I Hear the Reaper's Song by Sara Stambaugh

Author:Sara Stambaugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680992427
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 1984-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

XIII.

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when the pounding started. It must have been going on for a spell, because it had worked its way into a dream I was having, where I was at the blacksmith’s. I was holding a horseshoe with my hands while he pounded. I remember I couldn’t feel any heat, but each time, the hammer came closer to my fingers. He was just ready to heave it again when I woke up. Martha was leaning over the bed shaking me. “Wake up, Silas,” she was saying. “Someone’s at the door.” I pushed back the sheet and sat up, still more asleep than awake and wondering who would come visiting at that hour. “You got to see who’s at the door,” Martha said. The moon was just past full and made the room bright enough that I could see she was scared. I started to say Hen should see to it, but the other side of the bed was empty. He wasn’t back yet from his party with Annie Keene.

The pounding kept on, in bursts now, and in between I could hear someone shouting my name and Hen’s and Martha’s. “Go down and see who’s at the door,” Martha said again, standing barefoot in her nightie and all white in the moonlight. While I swung my legs over the bed and scrambled into my overalls Martha didn’t even think to turn her back. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Something must be terribly wrong.” Still tucking in my nightshirt and hitching my arms into my overall straps I ran to the landing and took the steps three at a time, Martha trying to keep up but feeling her way step by step behind me.

I was across the kitchen and had gotten the key from the nail before she caught up and grabbed my arm. “Don’t unlock the door till you know who’s there,” she said, clawing at my arm like a scared cat. “For cripe’s sake, Moss,” I said, trying to shake her loose. “Who’s there?” she called, still hanging onto my arm. “It’s Elias’s Dave,” a voice shouted back through the door. “For God’s sake, open the door!” Martha let go of me, but I’d barely turned the bolt before Dave pushed the door open. Behind him I could see the yard and the fields milky and strange in the moonlight, but standing in the door he looked like a shadow so I couldn’t recognize him right away. “Dave?” I asked, my voice cracking the way it hadn’t been used to for a time. “There’s been an accident,” he said.

The rest of the night was worse than my dream, because Dave said Barbie was dead. Martha had turned up the kitchen lamp, but I liked seeing Dave’s face less than hearing him like a shadow. His eyes and mouth looked limp, and as soon as the light came on he fell into a chair and hid his face while Martha and I stared. “Barbie’s been killed by a train,” he said, tears running down his cheeks.

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