The Gods of the Long Grass

The kitchen smelt of booze. Like it always did. Jack was slumped over the table, snoring. His hair matted with his own sick. A halo of empty bottles around his head. I grabbed a glass and slowly poured the water so not to make a sound. Then, I crept out of the room and onto the veranda, picking only the silent floorboards.

I held the cold glass to my lip and winced in pain. He’d got pretty good at hitting me hard enough to break the skin without cracking a tooth. I don’t think he truly wanted to hurt me, rather stop me showing my face in town. Anything to keep our secrets on the farm.

Sucking in a deep breath, I stared out over our land. Corn stems and roots withered and knotted like dead spiders beneath the iron sky. Fields ploughed without design, looking more like rows of churned up graves.

Oh, how the harvest had turned. For years, the land had yielded gold. Because we had been loyal. Then, after one final demand, everything was gone. The wilted crops, a testament that we’d prayed to the wrong gods. The gods of the long grass.

###

I spent the afternoon hiding. Waiting for him to sober. I crawled through the long grass, retracing my path from their last visit. My eyes were fixed on every speck of dirt, looking for a glimmer of hope, a sign that perhaps I’d dreamt up that night.

“You won’t find her,” Jack’s voice croaked out over the wind. “She’s long gone.”

I rose up. “She’s just lost that’s all.”

“Myra,” he said like a warning, “she wasn’t a set of fucking car keys. They took her. And they took her ‘cos…”—he cleared his throat—“we gave her to them.”

I went to move past him and he caught me by the arm. “Get off me.”

His grip grew tight. “Where you going?”

“It’s none of your business.” I shrugged him off and headed toward the house.

“You can pray to them all you like, Myra!” He called out. “They got what they wanted and they ain’t answering anymore.”

###

The shrine was in the basement of our house. We used to keep the room pristine, yet, in the weeks since Kayla had been taken, a thin film of dust coated everything.

A singular lightbulb hung in the darkness. A cone of weak yellow light. At the light’s edge, a dark shape stood in the shadows.

Stepping closer, the shrine came into view. A marble altar rose up, waist high and atop it stood a moulded clay figurine of a man without a head and a face crudely shaped into its torso. Large offset eyes and a snarled mouth.

I stared at the statuette. Motes of dust flashed in the light. I took in a deep breath and settled my racing heart.

Jack was wrong. Of course, the gods would answer. I just had to offer up something worthy of their interest that’s all.

Reaching up, I grabbed the light cord and pulled.

The room clicked out of view.

Darkness.

Suddenly, floorboards creaked overhead, dust dislodged and sprinkled down. Jack must’ve returned from the fields in search for more beer. Then, after the house had settled, I was engulfed by a thick silence.

Moments passed while I listened to my own stifled breathing. Then, with a trembling voice, I spoke to the darkness.

“I wish to trade.”

Silence. My words swallowed by the darkness. I inched closer to the altar. Steadied my breathing and spoke again.

“I wish for you to return ou—my baby. I know that you were not the gods we once prayed to. Imposters. And yet, you answered our call…”

A strange sense of dread overcame me. The sudden feeling that I was no longer alone in the room. I spun around; my eyes strained, though I couldn’t make out any shapes in the dark.

I swallowed and tried to recompose myself. “You’re listening. You’re interested. You still want from us.”

Two clumsy footsteps padded across the floor behind me. I turned and reached out with my hands. Nothing.

Then, something. Tiny pinpricks brushed against my fingertips. Though I did not recoil. A sensation all too familiar. The gentle caress of the long grass against my skin.

“Please,” I pleaded, wheeling around and addressing every shadow, “a life for a life. A fair trade, no?”

Four more footsteps. This time like the slap of bare skin on concrete. I turned to face the direction of the sound. Only darkness. Though, while I couldn’t see it, I felt a presence. Something now occupied the space right in front of me. And I could feel it, the hot wetness of its breath.

I stood there shaking. My eyes fixed on the darkness. All the while, I knew that if I reached out a hand, even a few inches, I would touch the beast’s face.

Too afraid to move, I repeated my request with a whimper. “A life for a life?”

After a beat of silence, the darkness spoke back. “Bring it to the long grass and bury it in the midnight soil.”

And then, as soon as the words had hissed into existence, they were gone. So too was the presence. Once more, I stood alone in the suffocating dark. Once more, a hellish burden press against my heart.

###

Over the next few days, I played Jack’s game. I danced around his moods, only spoke when he was smiling, let him grope clumsily and then fuck me like I wasn’t there.

Then, in those safe morning hours when he was still passed out, I dug that motherfucker’s grave. Way out in the long grass where he wouldn’t find it unless he was looking.

###

I stood at the kitchen sink, cleaning the same plate for hours. I watched the long grass move with the wind and wondered how cold the night air would be on Kayla’s skin. Perhaps they’d return her wearing the blanket we’d bundled her in.

Tonight. I nodded. Enough waiting. His grave was deep enough.

The fridge door rattled open and I picked out two beers. After glancing over at Jack and seeing that he was still snoring facedown on the table, I crushed two zoplicone and mixed it into each bottle. I screwed the tops back on and then placed them behind the first row. He usually hit his fifth and sixth by midnight. Not that he needed much encouragement to sleep.

I blinked. Then suddenly I was outside and wading through the long grass. My hands gently brushing at its tips. The house seemed so far away. A dark, hunched giant against a bruising sky. Every window swollen with the night.

Except one. Off to the side, a column of yellow light rose up from the small basement window. It created strange shadows across the nearby trees. Beings stretched and warped by the light. Limbs long and twisted severe. Bodies crouched low to the ground. Horrors, half-remembered.

A distant cry from a baby. I wheeled around and ran in pursuit of the sound. The grass whipped at my waist, grabbed at me like fingers. But I shrugged it off and pressed on, screaming for her, screaming for Kayla.

“What are you doing?” A voice like dirt croaked out from behind me.

I turned to see Jack closing the fridge, with two beers in his hand. His eyes narrowed and fixed on me as he returned to the kitchen table.

I shook my head and sighed. “Nothing. I—I just…”

Looking away, I stared out the window again to see the night had rolled in. The long grass was now a rippling shadow against the purple sky.
And yet, something else could be seen.

Out in the middle of the field, amongst the swaying grass, a large sharp shape stood. Then, before I could take another breath, the thing slowly dropped into the grass, hidden.

###

Jack passed out around eleven. He’d been sat out on the veranda and cracked open his fifth beer when I suggested I grab him another and get changed into the silk pyjamas that he liked. Instead, I waited on the stairs until I heard him fall out of his chair.

It took longer than I thought to drag him to the grave. Jack is by no means a big man, but this girl wasn’t made to shift a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight. I’d fallen as we passed the combine harvester and twisted my ankle pretty bad. Then I nearly passed out into the grave with him. Instead, I crumpled to the floor and cried into the dirt.

He’d been a good man for so long. He—we hadn’t always been like this.

Rolling on my back, I laid panting and staring at the ghastly moon. The grass danced all around me.

It had to be midnight by now. No?

I could feel myself drifting off. My eyes grew heavy as my racing heart settled.

*No.* I shook my head and sat up. *Not now. Sleep later. We got work to do.*

Standing up, I brushed the dirt off my clothes and stretched out the aches. I scanned the surrounding dark.

Nothing. Just the grass tips gently moving with the breeze.

Then, a sound.

A low, guttural groan. Right behind me.

I spun around and saw movement.

*Shit.*

Jack stirred at bottom of the pit. He coughed up a ball of phlegm and then wiped at the dirt in his eyes.

“What…is thi—“

“Don’t you move, Jack!” My voice trembled, yet I still had the strength to pick up and point the shovel down at him. “Don’t you dare move!”

He sat up and spat out the dirt in his mouth. Shook his head out. “You fuckin’ bitch!” He screamed out from the pit. “What have you d—“

A sound. Off in the distance. Sharp and metallic . Like a detuned radio. Strange, yet familiar. We’d heard it that night. The night we lost Kayla.

“You called them!?” Jack lunged up to grab at me. He missed and fell back on his ass. “Oh, you’re dumber than I thought, Myra. You know they ain’t no good.”

“No! This needs to happen!”

I jabbed at him with the shovel. He caught it and pulled. I slipped.

Suddenly, I was in the grave with him. Dirt in my eyes, in my mouth. Scrambling blindly, a great weight pushed me down. Then, pain lanced across my back as Jack hit me with the shovel handle.

I writhed in the mud, trying to catch a breath that didn’t come. I wanted to scream, cry out, but couldn’t only mustered a deep gurgle.

Blinking away the dirt, I saw Jack climb out of the pit. He rose up and looked down at me. Madness in his eyes.

Oh, how well he wore his grief. It had twisted him into something unrecognisable.

“Please,” I shouted, “help me! I must meet with the gods!”

He shook his head. “No. Because I intend to kill them.”

Jack disappeared. All I could see was the night sky above.

What was that? My ears pricked at a sound. Was that…a baby’s cry?

“Kayla? Baby is that—Jack! Please, they’ve delivered her! Please they’ve brought back our ba—“

Another sound. Thick with dread. Like thunder rolling in over the farm. The steady metallic chug of an engine.

The crazy bastard has started up the combine harvester!

“Jack! Please! Don’t! They have her! They have Kayla!”

And a final sound. Haunting and sickening. Like a wound upon my soul. A high pitched screech and then a rattling, crunching noise. Like a car reversing over a tree branch.

And rain. Gentle, aimless rain. Falling down upon me, down into the pit in a red mist.

The engine to the combine harvester cut out. I don’t know what was worse. Jack’s endless wet screams or the silence, so thick with the knowing, moments before.

Credit: CrabKnuckleJoe