from a run which she was not prepared for.

She didn’t need to look up — the shrieks coming from behind her, painfully frightening and yet very familiar, were all the notice she needed of the last rays of hope dropping below the horizon. Almost on instinct, she turned her head towards the horrors that were tearing the very air itself, losing her balance and tumbling to the ground. She got up, dazed by her own fall. Her left knee took the brunt of the impact with the hard soil and trickled blood as a result in a twisted random pattern down her shin — as if she needed something else further announcing her presence to the abominations already on their way.

She started her run towards the house again, this time with everything she had left. It wouldn’t matter if she tired before she made it. With the sun down, all that mattered was getting to the house before the darkness got to her. Less than a minute from the house, every last immeasurable ounce of energy she could muster went to her legs. She closed her eyes for a moment in the hope she could somehow channel the energy for her sight away to the movement of her legs. She knew they could outrun her, or rather outfly her, so she had to take advantage of what little head start she had.

She dared not turn her head to look at her pursuers, partially for fear of stumbling again and partially for fear of freezing in fright, but she knew they were close. Their shrieks were growing louder and closer together. By now they had definitely honed in on their prey and were racing to get it before it could get to safety. Only a dozen or so strides remained for Madeline to make it to sanctuary. She could hear flapping capes joining the chorus of shrieks behind her. The air behind her grew cold, almost freezing, as one of the purest forms of evil — evil so pure the Devil himself cowered from it, her father would tell her — made its way to within inches of her. For something that wasn’t alive, she swore she felt it breathing on her neck. The warm air to her front combined with the cold to her back was enough to make even the staunchest of men uneasy at the stomach.

As she hurled herself up the four steps to the Summers’ home, she looked up from the ground for the first time since her fall. In the full frame of her view was Pastor Summers. He was standing on the very edge of the porch with his right arm thrust outward defiantly and his eyes fixed, unwaveringly tracking her pursuers. Madeline could tell nothing would ever strike real fear into the heart of this man — nothing on this planet at least.

She collected herself from a collapsed pile of exhaustion on the porch in time to see the figures of shadowy evil flying away from the House of Summers, shrieking now in anger and disgust rather than anticipation. Her father turned to her with a look best described as a conflicted mix of anger, relief, and compassion, as if he couldn’t make up his mind which emotion to express. In the staunch iron grip of his right hand was something Madeline had not seen in over four years — her mother’s crucifix.

In his left hand was a broom.