Building 26 “Fields of Black”

“The fields that sit outside my window are rotting, a cold wind winding its way over the dead stalks, sending the smell of decaying plants in through my window. Mold clings to some of the stalks like snow, and there is a cold emptiness to all of it, a sort of stillness that won't leave even when an animal makes its way through it.

But that hasn't happened in a long time.

The last dead mouse I found was weeks ago.

My sister had to leave. We all knew it within a year of her recovery from the incident. She couldn't speak, but she also made little attempt to try to talk like she used to, even once we learned the signs. But we all understood what it took from her to live here, and so it was not surprisingly when she left and never came back.

I wanted to as well, but I couldn't leave, no matter how much I sometimes wished to, especially as mom and dad began to get on in years. The smell of their age began to pollute the house, and with the fields getting smaller so my father could better work them, it was not long before the long grasses began to make their way in towards the house.

I would take walks as much as I could back then, venturing never very far from the house. Walking is hard for me even after all this time, and there are moments when I will be working hard to move towards the house after hearing a movement in the fields, and I will be left gasping at the doorstep, struggling to find a key for a door that I didn't lock when I left.

No one locks there doors around here.

I will get winded, my vision tunneling, and it is only on blind luck that I make it inside quickly enough to take a treatment and put the pain behind me. I tried taking an inhaler with me on my walks, but it simply wouldn't do. Sometimes the issues with my lungs are too great for an inhaler to do much of anything, and when I am scared that is when it is at its worst.

I use my treatments only as much as I can manage, but there are plenty of days when the hours between them feel much longer, my breathing labored as I wait for the time to pass, and for enough time to escape by for it to be safe again for me to take another treatment. With the fields now choked with mold, I have for the first time in a while started to beg my parents to let me leave.

They know I can't, that I am tied to this place like a root that ran into the base of the house. I feel it whenever I go into town with them to get groceries, a sort of restlessness that refuses to leave me until I found my way back to the family farm. Every time I return, a feeling of dread will wash over me like a blanket, but it will not stop me.

The dread is all I have now in the world, and it is not so terrible once you live with it long enough.

The only sound that come through here is the rising and falling of insects, calling out in the morning and in the evening. When my sister and I were younger, that sound used to hold such revelry in it, but it has long since lost its luster. I hear it, and I know my sister hears it now, no matter how far she runs away from it. She hasn't come back, even for holidays, and so we are forced to do our celebrations over the internet, and the connection out her seems to have a mind of its own.

Like many things.

The mold I am allergic to, and even the seals around the windows and allergy pills are not enough to make my nights restful. I dream of it all the time; the thing we burned. It was dead when we killed it, and with effort it has stayed that way. Every few months I make another fire, and I throw the ashes of the previous fire into the next, just to be sure.

Once I lapsed in my efforts.

When finally I made the fire, I was certain I heard a scream.

The doctors say that I desperately need to get away from this place, that the mold here will surely do me in with my weakened lungs. But they don't know how things are around here.

No one does.

Mom and Dad used to think they did, but they haven't been able to be of much help as of late. When they die, I will burn their bodies as well, in the same fire I have used for years to burn all the dead animals I come across. Sometimes they burn like meat, and sometimes they burn like rot. A few times I have placed a dead bird on the pyre, only to watch it erupt up from it, maggots spilling out from its chest as it tries to take flight and collides with the porch or lands on the roof.

Getting a ladder is hard, but I can't be lax in any way, even if the smoke hurts my throat and burns my eyes.

Now the rot has reached the fields, and there is simply too much of that for me to burn. The decay is too far gone, and even gasoline could only do so much.

Now all I have is just the fifty feet from my house to the edges of the fields. So long as I care for the dead that cross my path, I suspect that the tall grass where stay away, and with it the things that lurk within them.

I can't tell me sister that we only killed one, that if it wasn't for our ritual, the one I now complete alone, that they would surely make our way here and fetch me once again.

I didn't tell her what it did to me, though the damage to my lungs said a little, as has my weakened immune system. Every few years or so a rot will begin to take hold in some part of my body, and I will need to be taken to the hospital to get the tissue removed and the skin grafts applied. I think I have a lump on my shoulder, but I cannot be sure to be honest.

At this point it all hurts.

Something broke the seal of my window last night, but it didn't come into my room.

We put in a screen, and put a secure lock on it, but that didn't stop it.

I think it just wanted to let me know that it could, that my days are numbered before I am to be collected.

My parents are getting on in years, and I know that there aren't any neighbors who I can trust with my work. Perhaps that is my fault, or maybe it is just the way of the farm, the sour nature in the land and the things that lurk in the tall grass.

I know what I need to do to keep the things away, but I am not sure if I will have the strength to do it. I told my parents of course, and they understand what I am telling them even if they can't truly believe me when I tell them about the things in the grasses.

But understanding will have to be enough.

So when one of them dies, I must burn the body, but I know I cannot move them to the fire. They are too heavy, even in their old age, and I know I won't have a lot of time to do it.

So I keep the gasoline by the door, and I make sure that the matches never go missing.

When they pass, I will set this house aflame, along with everything in it, just to make sure I get all the dead.

And maybe they won't believe me, and maybe they will lock me up, but really what choice do I have? All I can do is hope that the fire will be enough to keep them dead for good, that they won't be able to find me.

They will find me though.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with prison bars, and just how long I will wait, my mind stuck in the sounds of insects in the fields.

How long will it take for them to find their way back to me, or for me to break?

Not long enough I suspect.

Not long at all.”

When my mom was alive, she used to share stories with me about her time living on her family farm. She used to hand raise chickens, and they had a few goats that were the sweetest things in the world. When she would talk about the farm, she would never tell me about her parents, or even how she ended up meeting my dad, though I know it was around that time that they met.

She never really spoke much about him, but I suppose that is just the way of parents. They take for granted that the other is there, so they tend to not worry about sharing those details. At least that was how it was with my parents.

Maybe it is different with yours.

After my mom's death, my dad didn't talk about her for a long time.

It was only after a year had passed and we first visited her grave that he talked about her in any detail. He said that they had met at a school dance, and that they had danced all night together before sneaking out early to go for a walk. They ended up worrying the hell out of their parents when they came to pick them up, but managed to get back before too much of a fuss was made.

I don't believe much of it though.

As far as I can remember, I can never recall a time when I saw my mother dance.