Bloodstained Oz Read online

  That made her feel a little better.

  As she began to look away, the sun glinted off of something on the ground and the gleam caught her eye. Gayle paused, then veered in that direction. The need to visit the outhouse had abated a little now that her attention was elsewhere.

  On the ground, covered in a layer of dried dirt, was a doll with red hair and a pretty pink dress.

  Gayle squealed with surprise and bent to pick up the doll, gleeful as though it was Christmas morning. After the terror of the storm, this was better than Christmas.

  She brushed off the doll’s dress and then touched its face. The head of the doll was porcelain and when she traced her finger across it, she found that the enamel gleamed. The doll’s eyes and smile made her so happy that she hugged it to her, and even as she did, she saw the others.

  Scattered across the yard in front of her were other dolls, dozens of porcelain figures, some of them almost a foot long but others tiny things small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. This time, Gayle did not squeal. She held her breath and stared in utter astonishment. Wherever these dolls had come from, a twister must have sucked them up and then dropped them down right here on her property.

  Her mind raced as she walked over to pick up the next one, with pretty blond hair, and then the next, a little baby doll with the widest blue eyes. This was someone’s collection, somewhere. If they ever found out where the dolls had landed, they’d want to take them away.

  Heat touched her cheeks and her eyes threatened tears when she thought of someone taking the dolls away. Gayle wasn’t greedy. She wouldn’t need to keep them all. There were so many she couldn’t count, dozens of them. But even if she could keep a few—the prettiest ones—her daddy might be able to sell the others and make a little money. That would help the whole family. It would be terrible if they had to give them back.

  She crouched to look at a doll whose porcelain face looked different, darker. In her brown dress, the doll was almost like an Indian squaw, and Gayle decided that was exactly what she was.

  Maybe, if she was lucky, no one would ever come looking. Whoever had collected them would think the storm had taken them away and that was that. After all, who would have thought all of these dolls could be carried away by a twister without the violence of the storm breaking their porcelain heads. Not one of them was damaged. Dirty, yes, but unbroken.

  Her arms were already full, so she did not pick up the squaw doll. She would have to collect them all and bring them up to the house to show her mother.

  Gayle stood up and glanced around, and again the scarecrow in the cornfield caught her eye. She was nearer to it now, and something made her frown and stare harder. It was the hat, she decided. It was black and pointed and didn’t look right. In fact, she was sure it was not the same hat that the scarecrow had always worn.

  Slowly, dolls clutched in her hands, she walked across the yard to the cornfield and made her way to the scarecrow. There wasn’t a bird in sight, so it must have been doing its job. The dolls felt strangely heavy in her arms and, where their porcelain faces touched her bare skin, they were cold.

  At first, Gayle stood and blinked at the scarecrow. It didn’t look right at all. Their scarecrow had a brown jacket, faded from the sun, and green pants. This one wore different clothes—clothes that had never belonged to her daddy. It was a different scarecrow altogether.

  And where the other scarecrow, the one that had broken off and blown away, had been hung on its post, arms pinned to the crossbar, this one had no crossbar at all. Its arms hung down by its sides. Instead of being hung to the post, the enormous wooden stake—possibly a piece of broken fence, now that she looked at it—had been driven right down through its body so it stuck through the scarecrow’s chest and up out of its back, right between the shoulder blades.

  It had an old burlap sack for a face, with a slit for the mouth, stitched at the edges. Gayle was afraid of the scarecrow, now that she’d had a closer look. Its eyes weren’t sewn or drawn on—they were closed. What kind of bird was going to be afraid of a scarecrow that looked asleep.

  Or dead, she thought. It looks dead.

  The scarecrow opened its eyes, and it screamed. Its limbs splayed wide as it twisted on the post, a shriek of terror and agony coming from its burlap mouth. For several seconds it jerked and flailed on the post and then the sudden burst of life seemed to dwindle. Its limbs fell with a flaccid slap and then it seemed to notice her.

  “It’ll spread here now, little girl . . . the darkness . . . just like Oz, the blood will spill and it’s never enough . . . the monsters are here . . .”

  Inside the burlap face, the eyes were wide and white as a man’s. Then they fluttered and closed again. The scarecrow twitched once, and then blood began to trickle from the corners of its eyes and from its mouth, and to spread in a stain across its shirt.

  The blood dried in a moment, and then it all began to fall apart. The burlap, the fabric of the clothes, crumbled like a withered beehive, falling to dust. Red-stained straw spilled out onto the ground, and soon that was all that remained of the scarecrow.

  Gayle had forgotten how badly she had needed to pee. She had been holding her breath, and now she gasped, and a hot stream of it ran down her leg.

  At last she could scream.

  It echoed out across the fields. No birds were disturbed. Not a single one. The storm had kept them away, or something had. When the echo of her scream died, Gayle backed away from the post that jutted from the ground and then at last turned and ran for home, the porcelain dolls still clutched in her arms.

  The others, she would come back for later, with her momma to help her gather them.

  Not alone.

  Chapter Six

  Elisa felt like crawling out of her skin.

  The wagon sat at a crossroads, just off onto the grass so as not to block anyone coming along the way. Stefan was setting up a table just at the crux where the two roads met, about half a mile outside of the center of Hawley. Just about every farmer in the area who wanted to go into town today for supplies or just to find someone to share the tale of the dirt storm with would have to come this way to get there.

  Stefan had a plan. He had gone through his new pitch with her all morning. “If you’re parched, Romany Elixir will take away your thirst, and if you’re ailing, it’ll perk you up. But this old country concoction is not merely a tonic for your health, it’s the salvation of your crops as well. Now I don’t have a great deal of it, and it don’t come cheap, but sprinkle a bit of this into the ground around the roots, and Romany Elixir will revive your plantings just as it would your own spirits.”

  Her husband had been so excited when he shared this with her. Now she watched him, the cut of his handsome face, dark with stubble, the strength in his powerful arms with the sleeves rolled up, and the unruly thatch of his dark hair as he began to set bottles onto the table, and Elisa knew she loved him.

  But she was ashamed of him as well.

  This was no life for her. It had seemed so romantic when he had first proposed it to her. They had come from the old country to Boston, but he had not settled easily into city life. His heart had wanted to wander. They could not afford an automobile, and so the old-fashioned cart had become their transport, and too often their shelter for the night.

  Elisa had left the life of the Rom behind and come to the new world for a new beginning. And now it was as though they had never left. All across America, they were seen as “gypsies,” a hated name. And they were treated accordingly. But what had they done to shake that image from people’s minds?

  Sold them an elixir with promises of miracles that would never come.

  She held her darling child in her arms and sang to him. Jeremiah gazed up at her with his laughing eyes, but they were growing heavy. He had just fed and needed to sleep now for a time.

  So she sang to him, and watched Stefan at work, and dreaded the next car or truck or wagon to come along the road.

  The baby wa
s growing and Elisa had to shift him on her lap, still singing softly. As she moved, she glanced northward, toward the trees across the road, and she saw something moving in the high grass.

  She froze.

  It could not be.

  But as it trotted toward them and the grass parted, the sun shone off of its golden fur, muscles rippling beneath the skin. The wind ruffled its mane. It paused and cocked its head, staring at her as though evaluating her somehow.

  A lion.

  Impossible, a tiny voice said in her mind.

  But there it was, real and solid, a massive, murderous predator. The intelligence in its eyes made her heart clench in terror. It stared at her hungrily.

  Somehow, she had kept singing, not even aware of it. Now she ceased. After a moment, Stefan frowned and glanced up at her, wondering why she had stopped. From the corner of her eye she saw him look at her, but she could not take her gaze from the lion. The sight of the beast riveted her.

  In her arms, Jeremiah began to cry.

  Stefan swore in the language of their people. He had seen the lion. Elisa almost screamed to him to stay still, to do nothing, afraid that he would bring the monster down upon them.

  Then her husband ran to the back of the wagon and she could hear pots and crates shoved aside as he reached for his rifle.

  The lion took its eyes off of Elisa and she knew it was watching for Stefan’s return. It glanced at her again, and for some reason the great beast seemed weary to her, then. Weary, and sad.

  It turned and ambled back into the trees.

  By the time Stefan ran to the road with his rifle, the lion was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  The prisoners of Guilford had spent the night huddled against walls and praying that they would live to see the dawn. Now as the sun reached its zenith, most of them were once again praying for the night to come and save them from the blistering heat.

  Hank scraped his shovel blade through the ash-fine dust that had filled in half of the irrigation ditches they’d been digging and held his breath as he tossed it to the side. Days, maybe weeks worth of work undone by the storm. But what difference did it make, really? There was no reward for progress. To Hank, and the other prisoners, one ditch was as good as the next.

  No one spoke about what had happened to Terry Pritcher the day before. No one had to. The guards seemed at ease today, and Hank understood why. They could relax for a bit. No one in their right mind would consider running the day after another inmate’s head had been used as fertilizer. Hank’s brain might be boiling in his skull, but it was still working well enough to make sure he used his common sense.

  He paused a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and then licked the salty fluids into his mouth. Any moisture would do in a pinch. At least he’d never had to try drinking piss.

  The shovel went down again, and instead of catching loose soil, struck something that gave a bright, almost musical note. The noise was faint enough that no one else heard it, but distinctly different from the usual thump.

  Hank stood up and stretched, pushing his hands into his lower back. He used the time to scan the area around him and notice where the guards were and who they had their eyes on. None of them were spying him just then, so he reached down and brushed what passed for soil out of his way.

  Silver glinted at him in the sunlight. Without missing a beat, he leaned forward enough to make sure his shadow covered the reflected glare. He dropped his shovel to the ground and picked it up as quickly as he could while catching the metal in his free hand. Experienced fingers told him the metal he’d glimpsed was only a small part of something larger and he closed his hand around it.

  Fine links of chain and a larger metal piece that felt like it had stones imbedded into the design. Hank kept his face expressionless, but felt his heart speed up a bit at the thought of what might be in his hand. Could be nothing more than costume jewelry, but after the storms from the night before, it could have blown all the way from Europe as far as he was concerned.

  He wanted to sneak a look at his find, but wasn't sure if he dared.

  Emmett Blanton let out a whoop of celebration that damn near stopped Hank’s heart. Emmett wasn’t the smartest bird in the nest, and had a way of proving it almost every day. Normally he did something to annoy the guards and get himself knocked around a little—but not too much. Emmett was practically the same thing as a pet dog around the place; enthusiastically friendly and just dumb enough to bring a smile to the day.

  The problem was, whatever the thin man did, he did loudly. Emmett had a voice like a coyote stuck in a bear trap. His laugh was a loud braying and if he was angry he sounded more like a panicked swine.

  Today Emmett’s voice was the sound of a choking hyena. Hank looked in the man’s direction and saw him dancing—dancing!—in the blistering heat. Emmett’s hair fell damply down to his collar as he moved in an excited jig; his right hand held up in a fist that he pumped up and down several times.

  J.D. Cotton took care of the fancy footwork. The guard stepped up and slammed the butt of his shotgun into Emmett’s stomach. The man dropped to the dirt, gasping, his mouth working with nary a sound to be heard. Cotton didn’t seem to take any pleasure in the action. He just did what he saw as his job.

  “What are you going on about, Blanton?” Cotton was in a foul mood. From what Hank had overheard, the bastard had lost part of his roof in the storms the night before. Unlike Emmett, Hank managed not to smile or dance at the thought.

  Emmett groaned and stood up, holding out his right hand for all to see. Cotton looked closely at is prize and let out a low whistle. A green gemstone the size of a walnut rested in his palm, glinting brightly in the sunlight.

  Hank let out his own low whistle of appreciation. He'd never in his life seen an emerald anywhere near the size of the thing in Emmett’s palm.

  Cotton reached out like a striking snake and tried to pluck the stone from Emmett’s hand. He failed. Emmett was not bright, but he was fast. He clutched the emerald to his chest and turned away from the guard, looking over his shoulder and frowning like some petulant kid.

  “I found it! You can’t have it! It’s mine!” Emmett shook his head and backed away, his eyes wide and focused only on Cotton. That was his mistake. The other guards fell on him like a pack of wolves, but showed a lot less mercy.

  Hank stood and watched the men beat Emmett into submission, knowing all too well that if he tried to help the feeble minded man he’d get twice the same as punishment.

  Cobb was smiling now, a tight little slash of sadistic pleasure. He didn’t let it show too often, but his penchant for violence was always there. Hank figured it was half the reason he was a guard, it gave his nastier tendencies a place to express themselves.

  “Now, look what you did, Emmett. Time for you to go explain why you’re acting like a baby to the warden.”

  Emmett shook his head, his face already swelling and one eye blackened shut, on the verge of tears. Cobb and two more guards hauled him away, while the rest of the prisoners and their keepers watched.

  While all eyes were on Emmett and the guards, Hank glanced down at the treasure he himself had found, and then hastily shoved it into his pocket. The fine links of the chain were silver and the centerpiece, a medallion of the same precious metal, was studded with at least five small emeralds that were as clear and beautiful as a glass of ice water.

  Hank started digging again, his skin suddenly cold. He didn’t know how the necklace had gotten there and he didn’t much care. He just knew he’d have to find a way to keep it safely hidden away until his sentence was up. A piece like that could make a man’s destiny go in all new directions.

  The work went on and Hank kept digging, losing himself in the labor. If he focused on the task at hand, he could resist looking at the fortune he had sitting in his pocket.

  Sweat cut lines through the dust that adhered to his skin, but in time the guards called everyone in from the field and loa
ded them back onto the trucks. Nearly everyone was quiet after what had happened to Emmett earlier and especially after Pritcher got his head blown off. Best to keep quiet and not draw attention to yourself.

  Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe some of these guys are so quiet because they found things in the field, too.

  The thought wouldn’t leave Hank alone as he looked at the other prisoners in the truck. They weren't just tired, they were still. Quiet and careful. The more he thought about it, he could easily believe they were hiding something. Even the guards seemed to notice, a few of them sitting straighter than usual, gripping their weapons tighter than they normally did at the end of a work day.

  Guilford was as warm and welcoming as an outhouse after a flood. Home sweet home. Hank ate his meal in silence and watched the prisoners around him do the same thing. There was only one source of distraction in the camp during the meal of bread, water and what was supposed to be beef stew: Emmett kept up a litany of screams and howls from the Hole. Most times the noises he made were almost funny, but this time the poor bastard sounded so miserable that it frayed at the nerves.

  The entire prison was jittery and anxious. It had been a weird couple of days. A violent couple of days.

  The Hole was a miserable little cell in the ground, smaller than a root cellar and befouled by human waste that had nowhere else to go. No one ever wanted to stay in the place, which was exactly why the warden used it as a method of punishment. When the meals were done and the guards watched Hank and the rest of the prisoners head for their cells, Emmett started begging for someone, anyone to help him get free. No one dared.

  Emmett’s howling kept on until after the sun had set, and Hank did his best to adjust to the sounds. He closed his eyes and settled in on the cot provided for him and he even wrapped the thin pillow around his head in an effort to block out the noises.