The Woman Waiting Under Our Montana Ranch

Nothing in Leo’s bedroom remained where it belonged. His books, wooden blocks, plastic dinosaurs, and even the dirty clothes had all been taken from their places and brought onto the bare hardwood.

They did not lie in a careless heap. Someone had positioned every item with awful care, shaping them into a broad, unbroken ring.

A rough-edged cross split the circle down the middle. Its crooked lines made my stomach twist.

I knew that shape. Leo had filled page after page with it for the last six months, drawing it until his pencils went blunt.

“What the hell is this?” Mark breathed. The rifle dipped slightly as he crossed the threshold.

His boot came down on Leo’s plastic truck, cracking it beneath the sole. He barely seemed to notice.

“Did you do this, Leo?” he demanded. “Did you come up here while we were outside?”

“He never left us, Mark.” My voice shook despite everything I did to steady it. “You saw him. He was with us.”

Mark gave me no answer. He paced around the completed design, breathing hard through his nose.

Then he stopped beside Leo’s bed. The flashlight beam trembled in his hand.

The covers had been turned back with unnatural neatness, as if someone had prepared the bed for a guest.

At the center of Leo’s pillow rested a small rectangle.

Mark reached for it. He lifted the object and angled the flashlight over its surface.

“Just old junk,” he said. He tried to sound disgusted, but his fingers were shaking badly.

I pulled Leo closer and stepped beside Mark. Over his shoulder, I saw what he held.

It was an old tintype, bent slightly around its edges and darkened with age. The photograph was grainy, sepia-brown, and horribly easy to see.

A young woman sat upright in a plain wooden chair. Her high-necked black dress belonged to another century.

Her face looked drained and rigid, her eyes fixed on the camera without warmth or life. A baby rested across her lap.

The child was swaddled in heavy wool. One small shoulder had slipped free of the blanket.

My lungs seemed to forget their purpose. I raised one trembling finger toward the photograph.

A crescent marked the baby’s left shoulder. It was dark and raised, shaped like a narrow half-moon.

I looked down at Leo. I had bathed him, dressed him, held him through fevers, and kissed that little shoulder goodnight more times than I could count.

The same mark sat on his left shoulder. The same crescent. The same impossible stain of flesh.

“Turn it over,” I told Mark, though my voice was barely more than air.

“Don’t start this, Sarah.” He tried to draw the picture away from me. “It’s a prank. The ranch hands found it somewhere and decided to scare us.”

“Turn it over!” I screamed. I seized his wrist in both hands and forced it toward me.

For a moment he resisted. Then something in him seemed to collapse, and he flipped the thick piece of metal over.

Three words had been scratched into the back in graceful looping handwriting.

Elias.

Born 1892.

“That isn’t his name,” Mark said. His voice had shrunk into something frightened and thin. “He’s Leo. We adopted him. The papers say he’s Leo.”

I could not stop staring at the name. Leo’s agency file had held almost nothing when we took him home.

He had been discovered wandering near a highway, without parents, a certificate, or even a name. We had called him Leo because he had survived alone.

“Mom.” Leo’s quiet voice came from across the room.

I turned. He was no longer tucked behind me.

He stood at the large window facing the front pasture, both hands flattened against the icy pane.

“What is it, sweetheart?” I moved toward him.

“They aren’t by the well now,” he said. His breath clouded the glass.

I rushed to the window and stared into the blackness beyond the house.

He was right. The fourteen quarter horses no longer stood around the old stone well.

My gaze swept over the pasture as panic rose hot in my throat. Then I looked down toward the lawn.

They had not fled. They had come closer.

All fourteen huge horses stood around the farmhouse, spaced with deliberate precision in a narrow circle.

Every animal faced inward. Every still head was lifted toward Leo’s second-story window.

“Mark,” I gasped, clutching the curtain. “Look.”

Before he could join us, a sound struck through the house.

A knock.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Each blow was slow, weighty, and strong enough to make the boards under our feet shudder.

Mark whirled toward the open doorway. He raised the rifle and pointed it into the dark hall leading toward the stairs.

“I have a gun!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you, I swear to God!”

We stood without speaking, listening to the silence that followed.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Mark sent the flashlight beam down the stairwell, but nobody stood at the front entrance.

“Where is that coming from?” he whispered. Sweat ran along his neck although the room was freezing.

I sank to my knees and laid my palm against Leo’s floor. The wood trembled under my hand.

The blows were not coming from the door. They were rising from underneath us.

I looked up at my husband as the truth locked into place. The well was connected to the house.