The Wheat Fields

The Wheat Fields
By                                                                                                                                  Tyson M. Haynes


         "Sarah! Don't go too far in there, okay? Sarah!”                                                                          Sarah wasn't listening. Instead she was focused on the field, with its golden-brown waves of ripe, billowing wheat, soft and pleasant to the touch, tantalizing and invigorating to the smell. It lured her into its waist-high pleasance, beckoning her away from her grandfather's deteriorating shack near the West Road. She could hear her mother, vaguely calling for her, but she did not listen.                                      She progressed deeper and deeper into the golden sea, growing ever unconscious of the world around her as the wheat grew higher, enveloping her in a sweet-smelling, pillow-soft embrace, as her mother and grandfather stood watching on the rotting porch.

         "Kids these days," Lawrence Caliburn retorted. "They never used to be this disobedient back when I was her age. Hell, if I did what she did now my mother would sure have brought out the old switch on my tender be-hind.”                                                                                                                   "Dad," Anne-Marie warned softly. "Leave her be. She's just a kid. Go easy on her, okay?" Lawrence only grunted, turning his wheelchair around to head back into his rickety    home.                                                                                                                                                                    "Still," he persisted, "she shouldn't be going 'round, actin' like that. She 'bout soon to get her breeches whipped, she keep it up."                                                                                                       Anne-Marie could only roll her eyes and grasp hold of the wheelchair's handles, guiding her aging father back into his house.                                                                                                                       "She's only six, dad. It's not like she is thirteen going on thirty." Lawrence shook his head vehemently. "I don't know, Annie. I don't know, and I don't think I might ever will."                                              Hesitantly, Anne-Marie let go of the handlebars and allowed her father to roam free as he pleased. She remained at the door, however, staring out into the beautiful, remote, desolate countryside. It was beautiful alright; nothing but the golden-brown, wavy textures of the fields and a clear blue sky, a slightly chilling wind creeping up her skin, sending tiny, raised dots of gooseflesh spiraling up her arms. She shivered, rubbing her forearms lightly with her hands and scanning the fields for any sign of her daughter.                                                                                                                                   She spotted her, about a hundred yards away, maybe more, crouched low, barely visible beneath the tall, sweeping grasses. It seemed like she was examining something, and was just about to call her name again, to warn her to be careful, when a loud crash of splintering glass from inside the house and her father's disgruntled curses made her turn quickly around to investigate, her daughter almost forgotten.

         Outside, wading beneath the whipping grasses, the wind tousling her auburn hair and the sun pleasantly pecking at her exposed skin, Sarah listened.                                                                                      She could hear them, whispering her name, beckoning for her to come forward, to join them, to explore the fields with them. She listened to their musical voices, almost inaudible at first, seeming to glide with the wind, and then they spoke louder, still surfing on the cool breezes, enticing her to come forward, to play with them, to hear them sing.                                                                                               Sarah inhaled the fresh, invigorating aroma of what seemed like the scent of freshly baked bread, floating from somewhere in the distance. The scent sparked a new curiosity in her, and those voices, childlike, faint and pleasantly musical, drifted toward her again. She stood up, the wheat kissing her scabby knees as they drifted past her, and she followed.

          “God damn it!” Lawrence said harshly under his breath, wiping his hands on the front of his tattered jeans.  There was blood on his fingers; it oozed from several openings on his hands in quick-running streams. He winced at the pain.                                                                                                           “Dad, what did you do this time?” Anne-Marie stooped low to examine her father’s wounds. She clicked her tongue when she saw the damage, and asked, more sternly this time, what he had done.                       “It’s none of your damned business, woman!” he snapped. “Now get me a towel and some warm water before I bleed to death!”                                                                                                       Sighing, she stepped over the shards of broken glass and the clear, foul-smelling puddle of vinegar on the floor, to the kitchen, where she brought out a large wooden basin from under the cabinets. She filled it with warm water from the faucet, grabbed two dishtowels from the side cupboard, and proceeded out to the foyer area to tend to Lawrence’s injuries, who was now cursing audibly in spite of the pain.

-          -          -


         “Sarahsarahsarahsarahsarahsaaaarrraaaaahhhh….”                                                                             The voices continued, all around her now, calling, beckoning.                                                               Sarah only listened, stopped dead now, her eyes closed, listening to the musical voice of a child, a boy perhaps, chanting her name, the wind kissing her cheeks, her arms, her neck.           “SarahcomeexplorewithusSarahcomeexplorewithusSaaaarrraaaahhhh…”                                               Yes, she thought to herself. Yes, I want to explore….I want to….I want to….I want….                                           She opened her eyes, and there he was.           There they were, standing in a circle, surrounding her.          “Hello, Sarah,” the boy said, his voice pleasantly drifting along with the breeze. He was smiling, a wide, bright grin with almost perfect teeth. “Do you want to come explore with us? The field is ours. It’s all ours.” He grinned wider, waving his arm in a deep arc, signaling the fields around him. The others smiled, and nodded their heads slowly in agreement. Sarah turned all the way around, glancing at them, with their finely scrubbed faces and well-groomed hair, whipping in the wind.                                                         She turned back to the boy. His hand was outstretched; a gesture of welcoming.                                       “Come on, Sarah. Don’t be afraid. We are all safe here, beneath the soft, sweeping grasses.”                           The others agreed, saying yes, breathing the word, still grinning broadly. Sarah had no choice; she adored their smiles, their well groomed faces, but most of all she adored the fields, the billowing golden-brown wheat, the warm sun, the wind.                                                                                                 And she wanted more than ever to explore.                                                                                       She grinned like the rest of them, and took the boy’s hand in hers.                                                       Then they were walking, hand in hand, the barley kissing their waists, then their chests, and the last thing Sarah knew of before they allowed her to explore, was the high, sweeping grasses, and the faint, but pleasant, aroma of bread.

         “Where’s Sarah?” Anne-Marie asked. She had finished cleaning her father’s wounds carefully, and had wrapped his hands in bandages. They were tinted a light-red color.                                                       “Hell if I know,” Lawrence retorted, irately. “All’s I know is, little kids her age shouldn’t be snoopin’ round places their noses ain’t supposed to be in the first place.” He looked down as he said this, picking at his bandages meticulously. Anne-Marie disregarded him with distaste, and made her way out into the foyer, through the screen door, and out onto the porch. She was beginning to get worried now, the voice of her deceased mother ringing back to her in her mind, telling her what a worthless parent she would amount to. Now, as she scanned the countryside, eyes searching for a glimpse of her daughter through all this wavy gold, she wondered if her rotting mother’s prophesy was really true.  Presently, Lawrence wheeled himself out of his spot inside the house and placed himself beside his daughter. He, too, scanned the fields, looking for what Anne-Marie was looking for now.                                         “I told you so, Annie-babes,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “That girl’s gone off and left ya.”  “Don’t say that!” she snapped, not meaning to. Lawrence flinched. She was surprised at the sound of her own voice; it wavered on the edge of frustration and fear. Now it was mostly fear that she was feeling as she stood on the porch, her eyes aimlessly darting left to right.                                             “Sarah!” she called, waiting for a reply. None came.                                                                             “I’m tellin’ ya, Annie. She’s a goner.” Lawrence shrugged in his seat, his face unsympathetic. Anne-Marie nearly turned on him, her fists slightly raised, both fear and anger brimming beneath her temples.   
         “Do NOT say that! Don’t you ever say that!”                                                                                         She turned back to the fields, cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled: “Sarah! Sarah where are you? Answer me! Saraah!”                                                                                                            She made a move to run, to turn and run into the fields to search for her daughter. Lawrence shot out the hand that was the least bandaged and grabbed her arm before she could make a move.                               “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you! It’s too dangerous!” Anne-Marie whipped her arm out of her father’s loose grasp and snarled, “My daughter is in there, and if she is hurt in any way, I swear to God daddy, you’ll never see me or her on your stupid property ever again!” And then she was off the steps and ambling down the rutted dirt walkway, into the wheat fields, yelling “Sarah! Sarah, where are you, honey? Answer me, please! Sarah!”                                                                                                   On the porch steps, Lawrence sat with his hands clasped in his lap.                                                            “I warned you, Annie,” he said. “I warned you, and yet you have the nerve to disobey me.” He sighed, wheeling his chair back into the house, shaking his head.


-          -          -


         She was in the fields now; up to her waist in it. She had ceased calling Sarah’s name, for some reason she felt dreamy, and the fields where just so beautiful. She wondered how she didn’t see it from the porch. She reckoned you had to get close enough; real close, apparently, to actually know that it was there, to know that it possessed such angelic properties.                                                                   Then she heard the voices. And she stopped dead in her tracks.                                                                       They were soft, low, but distinct, as if they seemed to float on the breeze. She listened….carefully. In it she believed she could hear Sarah’s voice, laughing mirthfully, mingled within the other voices. 
         “Sarah…” she tried to yell again, but her voice was only a hoarse croak. “Sarah….” She was giving up, she could feel herself drifting away, becoming another one of the wheat stalks in the fields, and she crouched low, on her knees, clutching her chest in an X. A tear streamed down her eye, dropped onto the hard-packed earth, evaporated as soon as it touched ground. The wind continued to blow gracefully around her.                                                                                                                   “Mommeeeeee….”                                                                                                                     The voice. Sarah’s voice. Drifting from somewhere; close, it seemed, mixed in with the laughter of the other unknown children.                                                                                                           Anne-Marie looked up, like a ferret searching the surrounding areas, searching for a source. The voice, voices, were all around her, laughing, taunting, mocking. She got up shakily to her feet, tears streaming down her face now, thick and hot, searching, but not seeing.                                                               “Mommeee….heeelllp meee mommeeee…help meeeee---“                                                                   “Sarah?” Anne-Marie said softly. She tried to move her legs, one up ahead from the other, but they were like lead; as if they were rooted to the ground.                                                                               The children were laughing again, mocking her, and she was searching, but she couldn’t see them. Somewhere, her daughter was with them, laughing with them. But from the sound of her voice, she wasn’t laughing.                                                                                                                     Not anymore.                                                                                                                                               “Sarah…where are you, honey? Where….?” She was moving again, faster this time, picking up her legs and straining with the effort, but she still felt weak, out of touch with the real world.                                 “Mommeee heeellp mee….I don’t wannaaa explooore any more, mommmeeeee pleeeeease!”                             “I’m coming Sarah! Mommy’s coming!” She was running faster and faster now, the voices all around her, surrounding her, getting louder and louder, laughing at her, but her mind was growing weaker, weaker every single second, and the voices…they were….were….                                                       “Sarah!” she screamed, again and again. “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” She stopped, exhausted. She dropped to her knees and started to dig into the dirt with her fingers.                                                                     “Mommeeee they have meee mommeee heeelp pleeeeeease help meeee!”                                                   “I know, Sarah, I know they got you. Mommy’s here, mommy’s here.” She dug deep, her fingers scraping away the hard earth, the worms squirming out of the way.                                                                           It wasn’t worms, Anne-Marie thought now. It was the roots. The roots were moving.                              She dug deeper, her fingers hurting now, stinging, digging away furiously at the dirt, the roots squirming away, deeper into the ground, oozing out a white, sticky pus as she ripped at them. She knew Sarah was here. She knew it.                                                                                                                         Around her the laughter intensified. It was no longer the childish, mocking laugh she heard before.                                                                                                                                                     No. It was higher pitched, piercing and seeming to go on forever, like a moan, like a wail, like a scream.  “Go to hell, you bastards,” she hissed. “Go to hell and burn!”                                                                     The hole she dug grew deeper; the black dirt was fading away, she could see something now, something pale, something inching away from her as she dug and dug and she realized what it was it was it was--“Sarah!”  Anne-Marie screamed. “Sarah oh my God Sarah!”  Her fingers burned, they itched terribly and the roots, the roots were moving, moving her daughter deeper and deeper beneath the soil, beneath the fields, to explore, and she dug, dug, she was getting closer: an arm now, a side void of clothing, and finally her hands clenched around a thick ball of hair, covered in the roots, God her whole body was covered with the roots, bringing her down, down, into the churning soil.                                           “Sarah please don’t go! Please don’t go!” She was tugging frantically at her daughter’s body now, pulling her up, the roots holding her back, ripping and oozing and curling around any loose skin, any loose coverings, curling and pulling down.                                                                                               “No! Please no! Please!” Sarah was halfway out of the dirt, the roots squirming around her like worms, grabbing at her, grabbing at Anne-Marie. Sarah’s back was turned to her mother, her body twisted at an odd angle, the head and arms hanging limply. Anne-Marie stood up, stood up on her feet and pulled, the wind now a fierce gale.                                                                                                                             “Come on, Sarah!” she breathed, and with one incredibly strong, spasmodic jerk, Sarah was free, free of the dirt, free of the roots.                                                                                                             Except that there was only half of Sarah now; the legs and midriff eaten entirely to a cold bone by the roots, and all that was left of her now was the jagged, fleshy, bloody torso, arms and head. A thick sliver of entrails dragged on the ground.                                                                                             Anne-Marie, scared into a shock, turned her daughter around, the wind flailing her hair about in every which direction, and looked into her daughter’s face.                                                                               What she saw made her scream. And scream. And scream.                                                                 Sarah’s face was smiling, was grinning, her eyes wide and glaring; a look of intense dread.                  Just before Anne-Marie collapsed into a shock-unconscious heap, the roots, seeking a new refuge, curled around her feet, and started to creep inside her skin, burrowing, feeding.
         The wind died down. The screaming laughter crept to a giggle, and finally to whisper. The sun began to settle in the west.







-          -          -


         Lawrence Caliburn wheeled himself out of his house to watch the sun go down. He held a beer clutched in his bandaged hands, a smile on his face, whistling a tune. He settled himself near the porch steps, getting a good view of the sun, with its hazy orange-purple hues and the golden brown of his wheat fields fading to a darkening blur. Still, the wind crept eternally across the fields, as they always have, and always would. A larger simper plastered itself across his face, and he took a sip of his beer.                               “I warned them, didn’t I, boys?” he said to himself. “I warned ‘em, and there they went, but you boys brought them to finally obey me. Good riddance to ‘em, I say.” He took another swig of beer, and settled back in his wheelchair, still grinning.
         Outside, the sun settled slowly below the horizon, casting the wheat fields in a shadow void of any moonlight. The winds still danced among the wheat, the wheat swayed and danced with the wind, and the laughter of the children resonated throughout the dusk.