I realized early on that this was a book for the ages. I tweeted as much and I privately wrote some friends. I wrote Philip Fracassi, too, story by story, as I finished reading them, unable to stop myself, not wanting to stop myself, aware that I was in rare hands. Like the collections that electrified me in the past, Beneath a Pale Sky doesn’t let up, and it’s not difficult to imagine these stories populating an entire season of an anthology television show on their own.
You’re probably at the point where you want to read these for yourself. Great. I’ll step aside here. But first, a prediction:
You will read these stories, and you will think of them the next time you find yourself on the front porch of a party, a stranger two-sheets to the wind, suggesting he saw his deceased aunt winking from behind a furnace. But this time you will stop the stranger as he heads back into the house. You will think of Philip Fracassi’s stories and you will say, Wait a minute. Hold on. I’ve got one for you, too…
Josh Malerman
Michigan
HARVEST
PART ONE
Blue Sky
THE BLUE SKY was vast. Cornstalks reached to the heavens, unfurled green leaves turned upward like praying hands with crispy brown fingertips. Late September heat simmered and circled.
The antlers of the male flower pushed through the top of the stalks. Pollen lifted from the knobby stems in the autumnal breeze, clung to the feet of hungry insects, found the silky threads of female hair in a five-hundred-acre mating dance. The semi-sheathed beards took it in, the shy ladies fertilized, ready to birth budding shafts of sweet corn. A joyous miracle that would be plowed, harvested, and repeated. The time for reaping was near. Winter was still far off, but summer had been long left behind.
At the edge of the harvest rested a white church, its broad plank siding bright and clean. The tall arched windows marched along its sides were stretched shadows tinged with midnight blue where hazy sunlight caught the glass. Out front, an ancient gnarled oak craned up past the steeple, thick leafy arms stretched outward in every direction. Its massive trunk stood near the entrance, where it had endured for more than 150 years; settled firmly on its roots, stealing life from the soil, its weathered bark far older than the church and even the immense crop surrounding it. But age and frailty are close friends, and a poison ran through the great tree. Dehydration and decay festered in its veins. Leaves, most the size of an adult hand, lay strewn along its base, browned and weathered. The arching branches still clung tightly to an assortment of summer holdovers, the clingers-on dangling lifelessly as ancient Chinese fans, adorning the dying tree with a ghastly dystopic headdress, the entire milieu a symbol for the end of all things, or at the very least a season. And yet the great tree stood, stubborn, clinging to life and pride like a dying giant in a fairy tale.
And on this autumnal day it watched, wearily, as a broken line of cars approached from the distance, each chased by a cloud of dust. A spattering of parishioners en route for the ceremony to come.
CARRIE WORE WHITE and stared dazedly through a church window at the seemingly infinite army of marching green stalks. At the edge of the crop she observed a clay-colored cottontail slip briefly onto the perimeter of shorn grass, sniff the air, then shoot back into the folds of the cornfield. Mother sipped coffee in the corner, a napkin between palm and cup ready to catch any wayward drop that might infect her best yellow dress. Carrie’s bridesmaids wore cauliflower blue silk with a lace top and only one shoulder exposed, a concession she’d made in exchange for serving liquor at the reception. Beth and Trish took turns pouting lips into the vestry’s lone mirror, smoothing eyebrows, tucking loose hairs. They were chatting enthusiastically, but it was white noise to Carrie. Static.
Trish had flown in from school. She was sweet and harmless, fat and plain. Beth was pretty but petulant, liked to mouth-off to impress whoever was within earshot. She’d slept with the groom once, before he and Carrie had been serious, and both girls had been forced to swallow resentment like sin-eaters in order to remain friends. The three women had known each other since preschool but were not as close as some might believe. Deep down, Carrie had secretly hoped they wouldn’t come at all but… well, here they were.
The vestry was small, and after a few hours pacing its confines, primping and filling the enclosed air with banal gossip, Carrie had begun to feel claustrophobic. Staring out the window at the navy-blue sky and bushy green field eased her mind and settled her nerves. She noticed clouds plotting in the far distance, rubbing shoulders like hazy mountaintops…
Navy blue? Carrie thought, distracted from her inner musings. Had the sky really turned a shade darker than it was only minutes before?
Carrie closed her eyes and cursed under her breath. She prayed for a beautiful day. A perfect day. She also prayed for peace, and perhaps a little quiet, as the constant attention from her attendants wore thin. Thankfully her overly-fretful nana, the most vocal and challenging of the small group, had left to secure arrangements in the sanctuary. Carrie figured she had Pastor Willard’s elbow by now, pacing him through his well-worn Book of Common Prayer to steel his resolve against adding any modern flourishes to the traditional ceremony language.
“Carrie, darling.” Mother. “You should eat something.”
“I’ve had a sip of wine, and Nana brought lemon cookies. I’ve had three.” Carrie patted the taut tummy of her embroidered wedding gown. “Besides, I’m too nervous. I’ll eat at the reception.”
“If you don’t faint first. Such a humid autumn, my god,” her mother said, patting her throat and chin with a tissue. “Girls, go find a pitcher of water. Some iced tea.” They laughed and ignored her.
It was warm, especially for the season, but Carrie thought stifling the more appropriate adjective. Thankfully, the church had brought a fan into the vestry which pushed the heavy flower-scented air around enough to keep any dew drops of perspiration bursting from her pores. Despite her gown being full-sleeved and high-necked, the fabric along the arms and shoulders was light – a semi-opaque lace – that allowed her tanned skin to breathe. And despite what she told her mother, she wasn’t nervous in the slightest.
Anxious, perhaps.
Parker was a good man. Handsome. He would run his father’s (quite profitable) wheat mill one day – the largest in Gehenna County – securing their financial future. Her anxiety stemmed not from her future husband, or her tedious mother, but from a nagging, damnable black string which tugged at the back of her mind. A black string that wore overalls socially and knew all of her most private thoughts. Her secrets. A six-foot problem with blue eyes and haystack-colored hair.
Eli.
Carrie’s heart beat faster at the thought of him, and she clenched a tight fist, shut her eyes, said another prayer. Stay out of my head, she thought, knowing the futility of the command. Because he was there, swimming inside her, swirling around her thoughts and kicking at her heart; a ghostly presence that carried a worn suitcase bursting with a lifetime of memories, tied shut with that same dark string.
Then, without her consent, that black string gave a tug… and slid free.
THE KIDS WERE hidden from the larger world beneath a leaf-strewn canopy and the heavy shadow of surrounding trees. Storm clouds laid thick along the sky’s underbelly like smoke from a house fire. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
“God wants in.”
Carrie rolled her eyes at the joke for the hundredth time. Felt like the millionth.
“So let him in, dummy,” she snapped, her bare feet folded beneath her knees in the matted tall grass. She picked at the rip in her dress, the fabric covering her bony knee having been rent by a splintered branch while she’d climbed a low-armed mulberry.
