Fiction | Horror
When darkness falls on withered fields
A mother’s love extends beyond death.
An old Chevy van chokes and sputters down a dusty dirt road in the humid heat of a late July evening. Nearly every inch of the rusting white exterior is covered in symbols of protection. Crosses, witch’s knots, hexagrams, and more are painted or etched into its surface.
“Damn this machine. We’re not going to make it to the church. Can you walk?” William asks.
“I believe I could if our son is willing to wait, but he is too eager,” Jenna responds between deep breaths, there is pain in her voice.
As the failing engine fires for the last time, William Storm steers the van to the edge of a long-neglected field of dead sunflowers. They come to a stop under the darkening hues of a twilight sky. William hastily pops a road flare, drops it near the front of the van, and then lays a blanket on a small patch of grass nearby.
A dust devil dances across the road while the pulsating buzz of cicadas leaves no gaps of silence in the air. In the field, the tall, blackened stalks of the sunflowers stand with their withered heads bowed as if already mourning the doomed birth.
When Elliott comes, both mother and child issue a simultaneous wail, causing the cicadas to pause briefly. Jenna grabs her husband’s hand and manages a few strained words. “Don’t let them take our son,” she whispers. And then she is gone, along with the last vestiges of the sun in the sky.
William fumbles for his pocketknife, douses the blade in whiskey, and then cuts the umbilical cord. He swaddles Elliott in a tattered towel and rocks him in his arms as the baby begins to cry.
“Shhh. It’s okay little one, everything is going to…be…” William trails off as he stares at the still body of his beloved, her ghostly white face is covered in sweat and set against a wild nest of matted, red hair. In the light of the flare, he can see the look of defiance frozen in her open eyes.
The new father clutches the bundled baby and begins to shake uncontrollably, tears stream down his hollow cheeks and disappear into a scraggly beard. He glares at the sunflowers and screams at them, but it does nothing to lift their wilted heads. This time, the cicadas do not pause their incessant noise.
William’s body stiffens as somewhere deep within the darkness of the crop, comes the sound of something crashing through the stalks. He listens. Another crash, closer.
He scrambles to his feet and clambers into the van, gently placing Elliott on a small mattress in the back. He grabs the closest of three buckets of salt and hastily pours a crude circle around his son.
“I need you to be strong, son, like your mother,” William whispers. He moves to a large wood chest sitting behind the driver’s seat. Inside sits a dense shaft of dull, black iron. One end of the rod is wrapped in straps of worn leather while the other terminates in a large ball of spikes. The weapon is devoid of any ornamentation save for two words of Latin text etched into the shaft. Ira Deus, or The Wrath of God.
A tortured moan echoes in the field and fades into the buzzing of the cicadas.
William hefts the weapon from the chest and steps out of the van, positioning himself between his family and the field.
“I will keep him safe, Jenna,” William vows and sees his breath escape from his mouth in a small white puff just before he feels the shock of cold that turns the blackened stalks in front of him white with frost. The stalks snap and part as a patch of distorted darkness coalesces in the frigid air before him.
“We have come to take what is rightfully ours, Father Storm. Give us the boy and your family’s debt shall be paid,” demands a hollow, scratchy voice.
“You will not have him. Not while my heart still beats and there is warm blood in my veins.”
Without a word, the phantom dissipates. In its wake, rows of the dead sunflowers begin to bend and twist and crack. To William’s horror, the crop comes alive and starts to march toward him.
It is not until the first wave reaches the red glow of the flare, that William realizes it is not the crop, but a legion of animated corpses who threatens him. The twisted sunflowers are tangled in their bones and cling to their rotting flesh. The putrid smell of dank earth and death fills the air around them.
William tightens his grip on The Wrath as more than a dozen of the damned surround him in a wide arc. He looks over and his gaze lingers on the body of his Jenna. He grinds his teeth, takes a step forward, and levels the weapon at the nearest creature.
The dead do not attack immediately. They stand motionless. Light from the flickering flare dances across their features as the noise from the cicadas crescendos in anticipation of the coming charge.
Then, one of them rushes at William, a thrashing, stumbling sprint with skeletal arms outstretched. William swings and brings the mighty weight of The Wrath down on the creature’s head, dropping it to the ground where it does not move again.
He shifts his weight and levels The Wrath again. But this time, the entire horde rushes him at once. William swings the morning star in wild arcs, decapitating several before he is overrun. They bring him to the ground and pile on top of him, pinning him down. What little breath he can take is filled with their stifling stench.
As William struggles, he turns his head to see his dead wife staring back at him. Frost forms over her face and her eyes roll back to the whites. Her body shakes and thrusts up in wild spasms as if she is being forcefully lifted off the ground by unseen strings.
“Leave her be!” William screams, but he is unable to free himself from the writhing mass of flesh and bone. He watches helplessly as the possessed body of his wife hobbles to the driver’s door of the van and climbs in. The engine roars to life and he hears Elliott begin to cry.
At first, the van stutters forward but soon it picks up speed. It travels only thirty yards, jerking left, then right, until it finally veers violently into a twisted oak tree. A thick plume of smoke rises from the crumpled front of the van.
Seconds later, something else rises from the wreckage. A blinding figure of bright light battles a warped patch of black night.
William howls in triumph, “Jenna!”
