Summer of the Green Flies - A Short Horror Story: PART TWO

 

 

 

SUMMER OF THE GREEN FLIES

 

A Short Horror Story: PART TWO

 

By

 

Jean Daniel

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

Summer of the Green Flies

 

A Short Horror Story: PART TWO

 

Jean Daniel

 

Copyright 2026

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

PART TWO 

Jace and Beth had been upstairs, picking out bedrooms. There were four of them, with two baths in the hallway. A luxury for people used to two bedroom apartments with one bathroom.

After they heard Claire’s scream they hurried down to the kitchen. The kids were inside, both shaking as if they’d come through a blizzard. Claire was gulping water from a tin cup while Johnny ran tap water over his short cropped blond hair, to ward off the stench they had encountered which seemed stuck in his every pore.

“What the hell is it now?” Jace asked. “You two look like you’ve seen the Devil himself!”

“I wish that’s all it was!” Johnny grabbed a dish towel to dry his head. “There’s a dead cow out there. It was full of them awful green flies. Do we have to stay here?”

“A dead cow?” Beth shrugged. “Damn, kids, I thought y’all were more mature than this. We are on a farm, there are bound to be neighbors’ cows getting hurt by coyotes or falling and breaking their neck or something. It’s sad and scary I guess but not to be unexpected.”

“But, Mom,” Claire stopped a second to catch her breath. “There was nothing wrong with the cow except for the flies in her mouth! They killed her!”

“Oh, come on, Claire!” Jace shook his head. “Those flies only go after dead things. They’re like tiny vultures, you know?”

“These weren’t!” She began to cry.

Beth swathed her in comforting arms; walked her over to the air conditioner.

“Here, cool off some. You’re sweating so much!”

Beth smoothed Claire’s blonde curls away from her brow; noticed something crawling in her hair. It started buzzing. Claire screamed.

“A fly! A green fly! Get it off me, Mommy! Please?”

Beth grabbed at it; it bit her. She squeaked in shock, smacked the damned thing to the floor where Jace promptly squished it under his shoe.

“I thought green bottle flies didn’t bite,” he said.

“Well, that one sure as hell did!”

They heard more buzzing, turned to see the back screen door covered in green flies.

“What the ever loving fuck is going on here?” Jace slammed the solid wood kitchen door and locked it.

“The heat must be driving them to desperation. Kids, y’all stay in the house. Our stuff should get here soon then you can try to watch TV; I noticed there is a big antenna outside. For now you can help us get our rooms ready. We’ve picked out a blue one for you, Claire, and a red one for you, Johnny. They’re really nice; just need a good cleaning. We’ll get them clean enough for us all to sleep in real beds tonight. How does that sound?”

“I don’t like it here!” Claire wailed. “And I don’t want to stay here.”

“You haven’t given it a chance yet. We could have a very nice life in this house. Your dad has always wanted a farm. And now I can give it to him, don’t you see?”

“No, I want to go home!” Claire rubbed her eyes red and plopped herself down on an emerald green velvet chair by the air conditioner.

“We could sell the farm and use the money to go back to Nashville,” Johnny suggested.

“No, I don’t want to sell it. We all need to settle down. It’s the heat. Once the summer calms down, things will be fine. We can get some spray for the flies.”

“Okay, but what about the shadow?” Claire cried. “How do we get rid of it?”

Jace and Beth looked at each other.

“You saw a shadow?”

“Yes, Mom, I thought maybe it was the woods playing tricks on me, but it wasn’t. It was there. You saw it, too, didn’t you?”

“I saw a window shade move in the cottage a couple of times. There could’ve been a draft moving it, like your Dad says. Maybe we’re all just overreacting here. The last six months have really taken a toll on us. Let’s tamp it down and start over.”

“It’s too late for that, Mom,” Johnny said. “Look out the window!”

The moving truck had pulled up and the men, Jace’s cousins, Tom and Carl, were starting to take things out of the back. A swarm of green flies was heading straight for them. At first, they were a minor nuisance; the men swatted at them and cussed then kept going. Then the swarm grew larger and meaner. The men yelled as the flies bit them and dive bombed towards their eyes and mouths.

Claire peered over the air conditioner then began to wail again. “I don’t like this!”

“Oh, my God! Jace, what do we do?”

“You all run upstairs and lock yourselves in a safe room. I’ll go out and help them.”

“I’ll get the kids settled then come back down! Here,” Beth handed him a handkerchief from her purse, and a pair of sunglasses. “Maybe these can protect you.”

“Right.” He kissed her and ran out the front door.

“Daddy, don’t go!” Claire sobbed. “They’ll kill you!”

“Shh! Claire, Johnny, come with me!”

Beth led them upstairs to one of the bathrooms. It had the smallest window in the house. She ran some cold water and washed Claire’s face to calm her down.

“There. You be a big girl, now. I’m going to help Daddy. Johnny, y’all stay in here until I come for you, okay?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She kissed them both and hurried back down the stairs. She found another pair of sunglasses in her overnight bag and another handkerchief. Jace was on the porch, swiping at the flies with the shovel from the shed. Beth noticed an umbrella in a stand by the door, grabbed it as a weapon and joined her husband on the porch.

“Kids okay?”

“For the moment,” she answered.

Jace nodded to the two men; shouted for them to wrap their bandanas around their faces and put on their sunglasses.

Carl had been bitten by too many flies; every bite seemed to release some sort of poison into his system; he fell to the ground. Jace and Carl’s brother, Tom dragged him to the porch.

“This is the fuckingest thing I ever saw, Jace! What’s going on?”

“I wish I could tell you, Tom. Let’s get these green shits off of him! Beth, can you handle it?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

The three of them started to hit the flies, mashed them, and ground them into green mush, scarring the porch’s floorboards. Tom grabbed handfuls of the nasty things off of his brother’s skin then scraped them across the wall until they were dead. The man coughed up blood then fainted.

“We need an ambulance! Can you even reach one way out here?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jace said and ran inside to find a phone.

~

Once they were all inside and the ambulance en route Beth used a wet dishrag to soothe Carl’s swollen face as he laid on the leather Chesterfield sofa in the paneled study. It was the quietest, darkest room in the house. Tom sat nearby, sipping a cup of water and cursing under his breath.

“Wish I had something stronger,” he whispered. “Beth, you sure there isn’t a bar in this house somewhere?”

“No, Tom, the Carringtons would never have had liquor in this place. Sorry.”

He grumbled a bit, slurped down the rest of the water,

Beth glanced about at the moldy-smelling room. It was a man’s haven, with guns locked in a fancy cabinet and dead animal heads hanging on every wall. There was a picture of a couple, framed in silver, on the mantel of an intricately carved fireplace. She recognized the Carringtons, Jobe and Mamie, from other photos her parents had kept. There was also a photo of Jess Carrington on the other side of the mantel, dressed in black vintage finery with lace sleeves. The bookshelves were filled with odd books on how to perform exorcisms and cast spells to ward off evil souls.

“Just what the hell was going on in this house?” she whispered to herself.

“What’d you say, Beth?”

“Oh, nothing, Tom. I wish that ambulance would get here. How’s it look outside?”

The flies seem to be gone for now, if there was any left. We sure made mincemeat out of them!”

She grinned slightly. “Yes, we did.”

~

Jace checked on the kids; Claire hugged him tight after seeing he was okay and Johnny started to give him a handshake but reached for a comforting hug as well. Jace brought them back downstairs and sent them into the kitchen for a snack. They still had some peanuts and cheese crackers in the food box they’d brought in the night before. And it was way past lunch time.

Finally, the siren proclaimed the arrival of the ambulance. Tom went with Carl to the hospital. Jace said he’d watch the truck for them.

“Here’s the number. Give us a call to let us know how he is, Tom.”

“I will. I just can’t get over what a fucking mess this was. Does this happen a lot around here, man?” he asked the young doctor.

“Hell, no! We were shocked out of our gourd when the dispatcher told us the circumstances. It’s one for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, huh?”

“Yeah, or that One Step Beyond TV series.”

They took off. Jace stood in the yard, looking around at the farmland and the old house. It was a dream come true when Beth inherited the place. He didn’t expect it to turn into a God Damned nightmare. At least the remainder of the flies seemed to have disappeared … for the moment.

A movement caught his eye; it was the tattered window shade in the cottage. He pretended to go towards the big house then quickly ran around to the back of the cottage and tried every key on the chain in his pocket until one clicked the lock.

He entered the musty little kitchen, could barely see the pine cabinets and antique farmhouse table and chairs in the hazy room. There was a 1920s stove and icebox; both seemed to have been used recently. He opened the fridge and found a bowl of unappetizing, badly fried chicken and some over ripe tomatoes. The stove had a greasy pan sitting on one of the eyes – it was still warm.

“Who’s in here?” he asked. “We won’t hurt you. We just want to know who you are.”

No one answered.

Jace stepped carefully into the front room, where the tattered window shade hung. It was a sad, dusty shrine to lunacy. Black lacquered bookshelves held strange little statues, made of chicken bones and feathers, with drawn eyes and smeared pink mouths. There were dozens of them, lined up like a crowd in a theater. On the opposite side of the room there was a projector screen; the old projector itself was set up with a reel of what closer examination revealed to be home movies of the Carringtons. Mamie and Jobe acting out silly scenes with a beautiful little chestnut haired girl, Jess, probably. But who was living, if you could call it that, in the cottage, and watching those movies?

There was no one about. He looked in the bath and the bedroom. They were grimy, too, not fit for human habitation. So … was the one who dwelled there human or what?

~

The fierce emerald eyes stared at the dark-haired man through a crack in a hidden door. He didn’t look frightening. Maybe … maybe they wouldn’t hurt her. But Jess had said … well … she didn’t want to think about Jess or anything she had said. Jess was gone. So was Jobe. So was Mamie. They all left her. Her only friends were the dolls she had made, and they couldn’t talk or think or see or hear, no matter how strongly she pretended they could.

~

“I’m calling the Sheriff,” Jace decided as he re-entered the house. Beth and the kids were in the kitchen, sipping water.

“Why? What have you found?”

“Someone has been living in that cottage. The stove eye was still warm. So they’re probably still close by.”

He headed for the study, tried to jiggle the gun cabinet lock then searched about for a key. Beth followed him, motioned for the kids to stay put, though both of them protested. She gave them the “mama means business look” and they obeyed.

“Who do you think it is, Jace? A tramp? The railroad tracks are right down the road.”

“Could be. But there’s something weird about that cottage. Crazy little dolls made from chicken bones and an old projector with reels of home movies with the Carringtons in them. And somebody has been watching them. Why would some old tramp do that?”

“Just curious, maybe? About the movies, anyway. The dolls … well, it’s odd but I remember Jess telling me once at high school that after her parents got into that strict religion they followed they wouldn’t let her play with real dolls anymore so she fashioned some out of chicken bones and handkerchiefs. Maybe they are the dolls that she made back then.”

“But some of them look fresh, if you know what I mean, and the fridge has some really vile looking fried chicken in it.”

“I don’t know what to make of it all. Call the Sheriff and we’ll see if he can figure it out.”

“Right.” He picked up the phone that was sitting on a marble-topped table in the hall and dialed “O” for the operator. Then they heard Claire scream; Jace dropped the phone as he and Beth headed for the kitchen.

“What is it, Baby?”

“Look, Mom! It’s awful! This whole place is awful!”

She cried, pointed out the back window. The sky was littered with black vultures; some were swooping down and gathering about the carcass of the dead cow, which was visible through a tunnel of trees that led to the clearing. They began to tear at its flesh, working themselves into a frenzied feast.

“Oh, God, turn away, Claire. It’s Nature, honey, I’ve told you that.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “And don’t say you hate Nature again.”

“I can say it if I want to! Mom, please, can we leave now?”

“No, Baby, we can’t. Daddy is going to call the Sheriff first, to see if there is something weird going on. If there is, we will leave, I promise. Okay?”

“Okay, but I’m not stepping outside until you say we’re leaving.”

She slumped down in a kitchen chair and laid her head on her arms. Johnny watched the carnage out the window until he was ill with the reality of it. Then he vomited into the sink.

~

“It’s probably just as you thought, Mr. Poole,” Sheriff Kenneth Wills announced after he had surveyed the interior of the cottage. “Some drifter got in here and made himself at home. Though I do wonder why he chose the filthy cottage instead of the house. At least the house is tolerable.”

Beth searched his handsome, rugged face for a hint of wisdom; she didn’t find it but he did look familiar – the red hair and the bluest of blue eyes – he was one of those Wills boys she knew as a kid, of course!

“So, are we safe here, Sheriff?”

“I think you are. He’s probably run off by now and hopped a train to Memphis or beyond. We get these hoboes quite often. Most are harmless; just down on their luck.”

“Well, I think I’ll keep one of Jess’ rifles near my bed,” Jace said, “in case he comes back, and ain’t so harmless.”

“Good idea. You all are really going to live here, then? It’d be nice to see the place fixed up like it was when I was a kid.”

“I thought your face seemed familiar, Sheriff. You used to live with your family down the road a couple of miles.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I did. And I remember you when you were a tiny little thing with blonde curls, just like your youngin’ there. Saw you at church and in town at the Co-op quite often.”

“Do you remember much about the Carringtons?”

His face seemed to darken at the question. “Not much, they kept to themselves, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But what about Jess?”

His demeanor changed; he seemed to stiffen at the sound of her name. Beth wondered if he could be Jess’ “redheaded Jesus”. His whole family had been very religious. His dad, Patrick, was a preacher, owned a church out on Dark Springs Road.

“The daughter, yeah, I remember her. They were real protective of her. I’m surprised they let her attend school at all. She was absent a lot. Her teachers complained to the county that she wasn’t getting a good education ‘cause she missed so many days. My mama was her teacher one year, said she felt sorry for the girl and tried to encourage her to make friends. But the other kids didn’t like her. She was too different. I expect you were the only friend she had, Mrs. Poole.”

“But I wasn’t her friend. We were cousins. Not close cousins, either.”

“My mama said she told her you were her best and only friend.”

“Wow. That is very strange to me, that she would say that.”

“She probably was making believe, Mama,” Claire suggested. “I did that, sometimes, when I was smaller.”

“Well, anyway, if I were y’all, I’d put a new lock on the cottage or just tear the thing down. The flies will settle down once the weather is cooler; though they have been damned fierce this summer. I’ve never seen them this bad. Oh, I stopped by the hospital on my way here, to talk to Carl Poole. He’s better. They’re giving him medicine to ward off any infections from the fly bites. He and his brother should be here tomorrow, to help you move in.”

They walked him to the door.

“I can see a family resemblance with you and the Carrington girl, though her hair was dark and her eyes …” he stopped, sighed heavily. “Well, they were green, weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were. Thank you, Sheriff,” Beth said, shaking his hand. He held her hand a bit longer than necessary. She felt some hidden sorrow just beneath the surface and patted his sleeve with her free hand. He sighed again, nodded appreciatively.

“I hope you folks will have good luck with this place. See you at church, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Jace answered.

Once the Sheriff was gone they settled into the kitchen to come up with a plan for dinner when there was no food in the house.

Isn’t there a grocery store nearby?” Jace asked. “I don’t want to drive all the way into town right now.”

“Well, yeah, there’s Marlborough’s Market over on the corner of Dark Springs Road and Davisville Pike. Or there was. I guess it’s still there.”

“Fine. Give me a list and show me where it is on the map.”

“I think we should all go, Jace. The kids would probably enjoy the trip.”

“Boy, would we!” Johnny shouted. “I’ll go anywhere to get away from this place!”

“Me, too, Daddy!” Claire agreed.

“Fine, let’s go! But if the flies return, head back into the house PDQ!”

They all nodded and walked out to the Woody in a huddle, the parents surrounding the kids with their arms in case of trouble.

But they made it okay into the Woody and sped off down the highway, leaving dust raining in their wake. The feminine figure from the cottage ran out to watch them leave, her fierce green eyes filled with tears. She turned towards the big house; her bright auburn hair swirled about her face as a sudden hot breeze brought a swarm of green flies to her side. She raised her tiny hand, held them at bay. Then she entered the cottage as the flies returned to the sky.

~

The Poole family enjoyed their brief visit to a real country store, selecting a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies along with plenty of cans of pork and beans and Sloppy Joes, a jar of peanut butter and two loaves of bread. The proprietor, Abe Marlborough, a hunched over gnome with twinkling blue eyes and crooked front teeth, tried to talk them into buying a smoked ham from his backyard smokehouse and a delicious smelling brisket as well, but their finances being what they were, they had to decline.

Beth ran her hands tenderly over a bin of his fresh-picked vegetables – he had a huge garden out back beside the smokehouse full of plump tomatoes, corn, okra and cucumbers.

“These are wonderful!” she sighed. “Oh, I can’t wait to grow a garden of my own. That’s something I’ve really missed about living in Nashville. There is one in our backyard, but it’s neglected and rotted.”

“Take a handful or two; we’ve got an abundance of produce this year.”

“Thank you! I can’t wait to have a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise! Jace, grab a small jar of Hellmann’s, would you?”

“Did you say you folks have moved down here?” Abe questioned. “Whereabouts do you live?”

“The Carrington farm,” Johnny answered, waiting for the old man’s reaction. It only took a second for the man’s manner to change.

“That’s a wicked place. I wouldn’t ever set foot on that land.”

“Why not?” Jace asked.

“Satan’s spawn lived there. That Jess Carrington, she was evil. Once I saw her shoot a sick pup without an ounce of sympathy, just aimed, fired, and slung the poor thing into a gulley. I truly believe if she’d seen me, she would’ve done the same to me! I sneaked down there and buried the pup after she left, taking a big risk but I felt it was duty to give it a decent burial.”

“Well, if it was sick and suffering, maybe she was putting it out of its misery,” Beth decided. “My daddy did that once, and I didn’t consider him evil.”

“It was more than that.” He lowered his voice, trying to keep the kids from hearing him. “I used to see her running through the woods naked as a jaybird, with some redheaded young man chasing her like a hound after a fox. He’d catch her and let me tell you, the things they was doing were sinful. It shamed me to view such goings-on.”

“I’ll just bet it did,” Beth whispered to Jace, out of the man’s hearing. He smirked a bit.

“Well, Jess is gone now, and we’re hard-pressed to make a go of this farm, it’s all we have. Thanks for the groceries.”

“You’re welcome! If I was you, I’d get a preacher in there to bless the house and maybe that would cleanse all the evil out of there.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Thank you, Mr. Marlborough. Beth, what do you think of that?”

“Anything is worth a try, Jace. Good day, sir.”

Abe walked out with them, helping them load the paper bags of groceries into the back of the Woody. They placed the perishables in the ice cooler and bought a bag of ice from a rusty machine to cover them.

“Good day to you all,” Abe said. “Me, I wouldn’t live in that Carrington house until I got a preacher to bless it. If you need one, Reverend Wills is in the Dark Springs Church, just down the road. It’s on the way back to the farm, you can’t miss it.”

“Please, Mom, can we stop and see if he’ll help us?” Claire begged.

“Sure, why not?” Beth shrugged, not really believing in the idea but after seeing Johnny and Claire’s hopeful eyes, she couldn’t say no.

~

The Dark Springs Church was small, with white-painted, flaking clapboard siding and a rusting red metal roof; a small, wind-worn cross hung lop-sided over the entrance.

The Poole family escaped the heat of the gravel parking area, and entered the arched wooden doors of the church. They were blasted with the moldy smell of a buzzing old air conditioner that had been placed into a cut-out square in the side wall. Water was dripping from it, darkening the sickly green carpet that covered the width and length of the church. The pews were faded, the stained glass windows chipped; it was not a friendly sort of building for joyful worship, more like a station of Purgatory, punishing errant souls that were not yet dead.

“They’re none too proud of this place, are they?” Jace noted.

“Well, people are pretty poor around here, honey. Maybe they can’t afford to fix it up.”

A tall man, close in age to Jace and Beth, with freckles across his sad face and a crown of red hair topping his regal head, stepped out of a private door in the back of the church and nervously beheld the family with stunningly blue eyes. He was shirtless, tan and buff, and wearing ragged blue jeans with no shoes. In his muscled arms he carried a bundle of fresh-picked greens.

“Yes, can I help you?” he asked with a false kind of confidence.

“We’d like to see Reverend Wills,” Beth stated.

“Yes, Ma’am, I am Reverend Wills. Well, I was, I mean … yes, I am.”

“But you’re so young,” she said. “We’re looking for Patrick Wills.”

“He was my father. He’s deceased, as is my mother.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth whispered. “They were lovely people.”

“Yes, they were,” he sighed.

“I’m Jace Poole, this is my wife, Beth, and our kids Johnny and Claire. We have a strange request for you,” Jace admitted, a bit embarrassed now that he’d have to explain Abe Marlborough’s idea. “We just inherited the Carrington farm, and it has some odd history, and we had someone suggest to us that maybe if a preacher came and gave some kind of cleansing prayer over the house, it might help make the place a better home for us. I know, that sounds weird but …”

The man was quiet for a moment, glancing out the window with a sorrowful gaze.

“No, it doesn’t sound weird at all. Having grown up around here, I know some of that history … Mrs. Poole, you knew my parents?”

“Yes. You and I went to school together, Rory. I’m Beth Carrington, well, Poole now. We’ve been married quite a while.”

“I remember you, now, Beth. It’s nice to see you again.”

He shook her hand. He was just as handsome and athletically built as when they were teens, if not more so. All the girls had been nuts about him, especially Jess Carrington, who drooled over him whenever he came into view. It suddenly struck Beth that he, as well as his brother, the Sheriff, were the only boys she’d ever known around there that had bright red hair, and Abe Marlborough had seen Jess frolicking with a redheaded man. Had the man been Kenneth Wills, the Sheriff? Or, had it been Rory Wills, a preacher? But wouldn’t Abe have recognized either one in the woods?

“It’s nice to see you. So, what do you think of this idea? Abe Marlborough suggested it to us at his store just now.”

A look of consternation crossed the Reverend’s face. His deep blue eyes had a strange, guilty cast to them.

“Abe Marlborough? Ha, of course he’d suggest something like that.”

“I don’t suppose it would hurt anything, would it?” Jace asked, “Though your parishioners might think otherwise.”

“They wouldn’t have to know,” Claire whispered.

“Sure. They don’t know about every prayer you give, do they?” Jace added.

“Around here, there isn’t much people don’t know. I … I don’t have any parishioners, not since Abe Marlborough told them I was having a relationship with Jess Carrington. The church belonged to my father, the original preacher here; I only became a preacher to please him. But Abe’s rumors destroyed the church. The building is paid for so I have a place to live. I grow my own food and do a bit of carpentry work in other counties to pay the electric bill, but I’m not a preacher anymore. It was cruel, really, of Abe to send you here.”

“I’m sorry about all of this, and sorry about Jess,” Beth sighed. “But you could still give us a prayer, Rory, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind, Beth.”

“Did you love her?” Beth asked. “I’d like to think someone did.”

He sat the basket of greens on a pew and slipped into a blue short sleeve shirt and deck shoes.

“I wasn’t the one Abe saw with Jess.”

Jace and Beth nodded to each other. “Kids, y’all go on out to the Woody, okay.”

“But Mom,” Claire wanted to hear what the pretty man was going to say next. This whole thing seemed like a crazy soap opera to her.

“Go on, now,” Beth urged.

Johnny grabbed Claire’s arm gently and tugged her away.

“So, it was your brother then, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It was. He took advantage of the crush she had on me, talked her into loving him instead. They were wild together; I tried to get him to do the right thing by her, but he … well, Kenneth is different, stubborn and disobedient. My father sent him off to missionary school; thought he’d go to some other country and forget about Jess but he quit school and came back to her.”

“Could you tell us more?” Beth asked. “Not out of plain curiosity, but I’d really like to understand what happened to her.”

“Sure. Well, Jess became really hard to handle after awhile. Ken had been elected Sheriff by then, and wanted to marry her, to “make things respectable” he had said, but neither of our parents would hear of it. Then, once her parents were gone, she decided she didn’t want to be married, that the farm was hers and she didn’t want to share it. So, Ken stopped seeing her, even though she begged him to come back. I wonder sometimes if Ken had kept going there, would she still be alive. Honestly, he couldn’t deal with her wicked rituals and beliefs anymore. They were blasphemous. And then, there was the secret she kept, that her parents kept, too. You must know what I mean?” He stopped, his eyes were wet and becoming bloodshot.  

“No, we don’t,” Jace said.

“Oh, I thought you would. You live there; you must have seen her …”

“The shadow?” Beth whispered.

“Shadow? Oh, she’s no shadow. I’ll follow you over there in my Jeep. Let’s go.”

They all nodded and headed outside.

Once in the car, Jace kept glancing over to Beth, puzzled by the strange look she was wearing.

“What’s on your mind, woman?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s up. I can always tell with you.”

“Do you remember when I let you read that letter Jess sent to me?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t tell you much about it. We were so messed up over your pregnancy back then. Why, what was in it?”

She leaned in so the kids, listening to a lineup of Motown music on Johnny’s radio, couldn’t hear her. “There was a passage about “that redheaded Jesus with a body like silk”. Do you remember that?”

“Oh, yeah, couldn’t make sense of it then, but wait … Kenneth Wills was seeing her that long ago?”

“Yeah. If Kenneth was really the one seeing her. But Jess adored Rory. She wanted him so bad it hurt, even in high school.”

“Okay, so what? That was years ago. Everybody is entitled to sow some wild oats, even preachers.”

“But why would Rory lie about it? There’s more to it. I know there is. And it has to do with who, or what, we call the Shadow.”

“So, ask him about it.”

“I am, as soon as he prays over our house. I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Like it’s going to help anything.”

“If it doesn’t, we can always read one of Jess’ books about exorcisms.”

“Yeah, what?”

Beth laughed, though deep down inside she was thinking it might be a good option if the prayers didn’t work.

~

As Jace turned the Woody onto the road that led to the farm, they all smelled a fierce whiff of smoke. Jace and Beth looked at each other, simultaneously realizing what was up.

“Oh, God, no, the house!” she cried.

They hit the driveway, crept the Woody slowly towards the hill where the big house stood, blackened like a silhouette, surrounded by monolithic flames.

“The truck!” Jace yelled. Then he jumped out and entered the movers’ truck, started it and steered it safely away from the fire. Beth and the kids stayed in the Woody. She was crying, the heat was suffocating, relentless, burning her eyes. Claire began to cry, too, but more because her mother was crying than for any sorrow she might have felt for the dying house. Johnny was more in awe than upset, uttering curse words under his breath over and over.

Jace came back and leaned on the driver’s door. Beth could see the utter disappointment and heartache in his face.

“Who would do this?” he asked, his eyes tearing up. “Was it the Shadow? And why did they do it now, just when we had a chance to make something of this farm?”

Beth reached out and patted his hand. “I’m sorry, Jace. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”

Reverend Wills had parked his green Jeep far behind the Woody. He seemed frozen, finally stepped out of the Jeep and walked very slowly towards the family as they gathered by the Woody.

“This is horrible!” he exclaimed. “I am so very sorry. That house has been here since right after the Civil War ended. I can’t imagine this area without it. It’s just a tragic accident.”

Jace noticed a strong smell of smoke coming from the cottage, then a figure, dressed in a uniform, running from the back door towards a vehicle parked in the woods.

“I don’t think it was an accident, Reverend,” Jace countered. “And I think I know who did it!”

He pointed towards the figure.

“My God!” Rory shouted. “It’s Kenneth!”

“Jace!” Beth screamed, “The cottage is on fire!”

He ran to the cottage, tore open the front door. Inside, twelve year old Ruby Carrington lay unconscious on a faded red velvet chaise lounge, where she had been making one of her chicken bone “friends”. Jace grabbed her and carried her towards the door; her long auburn hair flew back from her face, revealing streaks of thick skin that striped her cheeks and forehead, forming letters that seemed to spell out the words “sin” and “devil”.

“What the fuck?” Jace whispered, unbelieving. “Who is this?”

Jace heard a buzzing sound welling up from the bedroom. A swarm of green flies flew in a stream right at them. Beth and Reverend Wills entered the doorway just as Jace swirled round to escape.

“Get her outside, Jace! Hurry!”

Beth helped him get the girl to safety then slammed the door before the green flies could follow.

The Reverend saw Ruby’s scars, gasped, fell to his knees and sobbed. “So this is what Jess was hiding for all of these years. Child, I am sorry. Forgive us for letting you suffer so needlessly.”

 “But … who is she, Jace?” What happened to her? Reverend?”

“Go, both of you. I will tend to her.”

An ear-splitting scream came from the yard. Beth and Jace hurried out to find another swarm of green flies making a veil of terror around Claire and Johnny. They rushed in, grabbed long dead branches from a fallen locust tree and began to swat the flies. Johnny joined in; Claire hid behind her father at first but then garnered a bit of courage and took a big limb off the ground to use as her own battle axe against the hordes of biting flies.

Ruby came to and began to cough violently from the smoke she had inhaled. She saw the Reverend and pushed him away then watched as her sanctuary burned down.

“My home!” she cried. Then she looked at the blackened remnants of the house. “It’s all gone!”

It seemed like the flies would never stop coming. Then, suddenly, they stopped and changed direction, taking aim at the Sheriff’s car as it pulled out of the woods and started for the road. Kenneth tried to steer the car away from the flies but they gathered in number and entered the open windows of the car. He lost control of the wheel; the car flew up in the air and hit an embankment then careened down into the very same ravine where Jess Carrington had died.

The Reverend ran to the Sheriff’s car as the Poole family surrounded Ruby in case the flies returned. But they didn’t.

Kenneth Wills’ head was bashed in from the battered roof of the car. He glanced up at his brother. “Rory, I’m sorry, I … I just wanted it all to disappear. You know how I loved Jess, but with the Pooles here, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. I couldn’t let people find out about the kid. Not if I was going to get anywhere in this county. She might tell them how I helped Jess cover up what she’d done to her parents. And I had ambitions, you know, so many things I wanted, money, power, respect, but the kid would’ve ruined it all.”

“Stop talking, Ken, it’s over now.”

“Yes, it’s over. Forgive me, Rory. Pray over me?”

“The Reverend said a quiet prayer as Kenneth’s eyes closed and his chest stopped moving. Then there came the sound of death, escaping from Kenneth’s bloodied mouth.

The Reverend checked his brother’s pulse; he was dead. He slowly returned to Ruby and the Pooles.

The Pooles tried not to stare at Ruby as she used her billowy sleeves to cover her scars.

“No, Ruby, there will be no more hiding,” the Reverend said softly as he approached her. “Your grandparents were cruel to mar your face that way. Your mother told Kenneth about that a long time ago. He should’ve come for you, to acknowledge you and to try to right their wrongs. And your mother was a sick, volatile woman. The things they all did to you were vile, and beyond understanding. Kenneth and I knew you were here, but I had no idea what those people had done to you. He told me he had come here every day to check on you since Jess died, feeding the chickens and mowing the driveway. He said you were fine, and that he was planning to put you in a foster home so you’d be safe. But, of course, that was a lie. If I had known the things about him that I know now, I could’ve stopped him from trying to harm you. If I had known what your grandparents had done to you, and what your mother did to you … well, ignorance is not an excuse … I knew you existed and I should have saved you from this misery. You were helpless to combat their evil. The powers your mother had, or seemed to have, over the flies, became your powers. I guess you needed them to survive. You don’t need them now.”

She began to cry like a toddler.

“The other redheaded man was Jesus?” she asked. “I used to think it was you. Jess talked about you so much.”

“Your mother called Kenneth that, yes. But he was your father, not I. I did love her once upon a time but I could see the ugliness that lived in her soul and I couldn’t save her from it, though I tried, so I broke up with her. Kenneth was my opposite. He wanted the ugliness, he was attracted to it. Tell me, now, did he burn down the house?”

“Yes, he wanted the strangers to go away. He wanted me to go away, too. He said so. He said I was ruining things for him, that he was going to burn down my cottage and destroy all the little friends that I had created. I tried to stop him but he locked me in. I didn’t mind him burning down the big house, though. I wanted someone to find Jobe and Mamie. I got tired of watching the movies of them, remembering how fun they were with Jess, and then with me. They did love me, once they got over knowing I was evil.”

“You’re not evil, Ruby,” Beth encouraged, walking towards her. “You’re just lonely and confused. We all could be friends, if you’d let us. Would you?”

“I don’t know.”

Claire stepped closer. “Hi, Ruby, I’m Claire. And this is Johnny, my brother. We could be your friends.”

“Maybe you could, if you don’t look at me. Jobe and Mamie hurt my face when I was a baby; they wanted me to see these words every day when I saw myself in the mirror, to remind me not to be sinful like Jess. Then Jess took Jobe and Mamie away from me because they told me they loved me and were sorry they had hurt my face.  She was mean, terrible mean.”

“Ruby,” the Reverend took her hand, “where are Jobe and Mamie?”

“There, where the basement was. She left them in there when I was eight years old. She said they moved away, but I knew. I heard them screaming and coughing. I tried to help them get out. Jess whipped me and said she’d shoot me dead if I tried again. She …” Ruby let out a sob then continued, “She said if she killed me and buried me, no one would know I ever existed. After a bit I didn’t hear the coughing anymore. Then one night the basement door was open again and I heard her and that man burying Jobe and Mamie. He helped her but then he went away from her again and she blamed me for that. Later, I found Jobe and Mamie’s graves in the dirt floor by the root cellar. Jess made me stay in the cottage. She said people would kill me if they saw me, so I hid. But then I got tired of hiding, I got tired of Jess. I locked her in the basement, but I couldn’t leave her there. I couldn’t let her cry like they did. She couldn’t control the flies anymore but I could. She was afraid of the flies and ran to the road and the truck hit her and …” She began to wail again.

“Shh!” Beth scooped her into her arms. “No more crying. It’s okay now. It’s all over. You belong here, so does Rory. We can build a new, nicer house for all of us, can’t we, Jace?”

“Sure, if you want to stay here?”

They looked at the Reverend. He heaved a deep sigh and nodded. The emotions running through him were too much to handle.

“I could sell the church building,” he said. “A couple from East Tennessee was interested in turning it into a studio for their artwork. I’d like to adopt you, Ruby. I know I can’t make up for what my brother did but I can try to give you a decent life, maybe even get a doctor in Nashville to look at your scars.”

“Aren’t you afraid of me? You should all be afraid of the flies.”

“I have a feeling things will cool down now and the flies will go away,” Beth stated. “What about you?”

“I want them to. I never liked having them around. I don’t know if I was really controlling them. Maybe they were controlling me. I want to be okay. I want to be like you two.”

She pointed at Claire and Johnny.

“Well, don’t be like Claire,” Johnny warned. “She doesn’t like anything.”

“I do so,” Claire huffed. “I like Ruby.”

Ruby smiled a little.

~

The authorities came out and found Jobe and Mamie, lying in shallow graves in the dirt floor of the basement. The Sheriff was duly blamed for the fires, causing a county wide scandal that would eventually die down when some new horror revealed itself, as these things do. The Carringtons’ deaths were attributed to Jess, and their remains were reburied in the family plot, next to her own, also causing a scandal.

The Pooles made a makeshift home out of the barn; luckily all of their belongings in the movers’ truck were spared from the fire so they had what they needed to function. Rory Wills sold the church and used the money to start building a house nearer to the road, a nice, simple farmhouse with room enough for them all.

And, once the Pooles put their plans for the farm into action, they garnered enough money to hire a surgeon who was willing to reconstruct Ruby’s face, so that the scars were not so visible anymore.

And, for whatever reason you can imagine, whether you believed in Ruby’s powers or not – the green flies left the Carrington farm, never to return.

 

THE END  PART ONE IS HERE, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT