Crosswinds

Veronica was young for a mother and had no pre-recorded history of mental illness.

Of course, back then, you weren’t ever really mentally ill. You were just "crazy". Or "feeble". Or a "lunatic". Or, most unfairly, a woman. There wasn’t so much talk as there is today about psychiatrists and behavioral therapists and - God forbid - mental health days. So long as you kept from running down the street ass-naked or smothering your infant baby, it wasn’t very likely that anybody would notice your problems. If you were really, really stressed, you could smoke a cigarette.

Offer it to your kid, if you’re feeling generous. A growing girl needs her smoke.

Well, Veronica was not crazy. She was a woman, but only barely. Her nineteenth birthday had been last Spring. She was a cheerleader in high school, with average grades and a fine enough social life for living in the middle of nowhere. Her boyfriend through all four years, Clayton, had been a farm boy, hard working, not overly forward. Now, he worked at the factory and made a comfortable living. Like people did back in those days.

That’s where he was now, and where she was, was the haunted house. "Crosswinds", according to the sign out front. Veronica knew it was haunted because she was loose acquaintances with the woman who had lived there before her. Her name was Cynthia Cross.

“Boy, Veronica, I’m just so glad to be rid of that ghost, now.”

That’s exactly how she had said it.

“The what?”

“I hope it doesn’t give you ask much trouble as it did us.”

Just like that.

Veronica had told her husband about this and he had spoken to Mr. Cross the next day at the factory.

“Just wives tales,” Mr. Cross said, “Just a little something to spice up the afternoon gossip, that’s all. When you don’t go out and work, you start to get a little stir-crazy. It’s just paranoid fantasies is all.”

“Sure,” Clayton said, “Sure, I guess. That makes sense.”

But there was nothing fantastical about the specter for Veronica. It was not some alien and surreal experience, but a very cut and dry fact of life that her house was haunted. She saw things, sometimes every day and sometimes once and then not again for a couple of months. The things she saw, she mostly kept to herself. Nobody ever believes the really good scary stories, especially not in Selma, Indiana.

Clayton said he believed them. Believing is very little compared to actually seeing.

The baby wasn’t even a year old but hardly ever cried. She was content to look around and stare, so long as somebody was holding her and cooing words of safety and affirmation. So long as this happened, the baby never made a sound. It was only once you put her down….

Veronica had named her infant daughter Priscilla, like the Presley. Both of them, Priscilla and Elvis, had been tremendously popular when the baby was born. Elvis more so, but then you can’t exactly name your daughter that.

Now, the baby was curled in her mother’s arms as Veronica paced back and forth along the cracked breezeway overlooking flat, flat fields off until your eyes bled. There was a whole lot of nothing around, so you could just about see the curvature of the earth, as the hazy blue atmosphere bent to meet yellow cornfields a mile away.

The emptiness gave Veronica an intense vertigo so she retreated back into the house, hushing baby Priscilla and telling her that it was nap time.

“Now, I’m gonna put you down, alright, Pris?” she murmured to the baby, “Now, I need you to not start screaming. I’m still here, I just need a minute by myself.”

Priscilla’s crib had been an antique in the forties. Currently, it was pastel pink. Before that, green. Before that, red. It might have been painted some other color even before that. It was old like a dinosaur’s bones are old.

The baby screamed immediately.

“Shut the fuck up!” Veronica screamed, and grabbed the cradle like she was fixing to throw it across the room. Of course, this didn’t calm the baby. Also, the cradle weighed as much as Veronica did.

She gave up, too tired to be angry, and sat on the floor with her back to the cradle. Veronica’s bushy, auburn hair fell over her face and hid the strangled sobs. The sun beat down apathetically outside. It did not care for the woman in the house.

What Veronica was dealing with, was that life doesn’t ever feel as good as you think it’s supposed to.

She wanted the baby. She wanted the husband. These had really been her aspirations, until she got them. Now, she needed new ones. There’s just no point in even waking up most days when you have nothing to build towards. And what else was there?

Most people only do anything so they can procreate. It’s why people bother to change into proper clothes before heading out for the day or bathe themselves in the morning. It’s the reason why men spend all day every day in the factory and leave their young wives home alone from sunrise to sunset. It’s the reason why most wars are fought.

Well, Veronica had procreated. Done. The act had been very nice, and then for nine months after it had been miserable. Now, she was mostly just bored. Yes, the act had been very nice, it’s just that the damn baby wouldn't stop screaming now. And why didn't Clayton have to be there to deal with it?

The boots were very old and scuffed, some real cowboy looking things. They stood just in front of Veronica, so with her head bowed, she could see each brown leather foot-coffin planted firmly across from her. The pants sitting at each ankle were filthy as rags. They weren’t her husband’s work pants. They were emerald green slacks. A very strange fashion choice, she thought.

Veronica decided to look up but found herself unable. Whether it was a physical restraint keeping her from lifting her chin, or only the primal grip of survival, she couldn’t say. One thing was clear: she must not look at the one who stood above her.

His boots were much bigger than her husband’s.

A cigarette fell through the air like the bombs over Dresden, landed smoldering. Her vision sparked at the edges, as though she had just stepped off of a roller coaster. As though she had just been walloped in the head. The boot crushed down on the cigarette, twisted once. The baby had stopped crying.

Now, the boots stepped away from Veronica, a heavy and slow gate.

(Clump!…Clump!…Clump!)

Something jangled from above the waist, where she couldn’t bring herself to look. The boots were on the other side of the crib now, behind her. The baby has stopped crying.

“It’s okay, Pris,” she whispered. She might have just thought it. Hard to say if the words ever left her mouth or not.

In the back of her mind, Veronica was aware of some other distortion, one which could not easily be named. The air felt thick, as though she were under water. The light which poured in through the open window lacked all warmth, harsh and white.

The crib rocked behind her, ancient wood digging into her back. She was not afraid. Should have been. Wasn’t. In fact, everything felt quite alright. The air was so thick she was certain it could hold her weight. That if she kicked her legs out and only laid back, she would float.

The thickness of the air filled her lungs with a dull ache. Her mouth was open, gaping like the carps in the pond out back, reeling in absolutely nothing. Transcendence ad color played on her mind, as though her scalp had been flayed, opened and exposed to something iridescent, sublime.

Outside of herself, Veronica heard the ragged gasping. The struggling for air. She did not understand that it was her own body making these noises. That her lungs burned for oxygen. She saw only the pooling of her vision, black and angry. Everything melted inwards on itself, fell outwards.

Clayton found his young wife sitting on the floor with her back to the crib. She was silent, forehead hanging over her knees.

“Veronica?” His voice was soft. It had been called weak before. Gentle, might be the better word for it. Nobody ever picked the best words, though. Only the sharpest, the most accusatory, labeling.

“Veronica?” Now the fear had started to enter, small but growing.

He left the door open, sunlight pooling in over his brawny shoulders. Dropped to his knees by her side and shook her.

“-the baby!” Veronica gasped.

“She’s right here,” Clayton said.

“No, she’s not crying.”

“She’s right here,” Clayton said, “Fast asleep but just alright.”

“Oh,” said Veronica.

“Are you okay, angel?”

“I’m fine."

“Do you need anything?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Clayton said, “Tell me. I’ll get it for you.”

For some reason, that made Veronica laugh.

Her eyes fell to the wood floor, scanned it. Empty.

“Cigarette,” she said.

Clayton did not smoke, and wasn’t aware that she ever had. Still:

“Okay. Yeah. Of course. I’ll go buy a pack. Just wait one moment.”

Alone again, there came the frequency. It crackled from the radio, sound waves reaching through the speaker holes as a snake swimming up the pipe of a toilet. Intrusive. Startling. It had happened to Veronica once and she had been hovering ever since.

The noise was dissonant; layers and layers of sound waves crashing over each other. Aching, furious noise. A cacophony.

Veronica’s mind reverted to childhood, to Sunday service with her Pa. It had been in a one room building, the air thick with heat and mildew. One Sunday, the preacher had given a sermon on Isaiah. How he had entered the Kingdom, seen angels and heard music unfit for the ignorant ears of man.

She braced against the sound. Stand up!

Stand up! she told herself. Turn it off!

There was something forming in the back of her mind. A vile, secretious something like a decomposing rat under the front breezeway. Unseen, unreachable, but felt in all of it’s putrid festering.

Words.

The radio waves hit each other, a sound like crashing metal fusing with a snippet of song, time after time, so many hundreds of layers. In all of it: words.

The noise became words, as she relaxed her mind. As she accepted the message.

“Forgot my keys,” Clayton said, poking his head back in the doorway. He was smiling, for her, but it didn’t hide his anxiety. Didn’t reach his eyes.

Veronica looked up from the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The radio was silent.

“You sure everything’s alright?” Clayton asked, “Is something going on?”

The baby began to wail.