July 30th, 2025
We arrived at our parents house just before church let out and waited for them on the front porch. An unseasonably cool breeze rustled the corn in the nearby fields. Our grandmother’s old black wind chime clanged a soft but feral tune. Something in the breeze and the noise seemed to wrap me in an unknown comfort, and my soul felt at peace for the first time in over twenty years.
I sat beside Andy on the porch swing that we had built with dad the summer we moved to Ferncombe. My muscles relaxed, and I felt as if I could melt into the cracked paint of the seat beneath me. He sat scrunched up with his chin resting in his right hand, eyes glassy, staring off in deep thought. Clearly he hadn’t felt the same sense of peace that I had.
“Don’t look so relaxed. This is the calm before the storm,” Andy muttered. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I replied.
“We don’t know what we’re doing, Amy. We don’t actually know who that man was or how he was able to follow us around all these years after… you know.”
“His name was Marshall O’Connell. That much we know, and it’s a good start. Tomorrow we’ll go to the town archives and see what we can find on him. Maybe we can find his family.”
“Then what? Waltz up to their front door and hit them with a ‘hi, you don’t know us, but twenty-five years ago, we murdered your pedophile uncle. We know you don’t care about him, but he’s haunting us because of it.’ They’d laugh in our face.”
“It wasn’t murder, Andy. It was self-defense. You need to stop blaming yourself for what happened that day.”
Andy opened his mouth to argue just as dad’s old black pickup truck pulled up to the house. His words were cut off by mom, who hopped out of the truck before dad had a chance to stop and screamed with joy. She wobbled on delicate, arthritis-riddled legs up the front steps and wrapped her arms around our necks. Our parents dog, Odie, ran up behind her and threw himself on Andy’s lap. At that moment, I felt guilty for not coming around more often. It had been two years since my last visit. To say she was happy to see us was an understatement.
“Well, stand up and come in,” mom said, pulling us up by our hands. “I’ve got a big dinner to make, and I’m going to need both of you to help me.”
“Special occasion?” Andy asked.
“Of course! My babies are home!”
—
There was a time when I hated helping mom in the kitchen. Be it cooking, cleaning, or washing dishes, the kitchen, as warm and loving as any room could be, felt like a prison to my adolescent mind. But something had changed with age. Andy stood at the center island and made dough for slippery dumplings while I chopped veggies. Mom wove an intricate dough lattice on top of a cherry pie and hummed along to a hymn that played from the little blue radio on the windowsill. The aroma of the dried herbs that hung above the old stone fireplace tickled my nose, bringing me back to when we used to help prepare big Sunday dinners for nearly half the church.
“I called Reverend Morris,” mom said, breaking the tranquility of the moment. “He and Hattie are coming over. Bringing their granddaughter with them as well. Her name’s Camille. Gorgeous little girl. She reminds me of you, Amy Rose.”
“Is he going to lecture us about not going to church for the past five years?” Andy asked, recalling the last time we saw the reverend.
Mom chuckled. “He’ll probably tell you the congregation misses you.”
“We never really were the churchgoing types,” I chimed in. “Just wasn’t our style.”
“Ah, so Janet lied about taking you to her church after you moved in with her,” she said, turning to look at us.
“Oh, no, we went,” Andy said.
“Twice,” I added. “We tried, mom. We really did. We just didn’t feel the call like you and dad do.”
Mom put the pie in the oven and took off her old, patched-up apron. “Well, no matter what, we raised you right. I know you’re good people. God knows it, too.”
“I don’t feel like it,” Andy mumbled.
“Good people usually don’t,” mom said. “They hold themselves to a different standard than they hold others. But I know you, baby. I know what’s in your heart. You’re a sweet boy. You always have been. You’re a good brother, a good son, and a good person.” She turned to me and placed a gentle, arthritic hand on my cheek. “The same goes for you, my beautiful, clever girl. Even if you don’t see it.”
Mom didn’t know it, but the way she sang our praises only made us feel worse. Not only about ourselves, but about our situation. Andy considered himself a murderer. I considered myself a liar for never coming clean about what happened that day, and murderers and liars aren’t good people.
From the front porch, Odie bellowed a warning of intruders. “Oh, that must be Tony and Hattie. Finish up and meet us out front.”
Mom disappeared from the kitchen. Andy and I glanced at each other and sighed in unison. Neither of us was happy to see the reverend, and even less enthused to see his sharp-tongued wife.
“Let’s just be civil,” I said as I put the chopped veggies in a stockpot. “There’s no use debating or arguing with them.”
“Yeah, but last time they all but called you a fag to your face,” he replied. “I don’t get why mom and dad still go to that church.”
“Because it’s the only one in town. You know they don’t like to travel much anymore.”
“It just feels like a betrayal.”
“It could be worse. Go wash your hands. I’m not going out there alone.”
—
The reverend and his lovely wife hadn’t changed much since the last time we saw them. Reverend Tony damn near broke our hands and elbows with hardy handshakes, while Hattie gave us that odious smile that wasn’t really a smile. She used her lower lip to push her puffed out upper lip towards her nose, squinted her eyes in false delight, and gave a little shake of her head as if to say, I’m only being polite because I’m being watched. Camille, who looked to be about ten, stood away from her grandparents and fiddled with a fidget box she had brought with her.
“Let me get a good look at you,” Reverend Morris said as he stepped back and gave us the once-over. “The boy is skinny, Danielle. And so is your little girl. Goodness, maybe you two ought to move back here so your mother can feed you properly.”
“I have a high metabolism,” Andy said with a nervous chuckle.
“My wife feeds me three square meals a day, plus snacks,” I replied.
Hattie sneered at the words my wife and turned away from us.
“Why don’t we move to the back porch?” mom suggested as the tension in the air grew thicker. “I have lemonade and cookies, and in about an hour dinner will be ready.”
“Yes, perfect,” Reverend Morris agreed. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with your family, and since you’re all here, now is as good a time as a-“
“Not today, Tony,” dad interrupted. He put a massive hand on the reverend’s shoulder and squeezed. Hard. If looks could kill, Reverend Morris’ head would have been splattered all over the room. I had never seen dad look so angry before. “Not ever,” he growled.
—
Dinner was civil, at least on our family’s part. Our parents and the Morrises talked about church and various events and people in town. Hattie wanted to gossip, but mom put an end to it before she had a chance. “Gossiping is a bit of a sin, dear,” she said with a soft smile.
Camille sat beside me and stared blankly at her plate. She only ate the carrots from her serving of dumplings. Hattie took notice and snapped her fingers half a dozen times to get the girl’s attention. “Eat, Camille,” she commanded. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense about texture. You will eat what’s given to you, or you will go hungry.”
“It’s fine if she doesn’t like it,” mom assured her. “I can whip up something that she likes.”
“It isn’t a matter of enjoyment, Danielle. She will take what’s given to her, and she will be grateful.”
“Mama wouldn’t make me eat it,” Camille whimpered.
“Well, I’m not your mother,” Hattie shot back. “I thought I raised her better, but I guess I failed in that department. I won’t fail this time. Eat.”
Camille reluctantly picked up her fork and took small bites. Hattie watched her closely. She resembled a hungry vulture perched over a dying critter, waiting impatiently for it to meet its end.
“What textures don’t you like, dear?” mom asked Camille. I could see by the look on her face that watching the poor girl choke down food she didn’t like hurt her heart.
“Oh, Danielle, don’t encourage her!” Hattie hissed.
Mom glared at Hattie, a look so piercing and unlike her that Hattie pushed herself back against her chair out of what looked like fear. “Go on, dear,” she said softly to Camille.
“I don’t like creamy things or slimy things,” Camille answered. She stared wide-eyed at her grandmother as she spoke. “And I don’t like a lot of veggies. Mostly just soft carrots and potatoes.”
“Do you like fried chicken?” mom asked.”
Yes, ma’am,” Camille replied sheepishly.
“Oh, good! Mr. West makes the best fried chicken in the world. I’ll make sure we make plenty the next time you come over for dinner.”
Dad smiled at the shy little girl and said, “It was my grandmother’s recipe. It’s better than any chicken restaurant.”
Tony and Hattie stared at our parents with disapproval, and I had a feeling that this interaction would end badly for Camille when she got home that night.
—
After dinner, mom, dad, Andy, and the Morrises made their way to the back porch once more. I stayed behind and cleared the table for mom. Yet another chore I once abhorred as a kid became a welcome break from the likes of the reverend and his wife. I piled the dishes onto each other, then felt a buzz in my pocket. I threw myself into a chair and checked my phone. My wife, Fiona, had texted the family group chat.
MARY IS IN LABOR!!!
The chat blew up, but before I had a chance to reply, I felt a presence breeze past me to the foyer. It was short and dark and moved impossibly fast. By the time I got to the foyer, it was at the top of the stairs and vanished into my old bedroom.
“You shouldn’t be looking through that,” I said from the doorway, startling Camille. She sat on my bed with my sketchbook on her lap, opened to the gnarliest drawing I’d made of Marshall.
“Why did you draw so many pictures of him?” she asked, flipping to the next page.
“Who?”
“The dead man.” She flipped a few more pages and brought the book closer to her face to take in the details.
I sat beside her and took the book from her. “Do you know who this is?”
“His real name was Marshall,” she said nonchalantly, “but everyone just calls him the dead man.”
“Everyone?”
“We’ve all seen him at least once. He’s usually out in the fields and vanishes when we try to take pictures or tell our parents. I’ve never heard of an adult seeing him before. You must have done something to make him angry if you can see him.”
“What do you know about him other than his name?”
“Not a lot. I know he was a bad person when he was alive, and any time someone sees him, someone in town gets sick or hurt. A few of the older kids thought they could make it stop if they found his body and got rid of it, but no one knows where to look.”
I knew. Twenty-five years later, and I was sure I could walk through the old patch and find the exact place where we left him.
“Do the kids around here still hang out in the trees?” I asked.
“No. He’s been seen in every patch since before I was born. We think his body is in one of them.”
I glanced out the window across from us and shivered when my eyes fell on the trees. There was half a mile of tilled earth between the patch and the house, yet it felt like the treeline crept up to the backyard, looming like a stalking predator.
“Grandmother and grandfather don’t like you,” she said, snapping my attention away from the trees.
“I know,” I replied. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“Don’t you want people to like you?”
“You can’t make everyone like you. I mean, you can try, but it isn’t fun. You have to pretend to be someone you’re not, and that’s a really sad way to live.”
Camille pondered what I said for a second and said, “grandmother said you like girls.”
“Women,” I corrected her. I wondered if Hattie had tried to tell Camille that I was something I wasn’t. “Yeah, I like women. I have a wife.”
“My best friend likes girls, too,” Camille confessed. “Nobody else knows. She’s afraid of grandmother.”
“Her secret is safe with me,” I promised. “Why don’t we go back downstairs? There’s really nothing to get into up here. Andy and I got rid of our toys decades ago.”
—
At the end of the night, dad and I saw the Morrises out. Mom would have joined us, but the pain in her legs became unbearable, so she took a sedative and went to bed early. Dad watched the reverend’s truck vanish down the road from the sidelights before letting out a dramatic sigh and muttering thank fuck.
“You look happy that they’re gone,” I said, heading for the stairs.
Dad chuckled and shook his head. “Thank God they left when they did.” He ran his fingers through his thick, gray hair, clearly perturbed by the unwelcome visitors. “The mask was starting to slip. God only knows what I would have said if they stayed any longer. Going to bed already?”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“It’s only 8. I thought you didn’t go to sleep until after midnight. I’m about to have a drink on the porch. Why don’t you join me?”
“Whiskey?” I asked, expecting dad to pull his old flask from his pocket, half full of Jim Beam.
“No, I gave that shit up a few years ago. I never did like liquor. Only drank it because it’s what my dad and all my uncles did.”
“What do you have?”
“Don’t laugh.”
Odie sat with me on the porch swing. His gargantuan black head and flowing hound ears covered nearly my entire lap, his spindly hind legs hung off the side. He was a good boy. An old boy. 9 years old and just as spry as the day mom brought him home from a neglectful hunter who refused to fix his hounds. I took a sip from the can in my hand then gave him a kiss on his gray muzzle.
Dad slumped back into his grandfather’s old rocking chair next to the front door, finished off his can, then popped open another. If you had told me ten years ago that my father would willingly seek and drink a fruit-flavored carbonated beverage from Japan with a 9% alcohol content, I would have thought you were going insane. Sure, he was no good ol’ boy with masculinity issues, but he loved his whiskey. Well, he pretended to, anyway.
“So,” I said, cutting through the early nighttime silence, “what was it that the rev wanted to discuss earlier?”
Dad threw his head back and groaned. “Conversion.”
“But Andy and I are already baptized.”
“Not that kind of conversion.”
“Oh,” I muttered. It took a moment to understand what he meant. “Oh! Shit.”
“He’s mentioned it a few times over the years. I always tell him to pound sand. I can’t stand that asshole.”
“Then why do you guys go to a church where you hate the preacher?”
Dad threw his hands up in defeat. “Most of the people who attend are good people, and your mom is close to almost everyone there. Hell, she’s friends with almost everyone in town.”
“I didn’t realize she was a pillar of the community.”
“When you and Andy left, she didn’t have anything else to keep herself occupied. Taking care of you was her entire life. And with the early onset of arthritis, there weren’t a lot of jobs that could easily accommodate her in town.”
I felt my heart ache at the revelation that, up until we left, our mother’s life revolved around us. She was an amazing mom, and we abandoned her because of our secret.
The sun had nearly set, painting slivers of pink and purple and orange low in the sky. Across the front yard and along the winding driveway, the cornstalks rustled as an unseen being made its way through the field. For a moment, I wondered if Marshall would emerge from the stalks and present himself to my father. Instead, a curious fox dashed out, then pranced out of sight.
“Dad, I need to know something,” I said. “Do you remember anyone in town talking about a man named Marshall O’Connell?”
“Sure. In hushed whispers, mostly. Jon Gillespie down the road warned us about him the week we moved in. Since you’re asking about him, I guess you don’t need me to explain why.”
“No,” I replied, staring down at Odie, who had fallen asleep, “you don’t.”
“Something’s wrong.” Dad set his can down and shifted to face me. “I can see it in your eyes. You were never good at hiding things from me, Amy Rose.”
“I was good at hiding one thing.”
“Amy, did Marshall do something to you?”
I sighed and shook my head. “He tried. Out in the patch.”
“That’s why you two stopped going out there. Amy, I’m so sorry. I knew that day when you guys came running home that something had happened, but I didn’t want to push you to talk about it. I thought maybe you’d had a falling out with some of the other kids. If you want, we can go to the police station tomorrow and file a report. I know the statute of limitations is probably expired, but-“
“It doesn’t matter,” I assured him. “He’s dead anyway.”
“How do you know that?”
“Mr. Richards said nobody’s seen him in over 20 years, and when we saw him we-” I caught myself before I could blurt out the truth, “-he looked like he was on death’s door. Probably croaked not long after we stopped going to the patch. Probably still out there under the brush.”
“That’s the real reason you and Andy wanted to move back to the city.”
“In part, yeah. Small towns are nice in their own way, but Andy and I never stopped being city kids, and what happened out there just pushed us past our limits.”
“Is that why you don’t visit? Because you prefer the city?”
“No,” I admitted, “that’s Marshall.”
Help, I Need An Adult! 