The Eye. A Horror Story. Chapter Two: PULP FICTION

How long do you reckon birds live, darling?

There was an eclipse today, real pretty, Liz. It happened in late evening, just before sundown. The clearing behind the main house went all quiet, and the skies turned into orange and dark grey. The sun was partly covered behind whirls of thin clouds, so when the moon eclipsed it, it looked all soft, like soft ice dropping on your chin that time on the pier, and I’ll be damned if it weren’t orange and vanilla that day, too, darling. 

Nothing moved, the moon covered the sun for maybe a few minutes, and during that time, the weirdest thing happened.

I kept thinking of this book I read as a young boy, where this housekeeper lady offs her no-good husband during an eclipse. I kept watching the clearing and the sky looking all mystical and the tree line, the sky was so nice I tell you, but then, I spotted a deer on the clearing.

It was hard to spot at first, since the eclipse seemed to drain the color from the landscape, and everything was this pale peach hue, April half-dead smelly soil just uncovered from huge banks of melted snow the way everything is at this point, and the lady was the same color as the bent hay. She walked, not really fearful, but like she had a point sort of, and then, I saw her husband prance a few yards behind her. They stopped for a bit and smelled the grass, then proceeded to cross the field without any hurry. A third deer, a young buck with the tiniest antlers, appeared from the woods, and galloped in a crazy, carefree fashion behind his parents, neverminding he was in clear shot.

Three. So lucky to spot three, I thought, but this was Tammy thinking, and I tried to brush it off.

I know she don’t matter to me no more and all, it is about you and me now, Liz.

Only I wish I knew where she was.

It’s been six months now.

And the blackbird who keeps coming back year after year has settled in the yard with the others. Remember, Liz, I told you about the Anomaly Blackbird with the white head, like she was an albino blackbird, Liz? Tammy loved her. That was her name for the strange songbird. Anomaly Bird. Maybe I didn’t told you, after all.

Tammy believed three was so lucky, and being my high school sweetheart and all, I guess old habits die real hard.

She sent me this real nasty email I didn’t read until way after her daddy had filed her missing. And I didn’t told Ms. Joni about them wells, but Tammy was always one to overreact and I guess she thought I was still mad. She spoke about you, too, but I don’t think she knew you was with me all those times last summer.

Tammy thought I was still peeved over how things went between us, and thought I had something to do with Joni coming for her. And I guess it did do me in for a while, what went down during the hoodlum with Brooke, but I can tell you right now Brooke is no dyke at all, it was a misunderstanding and she said she didn’t want to hurt Tammy’s feelings. Only Brooke is as clean as they come, she married that firefighter of hers three summers ago, they live right down the old road after the Atelier. She said Tammy didn’t even say hello anymore when she came back in town, and I guess it is all the same.

Tammy was so full of herself even after her big failure. She always thought everybody’s every reaction in life had to have something to do with her. Like when I stopped keeping in touch. But she don’t get it. The ranch is a lot of work. She wanted to live that queer lifestyle of hers in the city and be a bigshot writer, only the rest of us have to keep on living the best we can and care for our people. 

Tammy never understood nor did she care for any of that. Her daddy didn’t have to say it, but after her mama’s funeral, Tammy didn’t show in Halem for two years.

For two freakin’ years, Liz! Now, that is cold is what it is.

The ranch kept me busy, and I saw about a few girls now and then. 

I wish it had been you I met then, but I am the luckiest man alive to have met you now. 

I was surprised I didn’t remember you at all from back when, but I guess being with Tammy had all sorts of drawbacks even then. But it’s a small town, if you were this beautiful back then I feel I was lazy not to notice. Like I was lazy with Tammy, I was not prepared at all for what happened I tell you, but Brooke swore to me it had been Tammy and not her, and she was crying, you know. You need to keep it together and keep it in the family. 

Pop bought these two gorgeous Palominos last year, and I been real busy with them, see. Not docile like the last ones, but Arabian so willful and it always takes time and patience to see it through with them horses. 

Tammy was curious about them, but she never really learned to ride, and I was a ninny back then. I kept putting it off, and for a while there, I figured we would start a family of our own, and since she never seemed to take into the whole horse ranch idea, I didn’t press her to learn. 

We weren’t meant to be, she cared nothing for my qualities, and I guess I found her writing difficult to understand, so it was better in the end, when it ended. What I get even less is how she made that story into some definitive mythology about her life and how she thought she had ruined me and all, because that is just condescending and I should have been expecting that, but I loved her once, her black hair reminded me of Levon, that was my horse as a boy, remember I told you about Levon, darling? Tammy was scared of Levon, being a huge Rocky Mountain, I think. And I hated when she wanted me to lose my drawl. Ever since her I have taken pains to maintain it. Ours is a specific patois to this region, and I can’t see why she would need to act so superior. She would sit by me, hovering, like a bat with a hearing aid, and I felt I couldn’t even drink my shot of whiskey at peace without her correcting how I pronounced the gulp.

But Tammy considered herself too intellectual for this town and wanted to be with her peers, she said. I used to think she was real smart and all, but when she started acting all better than others, now that’s when I knew it was over. I mean, not know in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I had to have known on some level. And the lesbo business, and dragging my own sister in the middle? I can live and let live like anybody else, too, but Brooke was adamant about what had actually taken place, and I think it isn’t nice at all to hide behind perverse lies. If Brooke had told me she loved Tammy, I would have had a different opinion, but it was all bullshit, and Tammy just wanting to be different from others like that, too. It was fashion is what I think it was, and it was rude of Tammy to drag my sister into it.

I guess I already told you, Liz, about how rude it was. And I felt bad for her, I have to say, after I finally read her mail, and it turned out she had had these fantasies about you, too. Poor Tammy. 

I mean, what the hell does an intellectual peer even mean? She tried to get into the book circle here, but they would not have her. Now, I know, that was kind of mean of them not to include her, but then again maybe it all spells out that Tammy was never much of a writer. Or maybe it had to do with her parents. Or perhaps the others smelled her desperation to be included. Now, that is never attractive.

You told me you hardly knew her, only that you went in to help out with her daddy sometimes. If you tell me, I believe you. That’s the kind of man I am. 

It’s Tammy who’s the fabricator. 

The eclipse was so beautiful. I don’t know why, but the image of the three caribou haunts me still. 

Even after I went in the stables to check how everyone had held up during it, I could hardly let go of the image. See, animals sometimes have a strange sense about natural phenomena, they can act all weird or lie down or get a little unhinged, and I like to go and see about them. There is nothing quite like a horse in this world, I swear, no human being has ever treated my as kind as every one of our horses. Except you, darling.

The clearing was greying as I walked back across the yard. No deer.

But as I was almost at the front door, I swear I could hear faint neighing, just a little, and I could just tell it was Levon, I would recognize his warm tone anywhere, only he has been dead for twenty years, and there was no way he could be standing on that clearing.

Only he was.

His black eyes had a crimson shade, I could see the two red dots and I knew my Levon was there as clear as I know my own name. Suddenly it was like I was seventeen again, and we were all bloodied from the accident, and I saw him lying in the ditch with two legs broken, and Pop approaching him with his shotgun. No! I screamed, even though I knew it had to be done. Pop gave me the gun to do it myself. Now look, Ted, he said.

Now, none of that now, he said, time for tears comes when the deed is done.

Find the will, he said.

Go ahead, son, he said, you can show him no greater love now.

I swear on my life it was Levon, standing there, familiar and majestic and waiting for me. I ran to him, but it was dark, and I couldn’t see him no more after leaving the yellow pool of the porchlights. The red dots disappeared; I could not keep my eyes steady. Levon? Levon?

I knew it could not be, I knew it had to be some form of illusion, so I stopped in the middle of the blackening field. I felt I wasn’t alone. 

Liz, I know it’s hard to believe, but just as surely as I had known it was Levon, I knew now it was Tammy. Only she was nowhere. But I sure felt her presence and felt it most in the soles of my boots as the glow

the ground shook a little, only a little, and the image of the wells came to me, bathing in red light coming from under the ground it looked, and I could not move, the ground shook the tiniest bit, and I could not lift my boots at all. She was holding on to them underground, she was mad, and I saw her inside the well, losing shape, losing all humanity, becoming eyeless and liquid almost, elongated and monstrous, surrounded by red and pink and orange primordial ooze, and it was horrible, so horrible, the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, I had a strong urge to start screaming, and suddenly I was free from her grasp and I ran. 

I ran all the way inside the house and slammed the door shut.