Chapter 34
I can sense something is off, even before I open my eyes.
I grope around in bed and confirm it: Topher isn’t here.
I sit up, rubbing my eyes, and look at the clock.
It’s two in the morning. What the hell? No text from him either.
I fume for a moment, then try to be rational.
He couldn’t have texted me from up there, he wouldn’t have wi-fi access.
And he’s a grown man and doesn’t have a curfew.
But still, wouldn’t he want to come check on his pregnant wife at some point?
Then I suddenly start to worry. Topher would want to check on me.
What if he fell walking home? He was pretty drunk and the walk was dark.
I suddenly picture him lying in a ditch on the side of the road, cold and unconscious.
I’m out the door in a matter of minutes, in my pajamas and Topher’s big fall coat, carrying a large flashlight.
“Topher?” I call out his name, but my voice feels like it’s swallowed by the darkness.
I make my way up the winding driveway, casting the light back and forth across the gravel.
It’s not until I get to the top of the driveway and am standing in front of Madeline’s looming house that I realize the property is silent.
The tables and chairs and party decorations are still out on the front lawn—I can see their dark shapes strewn about—but gone are the people, the music, the happy mayhem.
“Shit,” I whisper, my breath clouding in the cool night air.
I contemplate knocking on Madeline’s door, but instead I head around the house to the back of the property. In the distance, I can tell the bonfire has burned out, though I can still make out smoke rising against the dark sky, can still feel it in my nose. Maybe he passed out back there.
I’ve started walking along the mowed path toward the back field, when suddenly I hear a faint movement in the grass. Like a step, slow and cautious. I pause, heart racketing in my chest. Irrational thoughts flood my brain. Is it a bear? A mountain lion?
I turn. It’s a woman, standing in thigh-high grass, maybe ten or twenty yards out. What. The. Fuck??
Madeline’s body seems to glow in the moonlight.
Because she is stark naked, except for the crown of eucalyptus and wheat she’d worn at the harvest festival.
She’s staring at me, as she takes slow steps backward, her fingertips gently trailing the tops of the grass.
Is this some kind of weird harvest ritual? ?
“Madeline!” I call out, but she just smiles and holds a finger up to her lips. I follow, breath quaking.
Then slowly, at some specific spot, she kneels down in the grass, still facing me.
And then, she begins to rock, in slow undulating movements, in the same way she’d been dancing by the fire, her eyes trained on me.
As she rocks, she lifts a hand to her crown, plucks a piece of wheat and places it between her crimson lips.
I make my way to her, a sense of dread, cold and heavy, moving through my limbs.
When I finally get to her, I know what I’m going to see before I see it.
I look down and see Topher, naked in the grass, his hips rocking in time with Madeline’s.
A strangled scream tears through my throat.
My eyes rip up to Madeline but she’s gone.
A black bird hangs in the air, wings flapping silently.
I lift my hand to touch it, but then it, too, is gone.
* * *
When I wake up, the clock reads two in the morning, on the dot.
Topher slumbers beside me. I leap out of bed, eager to put distance between us, before my mind slowly catches up and realizes there’s nothing to be mad about.
I don’t think. I don’t sleep the rest of the night, though, unable to slow the hammering in my chest. Unable to take my eyes off my sleeping husband, thinking that if I blink, he, too, will disappear.