Returning

Over the snowy field, glowing blue beneath the Moon, she makes her way to the Night Farm. She knows what she will find there, having been twice before.

The first time, she was on her way to meet her parole office in downtown LA. Walking under a brutal midday August Sun, she had spotted a shady trailhead under a freeway overpass. She pushed through the overgrown oleander bush with pink blossoms, hoping to find a shortcut along a shaded trail.

Instead, she found herself on a dirt road under a chilly night sky. As her eyes adjusted, she could see a full Moon shining over rolling, snow-covered hills. The cold bit into her cheeks as she walked.  

Wending around the curvy road, she proceeded cautiously, birthing ghosts with her breath. There was the cornfield and a large, whitewashed barn in the distance. She had crossed through a field of snow to get to the barn. Deciding to take a shortcut through the cornfield, she was surprised the snow beneath her did not crunch or make any noise. As soon as she reached the field, she held her hands before her, ready to push aside the dead stalks. But there was no resistance of stalks, no rattling husks, nothing to touch. Just shadows. She passed a tall, motionless windmill on her way to the barn.

The barn had a floodlight above the door, illuminating everything in a sickly yellow light: rusted farm equipment, bales of straw, and a 1948 faded green pickup truck. She carefully approached the vehicle. Looking through the driver’s side window and noticing the keys were still in the ignition, she tried the car door. It was open. She got inside the driver’s seat. The windshield had a diagonal crack and the truck smelled of ashtray and kerosene. The brown vinyl seats were heavily cracked and faded.

She started rifling through the glove compartment. It contained tools, a pack of cigarettes, and various slips of paper. But something didn’t feel right. She quickly and carefully shut the glove compartment, opened the door, and exited the truck.

The barn door was open. She entered tentatively. Runoff from the floodlight only penetrated the area near the door, so the deeper she walked into the barn, the stronger the shadows became, until she was standing in pitch black.

That’s when she decided to leave.

As she quickly made her way over the silent snow and down to the road, she noticed a farmhouse not far from the barn, but by then she had lost her courage to explore any further.

She raced down the dirt road, pushed through the oleander bush and was immediately hit by a dry heat and blinding sunlight.

The second time she visited the farm, she lost track of the time and was late for her meeting.

As soon as she entered her P.O.’s office, it was clear he was irritated.

“Lila, I’d like to put down in my report that you’re always on time, but you’ve been late the last two meetings.”

“Sorry. I had a little trouble coming back.”

“From the farm?”

“Yes. Since I’m not allowed to drive --”

“Yes, I know. You have to walk. There is the bus, you know.”

“Sorry.”

“How many times have you been to there?”

“To the farm? Just two. This was the second.”

“And you’ve never entered the farmhouse?”

“No. The first time I didn’t even realize the house was there until I was leaving. The second time I started to go in, but as I was opening the screen door, I lost my nerve.”

“Why do you feel the need to return there?”

“It’s hard to explain. Like I told you, the first time was an accident. I just want to understand what’s going on.”

“I’d like to put in my report that you decided not to return. But, given the impossible nature of what you’ve described, I’ll go ahead and leave out it.”

“Okay.”

“Have you been keeping appointments with the counselor?”

“Yes. Here is the last session.” She hands him a piece of paper.

“Okay, let’s meet again next week?”

Lila manages to stay away from the Night Farm for three days, but as her curiosity grows, her resolve weakens, and she soon finds herself wandering under the overpass. She looks up and notices the freeway sign: Elysian Park. Parting the oleander bush and entering the road into the night, this time she makes her way directly to the farmhouse.

Anticipating the cold, she has brought a jacket. As she is slipping it on, it occurs to her she never hears anything. No wind through the trees, no crickets, no owls, nothing.

She makes her way up the snowy bank. But on her way, the Moon suddenly disappears. Standing frozen and confused, she scans the sky but sees only black. The field of snow still glows blue, but the Moon is gone. As she starts to walk again, she suddenly realizes she was standing in the shadow of the old windmill. For reasons she can’t understand, this enrages her. She looks around and picks up a two-by-four from a stack of lumber and throws it with all her might. She sees it hit the windmill, yet there is no sound.

She walks up the front steps and carefully and slowly starts to open the screen door. She anticipates creaking. But there is nothing. The screen door opens without a sound. She tries the front door. It is unlocked.

As she enters, there is the full Moon shining through the kitchen window. Everything appears to be stuck in the 40’s or 50’s, an anachronistic theater set of appliances, cupboards, dishes, wallpaper. The clock on the wall hangs motionless.

As she ascends the stairs, she is careful with each step not to make a noise. Yet the wood remains silent all the way up. There is an open door to her left, so she tiptoes over to the doorway and enters.

The bedroom is dark, but the light of the Moon outlines a couple lying in bed. She draws closer, getting braver as she goes. The man’s face is bony, a light salt and pepper beard. He smells of cigarettes and whisky. She starts to move over to the woman’s side, but the space between the bed and the wall is so tight that she stumbles and almost falls onto the bed. After recovering her balance, she immediately steps back out into the hallway.

As she proceeds down the dark hallway, she sees a light. Someone is up. She thinks about running, but instead she approaches cautiously and pokes her head around the doorway. There she sees a young woman in a chair, eyes wide open, staring at her. Lila jumps back into the hallway, breathing rapidly. Gradually, she carefully peers into the doorway. Now the young woman still stares, but her eyes seem to see nothing. Is she blind? Lila summons up enough courage to enter the bedroom. The girl’s eyes do not move or follow her.

The girl is seated at a small table. Before her is a piece of paper with what looks like a letter. Lila waves her hand in front of the girl’s face. Nothing. Her skin looks slightly blue. Lila reaches out and tentatively puts her hand on the girl’s arm. It’s cold.

The letter is a suicide note, addressed to “Ma and Pa,” in which the girl confesses she is pregnant. Every line is apologetic, for the pregnancy, for disappointing them, for not being a “good daughter.” The girl appears to be in her mid-to-late teens, but the cursive looks as if a seven-year-old had written it. Lila’s eyes tear up as she reads on.

She sets down the letter and begins looking through a nearby rolltop desk until she finds a piece of paper. For the next hour, she begins painstakingly writing a letter in a hand as close to the girl’s as she can. This one is a goodbye letter. There are still apologies, but this time for leaving, the reasons why, and a promise to return after amends have been made. She keeps it vague enough hoping the girl’s parents won’t get suspicious.

As she writes, she begins to hear something. It is the first sound she has never heard at the Night Farm. At first, it sounds like a distant radio, as if someone is changing channels. Whenever she stops writing, the sound disappears, but each time she continues, so do the sounds. There are distorted voices, a whining in the background. She sets the pen down and looks around the room.

The girl’s voice shatters the silence. “A V of geese over continental folding.”

Lila bolts up, terrified.

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.”

She runs over to the girl, whose mouth keeps moving.

“Sin is merely that which is unforgiven by the self.” This time the voice is male and echoes as if spoken in an auditorium.

Lila instinctively covers the girl’s mouth, terrified she will wake her parents. “Please, please stop talking!” she whispers harshly into the girl’s ear.

“I can run faster than you think I can.” This time it is the voice of a small boy, muffled by Lila’s hand but still audible enough to frighten her.

“Please! Please stop!”

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.”

Lila feels the vibrations of the girl’s words through her fingers. She instinctively tightens her grip on the girl’s mouth. She frantically looks around the room and rushes over to a robe lying on the bed. She dashes back to the girl and immediately uses the robe to cover her head, muffling the voices.

“That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once.”

“Stop! Please stop!” Lila pulls the coat tighter until the girl’s voice is barely audible. Lila grabs her around the waste, keeping the robe tightly around her head, and begins dragging her down the hallway. Lila rushes past the parents’ bedroom, dragging the girl down the stairs and out the front door.

As they reach the snow, Lila suddenly hears her feet loudly crunching with each step. She manages to get the girl to the barn. She lays her down and begins looking for a shovel. She moves deeper into the barn until she is in pitch blackness. The girl mumbles through the robe.

Lila stumbles, reaching out to feel anything. She trips over something and hits the barn floor so hard she gasps. She reaches down and realizes it is a shovel. Grabbing it, she runs toward the light near the barn door. As she passes the girl, she can still hear her muffled voice but can no longer make out the words.

Lila spends the next six hours digging a hole in a clearing by a giant oak. Once the hole seems deep enough, she collapses onto the snow, exhausted. She looks up at the Moon and wonders how long it will be until daybreak. She rises slowly and painfully and sets off to the barn to gather the girl.

She returns to the hole with the girl over her shoulder, still mumbling in muffled tongues. She starts to remove the robe around the girl’s face. We’re far enough away from the house. The girl’s voice gradually goes from muffled to a clarity and volume that startles Lila.

“The future will have been perfect.”

 She tries to gently lower the girl’s body into the hole but slips and the girl awkwardly and violently lands face up. She’s dead. She can’t feel anything. With each toss of dirt into the hole, the girl’s voice becomes a little more muffled.

“Le silence va plus vite à reculons. Deux fois. Je répète”

When the grave is finished, Lila tamps the dirt down, returns the shovel to the barn, and heads home.

After pushing the oleander aside and entering the heat and brightness, she heads over to her therapist appointment.

“Have you returned to the farm?”

“No.”

“Really? Or are you telling me what you think I want to hear?”

“Would it matter either way?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You yourself said you weren’t going to mention it in your report because it seems so unlikely. If that’s the case, if this is all a figment of my imagination, then why even bother bringing it up?”

“I never said that. Lila, whether you think you go there or if you go there in your head, we need to figure out why.”

“Curiosity?”

“During your testimony, you claimed many things that brought into question your state of mind. The narrative you’ve been clinging to all these years hasn’t changed. You keep insisting it all happened just as you described.”

“Maybe I’m Dorothy Gale!”

“I sometimes get the feeling you don’t take any of this as seriously as you should.”

“No, I understand that. But, like I’ve said again and again, she was already dead.”

“I’ll tell you what. You have yet to produce a single piece of evidence to me or anyone that any of this is true. Would you do me a favor? Would you make it your goal to find something, a document, an object, anything that would even slightly help us all understand why you believe this story so conclusively?”

When Lila gets home, she calls her friend Carla., whom she had met in prison “Hey, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Can I borrow your car?”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to drive?”

“I’m not, technically, but this important.”

“Um.

“Please, Carla. I wouldn’t ask if this weren’t important.”

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

“I also need to borrow a shovel.”

After walking over to Carla’s and getting the keys and the shovel, she takes the freeway until she sees the sign above for Elysian Park. She takes the offramp and drives until the urban sprawl gradually crossfades into farmland. She winds up on a curvy dirt road. The Sun is brutal. The hills are brown and beige. Everything is dead.

When she sees the oak, she pulls off the road. She sees the old windmill, now slowly turning like a prayer wheel, each rotation crying with a voice of rust.

She takes the shovel out of the trunk and begins to dig. She only pauses occasionally to wipe away the salty tributaries from her forehead and eyes. Eventually, Lila gets to a depth she recognizes. She tosses the shovel aside and climbs down into the hole. After removing some dirt with her hands, she uncovers a toothy grin. That’s when she hears his voice.

“We need you to come out of there and put your hands in the air.”

She climbs out, puts her hands in the air, and surrenders once again.