Habitation

A house that has long stood as a silent monument to past hardship becomes the locus of a new disquiet.

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Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

There are many abandoned homes and farms scattered across this country, and this is as true upon the Great Plains as anywhere else – perhaps even more so here, because this land is so unforgiving and unwelcoming, and was settled too quickly by those desperate to build lives for themselves that they could not hope for in the cities of the East, or in the distant lands from whence they or their forebears came.

These remnants of the past tell us of old and fading tragedies – but also provide fertile ground for darker seeds blown on ill winds. Because nothing remains hollow forever – sooner or later, something will always make a home in these empty spaces.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]

NARRATOR

Episode Seventeen: Habitation.

(Sound of brown-headed cowbird song)

NARRATOR

The Gardner place has stood empty for almost twenty years, ever since the 1988 tragedy that claimed the lives of all five family members. Noah Gardner’s brother, Alec, who’d moved to California in 1979 but was the closest living relative, had tried to sell the house, but no one local had been interested in buying it – though the deadly carbon monoxide had all dissipated, the miasma of such an awful event still clung to the property. And at that time, there were very few people from outside the area who were both able to afford a new house and interested in moving out into the northwestern Kansas countryside.

So eventually Alec, who had his own problems back home and just couldn’t cope with the added headache, had simply given up and let the house slowly rot from the inside. No one outside the county treasurer’s office even seemed sure if he was paying taxes on the property, which seemed to sit utterly neglected. Sometimes there were rumors of teenagers breaking into the building for parties and similar adolescent mischief, but no one ever seemed to know exactly who had done so, or when it had happened, and there were no official records of any disturbances.

The decades came and went, and left untended to the extremes of prairie weather, the house fell increasingly into dilapidation and decay.

This is what Bob Huber is thinking about as he parks his tractor near the edge of the field for his lunch break. Ever since metastasizing breast cancer took his wife Juanita, Bob hasn’t bothered to eat a traditional farmer’s lunch back at the house – he doesn’t much care for his own cooking, and he doesn’t see the need anymore since modern farm equipment has a closed and air-conditioned cab.

Farmwork is hardly work anymore, he sometimes thinks, half with contempt and half with relief. He is getting old and has packed on too many extra pounds to be able to cope with the kind of labor he grew up doing.

He opens his lunch box, pulls out a lunchmeat sandwich with liberal additions of mustard, mayonnaise, cheese, and pickles, and pops open the first of two cans of Miller Genuine Draft to wash it down. Juanita would have told him that he needed more vegetables in his sandwich, and to lay off the beer, but, Bob reflects bitterly, all of her healthy eating and exercising hadn’t kept her well.

It surprises him how little the years seem to quell the anger at that loss, and the black well of grief beneath it, which even now he is afraid to peer into for fear it will swallow him completely.

To distract himself from these reflections, he returns to his earlier thoughts, peering down the road as he eats and drinks at the chipped mess of a house that stands about a hundred yards from where his tractor now sits, opposite his field.

And looking at the ugly sight, and contemplating all of the uglier associations it calls forth, he wonders why he thought that would be a better focus for his thoughts.

Because the house is no longer empty. As Bob is finishing his meal, a young man, rail-thin and with long hair that blows in the summer breeze, comes out of the house and walks to the dead elm tree at the edge of the property. There he stops and simply stares across the road at Bob.

Unsettled, Bob is not sure what to do but to stare back. The young man is dressed in loose clothes that are far too warm for the weather, a tattered long-sleeved flannel jacket with a faded sweater underneath, ragged jeans and weathered hiking boots.

At last, feeling more tense by the moment, Bob raises his hand in a friendly wave. The young man makes no response at all, but continues to watch Bob intently.

Swearing mildly to himself, Bob stows the empty can and sandwich wrapper in his lunchbox and starts up the tractor again, goes back to spraying his soybeans to try and quell the bean leaf beetle infestation.

But all the while, he keeps glancing back toward the house, towards where the young stranger still stands, hair and loose clothing rippling in the breeze. And soon there is another person standing beside him, a woman who looks even thinner and just as raggedly dressed. From this distance, Bob cannot tell if she is younger or older than her companion. Earlier than he intended, Bob opens and starts in on the second can of Miller, trying to ignore both his discomfort at the relentless gaze and at the heartburn rising in his chest.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

In the evening, after he has finished up his work for the day, Bob drives into town to meet his friend Art Kemp at the Eagle Bar for Thursday’s happy hour specials. This is a weekly custom for them, and one which has become precious to Bob in his widower years.

When he walks into the dimly lit, poorly furnished bar, he finds Art at the usual little corner table, already nursing the one beer he will likely partake of all evening – only going so far as to order a second if he’s feeling particularly reckless.

Bob orders his Miller and a platter of assorted deep-fried appetizers to split between them, and joins his friend. Their conversation starts as the sort of small talk and drily absurd, self-deprecating humor that is a holdover from the days of the old settlers, a sense of humor and humility that is fast disappearing from the Plains states. From there, their talk turns into the familiar channels of reminiscence, questions, and sharing of obscure knowledge – like Bob, Art is a lifelong resident of the area, and keenly interested in collecting and preserving the local history that so readily fades from communal memory.

But at some point well into the conversation, as they have nearly finished the greasy platter and Bob is starting on his third drink, Art brings up the people who seem to have either purchased or rented the Gardner place.

Bob sits a little straighter in his chair, feeling suddenly more alert and sober.

Art wonders aloud how anyone could live in that old house, falling apart after so many years of neglect, without at least doing some extensive repairs before moving in.

With that opening, Bob relates his experience from earlier in the day. Art listens patiently and attentively until Bob is finished, as is his habit. Afterward, he takes a thoughtful swallow of his tepid beer, then says that he’d forgotten that Bob’s north field was so close to the Gardner place, or else he would have made a point to tell him sooner.

Don’t engage with those people, Art says, after another somewhat long pull from his bottle. Word going around is that they’re very strange people.

Art then relates his one encounter with the older man who is apparently the patriarch of the newcomers. Art had been driving home from helping one of his neighbors to work cattle, when he’d passed the Gardner place and seen an old, rusted-out white Chevy S-10 in the completely overgrown driveway. He slowed down in curiosity, when a very thin old-looking man with unkempt white hair and beard walked out of the house, came to the roadside, and simply raised his hand to point down the road, as though saying move along, get away from here. Embarrassed and feeling a little ashamed of his nosiness, Art picked up speed again and drove on. But glancing back in his side mirror, he had seen the old man move out onto the middle of the roadway, then stand and watch him go. And then, most unpleasantly of all, the stranger held aloft what looked like a noose fashioned from a ratty extension cord, and then shook it violently.

Bob murmurs a mild curse, and Art simply nods.

After another drink of his Miller, Bob asks if anyone knows where the strangers have come from.

Art shakes his head, and says he’s heard a lot of rumors, but none of them seem too solid. He’s heard they came from somewhere up north, Nebraska or Colorado or South Dakota, but also that they might be from Texas. And he’s heard someone else say that they didn’t come from that far away, but from Paling, a town only about a forty-minute drive to the east.

After a short pause, Art asks if Bob has been through Paling anytime recently, and Bob shakes his head. Tapping a finger against his almost-empty bottle, Art says softly that things have gotten really bad there over the last decade or two – drugs, he elaborates, mostly meth.

Huh, is the only reply that Bob can muster. He doesn’t really know many people from Paling, and finds the revelation disturbing in only a distant way.

Art seems to sense his thoughts, and adds a little chidingly that Paling isn’t far, that anything there can easily find its way here.

Bob scratches his chin and nods, but has nothing more to say on the matter. Apparently neither does Art, because a few moments later, he is steering the topic toward baseball. But when they part about a half an hour later, saying their drawn-out country farewells in the parking lot and then each driving his separate way home, Bob’s thoughts return to his mysterious, and possibly sinister, new neighbors.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

For the next few weeks, Bob largely forgets about the Gardner place and its new inhabitants. He has many fields and pivots to tend, equipment to maintain and repair, and his days are about as busy as his aging body can tolerate.

Then his pivot breaks down in the north field.

Driving out, he hardly even thinks about the Gardner place. It’s only after he’s replaced the failed center drive motor, and he’s leaving the field, that he glances toward the still-unmended house. All three of them are standing in the untended yard: the old man, the young one, and the woman. Bob realizes he isn’t sure if they are the only ones who live in the Gardner place, and his eyes dart between the empty windows before resettling on the watchers in the yard.

Once more, the old man raises his arm and points down the road, wordlessly telling Bob to leave, but this time the other two join him in the gesture, so close to simultaneously that Bob can’t help but wonder if it’s been choreographed somehow.

Walking a little faster, Bob gets into his pickup and drives away. Very consciously, he does not look back in his rearview mirror, having no interest in seeing anything further. This probably makes him a coward, he concedes to himself, but at this moment he does not care. He wants only to get as far away from that house and those people as he can, to get home and lock his door as so few people do in this part of the world.

But even when he has, and when he’s laid his double-barreled Browning BSS and a box of 12-gauge shells beside his bed and settled under the covers, he still cannot seem to fall asleep. Every gust outside, every sound of the house shifting with the cool of night, makes him think of those strangers creeping through the dark, their thin, pale faces framed by tangled and windblown hair, their wide eyes gleaming faintly in the moonlight.

(Creepy music)

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The next Thursday at happy hour, Art has some new gossip to share.

Apparently, the strange family – if they are indeed all family, no one seems sure – numbers six, three adults and three children between the ages of seven and fourteen. The children rarely seem to come out of the house at all, but many passersby have had uncanny encounters with the three adults. The old man goes by the name of Dodd Hoskins, whereas the woman is called Fern. The young man’s name, and those of the children, remain hidden from common knowledge.

It is certain, though, Art intimates over his slowly warming beer, that Dodd and Fern came from Paling. And until recently, they had always seemed like fairly unassuming and even pleasant people, until one day they just withdrew completely from social life. Bizarrely, they were only known to have one child, a son that moved away years ago – maybe he is the young man, but those who remember the son well seemed disinclined to think so.

Weird, Bob says, taking an uncomfortable gulp of Miller.

It gets weirder, Art says in a hush. The last time he drove past the place, he explains, Fern had hurled overhand something long and limp at his truck. Art heard it thump heavily against his wheel well, and looked back only long enough to make out the shape of a large dead snake flopping onto the gravel, by its coloration either a bullsnake or an uncommonly large prairie rattler.

How she had managed to achieve that accuracy with such an awkward, gruesome missile still surprises him, Art mutters darkly.

Jesus Christ, Bob shakes his head in disbelief.

That’s not all, Art continues, taking a rare long pull from his bottle. Last time Deputy Lanzo was out that way, apparently the younger guy came out and put up his hands, pretended to be pointing a rifle at the car, just like a kid playing war.

Couldn’t he get in trouble for that? Bob frowns. For making terroristic threats, or something?

Sure, Art nods. But you know Andy. He isn’t like that, doesn’t like to stir the pot. Even when maybe he should.

Bob nods slowly, suddenly dreading his next trip out to the north field, and takes another drink of Miller.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

He puts off checking the north pivot a full day, before finally telling himself that he’s being a fool and that he can’t afford to shirk his duties and his livelihood because of a little spooky gossip. So he drives out toward that most distant of his fields, all the while trying to ignore the chilly prickle at the nape of his neck, on the pores of his balding scalp.

He actually laughs with relief when he sees that there is no one in the yard – not when he arrives, not when he returns from checking that the irrigation pivot is functioning properly and that the soybeans look healthy.

Bob almost is thankful for feeling like he’s been a fool, as he turns his pickup back toward the fields closer to home. But he has only gotten a little way down the road when he sees Dodd walking along the ditch, and not alone. A little girl is walking beside him, and Bob is just starting to speed up to pass them faster when he thinks he recognizes her – and she is not one of the Hoskins brood.

She is Alyssa Sykora, from about a mile farther south on the road. Bob remembers when she was born, only about seven years ago, how joyful the Sykoras had been at the new addition to their clan.

He stomps on the brakes, pulls over to the wrong side of the road and rolls down his window.

Howdy, he shouts at them, trying to feign a smile and a cheery tone and pretty sure he’s not doing well at either. He looks at Alyssa and asks her directly if her parents know where she is.

No, Alyssa answers. It’s supposed to be a surprise.

What is? Bob presses.

Don’t know yet, she answers, and looks up at Dodd.

Have something to show her, is all the old man says.

Well, Alyssa, Bob says slowly, carefully avoiding addressing old man Hoskins, I think your parents should know. Let’s go back and tell them, and you can all see the surprise together.

It’s just for her, Dodd says, not raising his voice but sounding so hard, so cold.

You can’t take a girl from her home without her parents knowing, Bob finally looks at the other man, no longer able to contain his mingled fear and fury. There’s a word for that, and I don’t think it’s one either of us wants to hear out loud. Or one you want the sheriff to hear, I’d guess.

(Threatening fades in)

Dodd’s spine goes rigid, and the expression on his face changes so suddenly and so completely that Bob feels an awful fluttering in his gut. The old man’s face becomes so twisted by feral rage that it looks hardly human. He sets off back toward his house, pulling on the child’s arm so fiercely that she cries out in pain and begins to struggle.

With speed he didn’t know he could summon, Bob is out of his pickup and running toward them, a heavy adjustable wrench in hand. He shouts for Dodd to let Alyssa go, and the old man does so only to round on the farmer. Dodd’s fingers are now hooked like talons, hands spread low and loose, ready to deal or ward off a blow. His back is slightly arched, his feet grounded and ready to spring in any direction.

Bob suddenly remembers his days of high school wrestling, very far behind him, and feels more keenly than ever his years, his extra weight and stiff joints and poor balance. And he knows that he is in real danger at this moment.

Softly and as calmly as he can manage, Bob tells Alyssa to get into his truck. Not taking his eyes off of Dodd, who is as still and lethal as a mountain lion in the moment before the pounce but seems to be waiting for the farmer to make the first move, Bob waits until he hears Alyssa open the door and shut it again. Then he slowly begins to back toward the pickup, wrench at the ready and placing his feet very carefully. Those moments seem to pass so gelidly, each agonizing heartbeat feeling likely to be the last before something truly awful falls upon them, but then he is finally at his driver side door, which he’d left open. It’s only then that he becomes aware of the rumble of the idling pickup engine, is thankful that he’d left it running.

(Threatening fades out)

He tells the old man to go home, feeling a little absurd as he does so, then gets into the pickup and closes his door as smoothly as he can manage. Still watching the old man, who remains in that threatening posture but has not moved, in the side mirror, he shifts the truck back into gear and roars down the road toward the Sykora place.

That man scared me, Alyssa says smally beside him, and he can hear tears in her voice.

Me too, Bob replies gently, chewing on his lip.

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

Of course, Bob tells the Sykoras about the encounter when he brings Alyssa home, and they are appropriately horrified. But apparently they are getting ready for a long trip to Ohio to visit an ailing relative, and Vic, Alyssa’s father, is just not ready to get into the matter with the police right now.

Bob doesn’t argue with him, though inwardly he thinks that this is a mistake.

After he has arrived home and sat in his recliner with beer in hand, the television on but hardly noticed21, he finds that his mind is stuck on those moments of discovering Alyssa, of confronting Dodd Hoskins. The whole episode could not have lasted more than five minutes, but it seemed like such an eternity.

After about an hour and a half of futile wrestling with these ruminations, he gets up and goes to the landline phone – the only one Bob possesses – and looks up the Sykoras’ number in the phonebook. He gets no answer when he dials it, and assumes they must be on the road already. His next call is to the county sheriff’s office, to the non-emergency line.

A voice he doesn’t recognize answers, inquires as to the nature of the call. Just as he is about to reply, the line goes dead.

Bob taps on the receiver, gets no dial tone. He swears softly, and then his lights go out.

Groping blindly in the sudden dark, Bob feels his way toward the bedroom, where his shotgun still lies beside the bed. Every movement, every breath, is torture. His pricked ears catch every subtle shifting of timber, every breath of wind or rustling of the trees outside, even a distant barn owl screech once, and each time he starts and feels his heart hammer arrhythmically against his ribcage.

But he makes it to the bedroom, manages to find the flashlight in the night table drawer and to load the Browning double-barrel, to stuff a handful of spare shells in his pocket. With the light held awkwardly under the forestock, he returns to the living room, begins to comb the house. That room, the kitchen, and the dining room are all empty. He is returning to the living room to look out the front door when he sees a pale face in the window.

He gasps and reels for a second, and by the time he is shakily aiming the shotgun in that direction, the face has disappeared.

Bob hurries to the front door and locks it, backs away with both barrels trained on the entrance. The only other way into the house is the garage door, which he rarely uses, and which will be plainly audible in the living room if opened. But then, he thinks, there are so many windows in the house, and he wonders for the first time how anyone can be comfortable in a home that is so easily breached, with so many points of possible invasion.

He has backed away about two yards from the door when a voice from behind startles him. Spinning, Bob swings his flashlight in a wide arc to find the source.

Dodd is sitting comfortably in the recliner which Bob had left less than fifteen minutes ago. Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the flashlight’s glare, Dodd stares at him impassively and repeats the words that had only really registered as a threat the first time Bob heard them.

You have such a lovely home, the man is saying, voice spider-soft. After Bob makes no reply, grappling with the reality of what is happening, Dodd continues, We shall enjoy it so much more than the old house.

What? Bob finally manages, voice breaking.

You must be so lonely here, Dodd says, rising from the recliner and taking a single, slow step forward. You should be happy to have company, to find a new family.

Bob raises the shotgun, and screams at the man to shut up and get out of his house. It is only now that he realizes how wrong the old man’s eyes look, a horrible jaundice yellow that has even infected the irises.

Dodd shakes his head sadly, and then a shape is lunging out of the darkness to Bob’s left. He feels the young man, strong despite his apparent malnourishment, tackling him to the floor and trying to wrest the shotgun from his grip. One of the barrels discharges and blasts a large hole in the living room drywall as Bob collides painfully with the floor.

The young man’s next tug almost wrenches the weapon from his hands. Fumbling to regain his hold, Bob accidentally taps the trigger a second time, and this blast leaves his ears ringing.

The young man stiffens, and then sprawls limply over Bob as something damp and warm seeps through his shirt.

Bob can hardly breathe as he shoves the unmoving form off of him, rolls over and scrambles to open the breech and replace the spent shells by the diffuse illumination of the dropped flashlight beside him. But his shaking fingers are inadequate to the task, and as he grabs clumsily for the ammunition in his pocket, Dodd kneels beside him and lays a light hand over Bob’s own, shushing him gently.

Such a shame, Dodd says, the words sad but his voice flat. But it is what it is.

With a sudden movement, astonishingly dexterous and powerful for the man’s apparent age, he rips the gun from Bob’s grasp and throws it across the room. It lands upon the floor with a dull, metallic clatter.

Only now does Bob spare a glance for the dead young man, for the stain on his own shirt, and it seems to him that the blood looks wrong somehow, too dark and too thick, almost like thoroughly spent motor oil.

Bob, the old man places a hand on his cheek, gently turns Bob’s head to look at him, aren’t you lonely? Aren’t you tired of being afraid, of being vulnerable?

Bob swallows thickly, and nods, unsure if he is only humoring this unstable intruder or if he is simply being honest.

I thought so, Dodd smiles. The expression is rigid and mechanical, like something unused to human facial musculature is trying awkwardly to puppet it. I have something wonderful to show you, Bob.

Bob wonders how the man has learned his name, but doesn’t bother to ask; it seems inconsequential at this point.

Dodd pulls a little green-and-red-striped cardboard box from his voluminous jacket pocket. Looking at it, Bob can only think inanely that it looks like a Christmas gift, but it is far too early in the year for one.

Yes, Dodd nods, seeming to sense his thoughts and again hideously miming a smile. Christmas has come early for you this year.

He delicately opens the box, and within, something stirs. It is round and gelatinous, about the size of a tennis ball, and is a wan and sickly yellow. Hundreds of tiny, wriggling appendages which Bob can only think of as cilia keep forming, becoming reabsorbed, and forming anew as he looks at it in rapt disgust. A thin mucous that smells like a mix of vanilla extract and rotten eggs oozes off the thing, leaving a small patch of the cardboard wet around it.

Get it away from me, Bob begs, voice cracking.

But can’t you see how beautiful it is? Dodd asks. Can’t you see how much it longs for you, and don’t you long for it in return?

Bob shakes his head vigorously and begins to try and crawl backwards away from the old man and the abomination in his hand, but Dodd only sighs and calls out Fern’s name. And suddenly, the woman is behind Bob. Closer to her than he has ever been before, Bob can see now that she looks about fifteen years younger than Dodd.

With the same inexplicable strength that her companions have demonstrated, Fern sits down behind Bob and wraps her arms around him, holding him in place. Dodd leans forward, holding the box and its contents closer and closer to Bob’s face as Bob clamps his mouth shut against the strangling, nauseous scream that rises up his throat.

(Dreadful music)

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Looking at the clock over the bar for the fifth time, Art takes another tentative sip of his beer. He has never really liked the taste or the effects of the stuff, only drinks it as an excuse to socialize.

But tonight, it tastes even sourer. Bob has never been more than five minutes late to Thursday happy hour, but it is now almost over and still no sign of him, no word.

Pulling his outmoded flip phone from his pocket, Art again tries Bob’s house number, but as before gets no answer. He is about to get up, pay his tab, and drive over to Bob’s home when the man finally walks through the Eagle’s front door.

The first thing Art notices about his old friend is that he looks unwell, paler and thinner than when he saw him last. The second thing is that Bob doesn’t even spare the bartender a glance before moving toward Art in their usual corner, sits without ordering anything at all.

Thrown a little off balance, Art asks Bob if he’s feeling okay, says he looks a little under the weather.

Bob only sits and stares back at him, his gaze intense but somehow also without any identifiable emotion behind it.

After waiting an uncomfortably long time for any kind of response, Art asks what kept Bob, why he’s so late today.

Again, Bob seems unwilling or unable to provide any answer beyond that flat, wide-eyed stare. Art is summoning the nerve to tell him to knock it off, that if this is a joke it’s not at all funny, when Bob finally does speak.

He says only that he has something to show Art.

Art sits, baffled by this brief but bizarre exchange. After a few moments of racing thoughts, he decides that Bob must have discovered something, and it must be something truly awful to have affected him so deeply.

So, still wondering if this is some kind of uncharacteristically elaborate and tasteless prank, Art agrees to take a look at whatever Bob has to show him.

Not here, Bob says. We’ll have to drive to it.

Okay, Art says slowly, and fishes out a few bills from his wallet to pay his tab.

As they leave the bar and walk toward Bob’s pickup, something moist and soft shifts in the darkness of the glove compartment, its many protean appendages writhing in anticipation.

(Softly sinister music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

Story, narration, and arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]