In my dream, the deer emerge from the corn.

The tall stalks rustle as a faint breeze stirs the grass around me. There’s something in the field but I don’t know what. I stand there, my feet bare and burrowing into the dew-kissed grass. Dawn rises above the imposing thunderheads in the east. The heat of the night is heavy, damp, and the shadows dance.

As I wait, perfectly calm, a set of eyes stare at me through the murky air and browning leaves. The eyes are rusted like the old windmill, which I can hear rasping and grinding in the wind. I cannot move, and if I could I would not choose to.

The deer thrusts its ebony nose through the stalks, his eyes blazing below his sprawling antlers, like the branches of a small tree. He looks at me for a long time. The rustling becomes louder, and when I turn my head I see more of them—does, fawns, bucks—pushing through the corn and lining up along the field’s edge.

Heart beating rapidly, unease spreads through my body like a hesitant infection, cool water trickling through a sieve rather than an overwhelming flood. I try to move my feet, but I can’t. The urge to run is killing me, and suddenly I wish desperately that I could simply grow wings and fly.

The buck takes a step closer. I can hear his breath blowing out of his nose. In. Out. Barely caged greed in each exhale. His lips curl back and reveal his teeth, rotted and dripping with ruby red blood. My father told me deer were herbivores, but I’m not so sure about that now. I imagine his severed head, the weakness in his glass eyes, mounted over the door in the garage. A sick feeling expands, contracts in my lungs like a heartbeat.

If the buck comes closer, I’m not sure what will happen, and I don’t want to know. I pinch myself, praying this is a dream. There are words in the air, words coming out of my mouth. Yet the silence roars—the rustling grows louder and louder with each second.

And then I wake up.

. . . . Two Weeks Earlier . . . . fall, 1997

Silver Corners is deserted but for the dazed cashier behind the counter. The fluorescent lights hum blankly above my head as the bell chimes, warning the gas station of my entrance. I shove my fists deep into the pockets of my jacket, burrowing my chin into my striped cashmere scarf, hiding so the nostalgia can’t hit me.

I stroll down the single aisle. It’s lined with soft drinks, Snickers bars, beef jerky, a rack of insulated camo jackets and matching hats, batteries, Minnesota lottery tickets. A box of yellow-handled screwdrivers. Mountain Dew—the diet kind. Tiny silver crucifixes dangling from delicate chains.

My gaze studies the innards of Silver Corners with a mysterious affection—my memories of the place are fond but fused with a strange gloom that I can’t explain. With a mechanical turn, I find the basement door directly in front of me. I recall hundreds of hours spent frolicking in the dingy depths of the Silver Corners basement—playing games of make-believe in wintry afternoons, flipping through magazines with my best friend Sara, play-fighting with my brother Daniel.

The door invites me forward, but I reject the summons. Spinning away, I reach out to grab a bag of pretzels for the remainder of my journey when suddenly I hear faint squeaking and the skittering of miniscule feet against linoleum. I look around. A mouse is dashing across the aisle, head down and tail swinging madly. My heart jumps into my throat. I have never liked mice. The barn cats used to bring their clawed corpses to the back steps, blood staining the cement a rotted brown like the hinges of a rusty door until the rain washed any residue clean.

The mouse’s high-pitched cry echoes through the store. Glancing around at the cashier, I see he hasn’t even looked up. I realize I’m not very hungry. Sighing, I take a paper cup off the shelf and fill it with lukewarm black coffee from the dispenser at the end of the aisle.

The cashier raises his head as I approach. He types up the sale with white-knuckled hands. He’s cold and pale, veins blue and translucent like a corpse’s. A baseball cap shields the top of his face from my gaze. He looks familiar—likely the teenaged son of someone I went to highschool with, whom I stopped talking to as soon as I moved away. Maybe he’s Sara’s son. The thought is fleeting, but for a moment I can pick out her features in his face—the tautly curled brown hair framing his high cheekbones, the lean, tense shoulders.

“Is that all?” he asks in a voice so quiet I can barely hear.

“Yes,” I say. He passes the change to me over the counter. “Thanks.”

He barely nods as I open the door. Outside, a rosy glow illuminates the stark farmlands stretching as far as the eye can see. A deer sprints past the road, its powerful legs quicker than my car’s engine. I drive fast, dreading what I’ll find when I return home. Even if I don’t want to call the farm home, that’s what it is and what it will always be.

The gravel road feels the same—tiny stones pelting the sides of my car—and thrusts me backwards into childhood memories. Suddenly it’s peculiar to me that I haven’t been back since college, and a twinge of guilt riddles my heart. When I pull into the driveway, I see the cornfield reaching for the darkening sky. An old, battered pickup truck rests in a cavity beside the deteriorating barn, choked by decaying curtains of vines. Cats rummage for mice through the overgrown bushes.

I tear my eyes from the pickup truck, reminded by the reason I’m here, even though I know it’s not the vehicle my father died in. Despite the time I’ve spent away, building up my bitterness like an impenetrable prison, it hurts.

It’s only been a week since my father’s death. I’m here to make myself useful, though I’m not sure where to start. The funeral is in two days, my mother’s in shambles, the house is falling apart and my will to reunite with my past—and, I suppose, my present—hasn’t even begun to reveal itself.

Over the phone, my brother Daniel said my father died under mysterious circumstances. He wasn’t old, exactly, but he wasn’t healthy either. Two months before, I had heard of his accident from my mother but she was ambiguous about the details so I didn’t think it was that serious. Besides, it’s hard to make the journey from Vermont to Minnesota at a moment’s notice. My job keeps me constantly busy.

Before I can get too guilty, I park the car, turning off the engine and my thoughts.

Yellow light leaks onto the pavement from the living room windows. I walk up to the door, my heart pounding. I wonder what my mother will be like now, if she’s the same as I remember her—demure, her black hair shot through with gray, shrewd blue eyes that never missed a thing.

The door is unlocked. I turn the knob and enter. No fanfare but the unearthly creak of wood.

“Honey? Is that you?”

Her voice is familiar, but not the same. Sadness streaks through me without warning. I want my old life back, where no sadness lingered on the marrow of my bones, where I could drive down county roads in the backseat and believe that I would never need anything more than this; a life comfortable in its simplicity.

“Mom?”

“Oh, honey, come on up. We’re in the living room.”

We? I drop my duffel bag near the stairs down to the basement, where I’ll be sleeping in the spare bedroom. The bedroom which used to be mine. Trepidation building in my chest, I climb upstairs.

“Hey, Mom.”

She’s sitting on the couch in a faded lavender tunic, arm resting on the end table—cluttered with old Chapstick, a half-empty bottle of Diet Mountain Dew, hunting magazines which I recognize as my father’s, a layer of dust settling on their still-vivid covers decorated with photographs of rambling green forests. My insides soften when I look at my mother. She looks innocent, somehow, with her wide blue eyes and kind, lined face. Her hair is a stark gray.

“Hi, honey. Come here.” She holds out her arms, reaching for an embrace. As I lean over her shoulder I realize someone else is in the room. Straightening, I look at Daniel, my brother, who has always looked eerily like a younger version of my father. He waves nonchalantly, cigarette smoke trailing from his fingers. He smokes with a passion, and smelled like it since we were eighteen. Part of me is surprised that Daniel is still alive, but I don’t tell him that.

“How’s it going?” he asks me, a familiar lopsided grin on his face. Then he winces. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “I’m fine.”

I look around the room, at the clutter surrounding me, and my gaze finds the clock hung on the wall. It’s one of those cats, waving hello with a finely-manicured paw and a malevolent grin. Over the years, the red has faded into a deep pink, but the ticking is still loud and relentless. That clock had appeared on the wall when I was a senior in high school, and annoyed me all through college.

“Sit down, dear,” says my mother, jerking me from my musings. “We’re watching the baseball game.”

I don’t sit. “I should unpack.”

“Go ahead, honey. We’ll be up here. Have you had anything to eat?”

A roar erupts from the screen as the home team barely misses their chance to score. The pretzels from Silver Corners flit through my mind, enticing now, and I remember how hungry I am—like a wild animal is gnawing at my insides. I’ve barely eaten all day. “Not yet.”

“There’s potatoes in the kitchen, but you might need to heat them in the microwave. Green beans and leftover apple pie in the fridge. Klondike bars in the freezer.”

Tonight, the soft ticking of the old clock keeps me awake. I toss and turn for what seems like hours. The bedsheets don’t feel right; they seem rough and full of dust even though my mother assured me they were washed. At around six-thirty in the morning I slip out of bed, change my clothes, and quietly tiptoe upstairs.

In the kitchen I place two powdered doughnuts on a napkin and bury an apple in my pocket. I go out the front. The garage door is open; I can see Dad’s red pickup truck and my mother’s navy Buick. The deer heads—trophies from years’ worth of hunting trips—line the wall above the door.

It makes me ill, seeing the severed heads mounted on the wall with such pride. When I was younger, I despised the occasional times my father brought me along on the shorter day trips. Not because I was squeamish, but because of the guilt I felt about the killing of an innocent creature. It seemed like proof of some inherent evil. At some point he stopped bringing me. To him, it was a disappointment. To me, it was the answer to a prayer.

I turn away from the disgusting sight and walk into the fresh air. The morning is a pale gray. The trees are practically stripped of leaves; only a few still cling to their branches. A farm cat, unkempt and malnourished, darts across the grass on stunted legs. The lawn has been recently mowed, I notice—Daniel probably did it yesterday.

The barn looms closer as I stroll up the hill. The loft window hangs open like a gaping wound, pieces of straw swaying from the aperture. Animal bones litter the grass in front of the wide door, and the yellow eyes of feral farm cats stare out at me from the barn’s innards.

For a moment I am tempted to go inside, but revulsion overpowers my curiosity and I don’t stop. In the whistling breeze, the windmill creaks as it spins, an eerie soundtrack to my morning ramble.

The scream of a crow rips the cool air to pieces. I wrap my scarf tighter, shuddering at the sound; its voice only grows louder as it plunges through the sky.

I keep going, pushing myself across the grass. Ahead of me are the tractor garages, where the John Deeres rest, collecting dust and mice. Their tall bodies loom over me, and suddenly I’m ten years old and clambering inside, pretending I can drive them. My feet can’t reach the floor.

I force myself away from the tractors, skirting the building to favor the wide-open cornfields. My father never grew corn, but he rented the field out to our neighbors, the Nielsens. Today, the cornfield is desolate and brown, crushed by the feet of wild animals and humans alike. Which is the wilder, I find myself wondering.

When I walk past the shop, the radio is playing in the back, distorted voices and twangy guitar floating through the wind. My father always kept the radio on, though his reasons were a mystery to me. I dither outside the door for a moment, then step inside.

Walls lined with ancient tools, chainsaws, a leaf blower. Rifles lying on the table. On closer inspection I find them to be loaded, so I leave them alone. The husk of an orb weaver tangled in its sprawling web. Everything in there feels dead, tainted with the demise of its owner.

I fall back on my heels and look up. Antlers of all sizes had been mounted above the door, each one marked by the year the deer was shot. 1983, Turtle Lake. 1992, Cloquet. 1974, Cheyenne. 1988, Albert Lea.

I lower my head and leave the room.

But as I make my exit to the great outdoors, I stumble back. An entire head this time, is partially hidden behind a dark blue tarp and an ancient wooden door. I exhale sharply as the adrenaline settles in my bloodstream.

“Not another one,” I say aloud, dragging a hand across my eyes. When I look up again, my heart skips a beat.

The deer had—

Blinked.

My heart is thundering as if it’s inches from death, a sound I never thought it could make. I take the last few steps outside, the wind ruffling my hair. I throw another glance over my shoulder.

I could have sworn the deer’s glassy eyes followed me across the threshold.

Now the world has been transformed into a frosty wasteland. A deadly chill infects the air; a thick, billowing white fog crawls across rolling hills. When I leave the garage for my morning wander (avoiding the shop where I was the day before), the frozen grass cracks beneath my shoes like shattered glass. It is a sight that steals the breath from my lungs: the branches of evergreens and small ruby berries laden with white crystalline cities, everything around me suspended in a gray haze. Cornfields, cut low to the ground, emerge sinisterly from the mist. I wonder how quickly I would get lost in the thick of it, if I could see my own hand in front of me. Though there is no snow on the ground, I can feel it coming.

Upon my return, I find my mother already cooking. She exhibits her cheesecakes—the sea of blueberries and cherries across their pans pristine and shining—with pride. On every counter, a triple batch of chocolate-chip cookies is being prepared. Yet there isn’t a spot of flour anywhere on my mother—she and her robin’s egg blue sweater are as immaculate as ever.

“I don’t know how many people are coming today,” she says, stumbling over her words. “I thought I would make more than we might need, then we’ll have leftovers.”

She flashes me a flustered smile, which I hesitantly return. For a moment it’s silent, and we simply stare at one another. Then—her smile fading fast like a retreating ghost—she reaches out with a pale, skeletal hand and brushes my cheek so quickly and softly I’m not sure it really happened.

“All the boxes are downstairs. I had Danny bring them out. You’ll help him, won’t you?”

I take up a white rag for drying dishes. “Of course,” I hear myself say, dragging the cloth across a pan beaded with moisture. “What’s . . . in the boxes?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dear—but Danny might. You’d have to ask him. Honey, it’s much too quiet here. When you’re done with those, would you mind turning the radio on?”

The scent of the cookies in the oven chokes my lungs. Upstairs, the radio is blaring the best of classic country; I can picture my mother nodding her head along with the beat as she pulls racks of cookies from the scalding oven.

Daniel and I drag tables to the center of the basement, gouging tiny furrows in the carpet behind us. Stacks of cardboard boxes line the walls around us, filled to the brim with stray objects and clothing like threadbare sweaters, flannel shirts with missing buttons, leather gloves with holes in the thumbs and between the fingers. Film-noir, the wild west. Just thinking about the contents of the boxes makes my head spin.

A strange smell pervades my nostrils, damp with decay, that I think is escaping the boxes, but it could simply be a part of the aged basement. It’s so strong that I have to crack open a window, welcoming the cold autumn air inside. Daniel gives me an odd look, but I can tell he understands.

It’s funny how the basement drags all my foggy memories out from their cache in my brain—echoes of my father’s voice ring through my ears as he brushes autumn leaves from my sleeves, visions of the Christmas tree in the corner, strewn with bright tinsel and gleaming ornaments, my cousins’ grinning, aunts and uncles clapping each other on the back.

I look down at the box before me. At the top of the mismatched pile is a flannel I recognize, dull shades of brown and burgundy warped and fused within a plaid prison. With a rush I realize he wore this shirt the last time I saw him, a paper cup of black coffee steaming in his grip, his glasses thick but hardly hiding that frown I’d seen a hundred times.

I raise the shirt to my nose and inhale. It summons memories of cigarettes and rambles through the woods, a pointer’s bark, the throaty cry of a crow, the clear chirp of a bird echoing in the most distant corner of my mind. But then Daniel’s voice rings through the room and I am ripped from my reverie.

“We need to put up the tables,” he says.

After a moment’s hesitation, I slip the flannel shirt around my shoulders. To keep the chill away, I tell myself.

It doesn’t take long before we’ve constructed a town in miniature made of foldable card tables, and before I know it there are engines sputtering in the driveway, then voices. There is no insulation against sound here, so I hear my mother’s laugh, clear like she’s right beside me: she seems happy as a child on a fresh spring day. My stomach is knotted taut at the idea of going upstairs; I wonder if Daniel senses my apprehension because he stays with me, methodically sorting through boxes long after he’s finished with them, as though he’s searching for something long-lost.

A hush befalls my relatives as they traipse one-by-one into the basement and glance through my father’s belongings. They seem to remember that they’ve crossed the threshold of a dead man’s home: their pale hands, numb feet an intrusion into another darker, more uncertain world, murky as the depths of a lake enclosed in ice. Cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews—they’re all here, bringing with them the bitter scent of the outside, shaking the frost from their boots and warming cold feet clad in double socks with mittened hands. They offer condolences, inquire about my job, about my private life, begin long-winded reminiscences. I am unsettled by the way they stare at me, like they’re waiting for me to erupt with a controversial remark that I learned out east, like they know how much I’ve forgotten of this place I came from. They think I’ve come home. But now I’m not so sure what that word means.

That night we eat in silence, the clinking of forks against unused chinaware a melody to atone for the lack of our voices. My gaze is fixed, unwavering, on the floral designs etched in blue that adorn the edges of the plates. I’ve never seen them before: a seed of suspicion tells me my mother brought out the best silver just for me.

My mother delicately spoons under-roasted squash into her mouth. There are lines on her face I didn’t realize were there, and I wonder if they’ve appeared during the past few months, or if they have always been there. The furrows tugging at her mouth and forehead seem innocent and worried. An emotion blossoms in my chest, thick and dank, and I can’t tell if it’s love or pity for the woman who raised me.

“So.” She slants her gaze toward me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

A pit—gaping, endless, like a wound—opens in my stomach. “Mom,” I say, an unintentional whine creeping into my voice. “I’m so busy these days. I don’t have time for that kind of thing.”

Taking another bite of squash, my mother hums in that way she does when she thinks I’m deeply wrong about something. Once she’s finished chewing, she says, “Well, you know. I met your father when I was—”

“In high school,” I finish, rolling my eyes at Daniel, whose mouth quirks. “I know.”

“All I’m saying is, just because you moved away doesn’t mean you have to be lonely. You should find someone to look after you.”

“I don’t need someone because I’m not lonely, Mom. Why can’t you pry into Daniel’s life, not mine?”

My mother smiles at him fondly. “Because he has a girlfriend.”

“What?” I stare.

“It’s true,” he insists. “Her name is Hazel.”

“Sure, I believe you,” I say, my attention slipping. I try to grasp for it but there’s no use, it’s already gone. The painting above Daniel’s head of the bison in the maple-leaved wilderness is staring at me hard, dark eyes preserved on canvas. The irony turns the sweet potato in my mouth sour.

I haven’t had a moment’s peace since I arrived here. First this continual rush of memories, then the vision of the deer’s restless eyes . . . I have prowled this house, fear making me restless, searching the halls for something I know I won’t find. It’s the same feeling I had when I was a teenager, learning how to drive on desolate county roads fringed with evergreens and beady-eyed crows. After every empty road came another, and another, and another, a cycle that would never end, a labyrinth where escape was utterly futile. I convinced myself there was nothing beyond this—these fields of soy, these evergreens, these houses with the paint slowly peeling from their sides—I convinced myself that the world would drop away once I was past the state limits, like a cliff collapsing into cold black space.

A week after my eighteenth birthday I drove to Wisconsin in my father’s pick-up truck. I just pulled over and stared across the state line.

There were no cliffs. But it looked exactly the same.

It is a relief to be leaving the farm, but the occasion is gloomy: my father’s funeral.

I was plagued by another sleepless night, cursed with nightmarish visions of glassy eyes staring at me through the darkness, antlers dipping gracefully to carry me bleeding through the night. The face of the buck in my father’s shop loomed, his mouth stained red. I kept seeing my father, his disfigured body crumpled in the ruins of a pickup truck. The buck stood behind the vehicle, his lips curled back. More than once in the night, I bolted up, furiously throwing sheets away from my body. I prayed it was all in my head.

Once I’ve finished smoothing the creases in my black skirt, I visit my mother in her room. She’s smothering her mouth in lipstick, but she looks nice in a clean-cut black dress. I watch her from the doorway, saying nothing.

“Hi, hon,” she says without looking. She tucks the lipstick capsule back into her makeup cabinet, pressing her lips together. “When I woke up today and looked out the window, I thought it might snow, especially after all the frost we’ve been having. Look at those cumulus clouds. Rain or snow. Are you okay, dear?”

“I’m fine,” I say, glancing briefly out the window. It does look like it might snow. I fold my arms across my chest, seized with a sudden thought. “Hey, Mom? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever think Dad’s hunting was—I don’t know, cruel?”

My mother looks at me now. Her hands stilled. “What do you mean, honey?”

“I mean—I don’t know. Displaying the heads like trophies, being proud of killing something—doesn’t it seem cruel to you?”

She picks at the button on her sleeve, speaking quickly. My mother always talked like that when she was nervous. “Honey, I don’t know. That’s just how things are here.”

I wish she would stop calling me honey. Even though I am angry, I try not to show it. I try to think about my father’s death, and how sad it makes me feel that he’s no longer with us, but I can’t summon the emotion. Instead I think of the bullet piercing a doe’s flank, panicked last breaths, the world fading to black. The thunder of a red heart stilling, once and for all.

When we meet again in the garage, my mother doesn’t mention our conversation. Daniel is here, and he offers to drive us there in his black pick-up truck. My mother accepts, soothing the silence left by my glare. I slip my hands into the pockets of my fleece-lined, brown corduroy jacket.

“Okay,” says Daniel. He looks at me. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” I say. As he helps my mother into the car, I take the keys and turn back to lock the door. My head circles briefly to the side. The deer head is there still, hung on the wall like a prize a child won at the fair.

No.

It’s not the head of a deer.

It’s the head of my father.

I stare in sick fascination. I stare at the green, watery eyes, a useless, helpless plea caged inside. I stare at the mouth, slightly open and caked in crimson blood. I stare at the light brown hair, not a strand out of place. I stare until my eyes burn.

“Honey?” My mother peers at me from inside the car.

With an uttered apology, I flee to the solace inside. My lungs have stopped working, and I gasp desperately for air. I am the doe, lost to the dark. The doe, trapped in the labyrinth that is the cornfield. I run wildly through the house—up the stairs—down the hall—into my parents’ room.

I drop to the floor, breathing heavily. As I return to my body I find my hand is wrapped around the bedpost, tethering me to this world, this moment. I shut my eyes tightly, then open them and heave myself to my feet.

I look around until my gaze finds the mirror. My mascara is dark around my wide, crazed eyes, the eyes of a lunatic. For a moment I can see him in my face, in the pupils of my green eyes, in the cut of my jaw. I step closer. So does my reflection—so does he.

“You have to go to the funeral,” I tell myself. “You have to go.”

Everything in me resents it. How could I face a funeral in this state? I want to cry, to scream. I want to run through the gray afternoon like the doe I saw racing along the highway that first night.

“Calm down,” I say. Become the doe.

Surprisingly, my body obliges. Gazing into my reflection’s eyes, I still feel the tension locked inside my shoulders, but my fists slowly uncurl, my heart slows to normal, my head stops spinning. My blouse no longer threatens to smother me.

I glance out of the window. The snow is beginning to fall.

–

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Landry Simpson is a high school student in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has a deep passion for creative writing, and is also very interested in music and psychology. 

© 2024, Landry Simpson