Black Evening Read Online Free

in. My father should have tied a rope from the house to his waist to guide him back in case he lost his way. Certainly he knew enough. But then he was like that, always in a rush. When I was ten.
    Thus I think as I aim my flashlight toward the shadowy stalls, terrified of what I may find in any one of them, Meg and Sarah, or him, thinking of how my mother and I searched for my father and how I now search for my wife and child, trying to think of how it was once warm and pleasant in here, chatting with my father, helping him to milk, the sweet smell of new hay and grain, the different sweet smell of fresh droppings, something I always liked although neither my father nor my mother could understand why. I know that if I do not think of these good times I will surely go insane, dreading what I might find. I pray to God that they have not been killed.
    What can he have done to them? To rape a five-year-old girl. Split her. The hemorrhaging alone can have killed her.
    Then, even in the barn, I hear my mother cry out for me. The relief I feel to leave and go to her unnerves me. I do want to find Meg and Sarah, to try to save them. Yet I am eager to leave the barn. I think my mother will tell me what has happened, tell me where to find them. That is how I justify my leaving as I wave the light in circles around me, guarding my back, retreating through the door and locking it.
***
    Upstairs, my mother sits stiffly on her bed. I want to make her answer my questions, to shake her, to force her to help, but I know that will only frighten her more, push her mind down to where I can never reach it.
    "Mother," I say to her softly, touching her gently. "What has happened?" My impatience can barely be contained. "Who did this? Where are Meg and Sarah?"
    She smiles at me, reassured by the safety of my presence. Still she cannot answer.
    "Mother. Please," I say. "I know how bad it must have been. But you must try to help. I must know where they are so I can find them."
    She says, "Dolls."
    It chills me. "What dolls, Mother? Did a man come here with dolls? What did he want? You mean he looked like a doll? Wearing a mask like one?"
    Too many questions. All she can do is blink.
    "Please, Mother. You must try your best to tell me. Where are Meg and Sarah?"
    "Dolls," she says.
    As I first had the foreboding of disaster at the sight of Sarah's unrumpled satin bedspread, now I begin to understand, rejecting it, fighting it.
    "Yes, Mother, the dolls," I say, refusing to admit what I suspect. "Please, Mother. Where are Meg and Sarah?"
    "You are a grown boy now. You must stop playing as a child. Your father. Without him you will have to be the man in the house. You must be brave."
    "No, Mother." My chest aches.
    "There will be a great deal of work now, more than any child should know. But we have no choice. You must accept that God has chosen to take him from us, that you are all the man I have to help me."
    "No, Mother."
    "Now you are a man and you must put away the things of a child."
    Eyes streaming, I am barely able to straighten, leaning wearily against the doorjamb, tears rippling from my face down to my shirt, wetting it cold where it had just begun to dry. I wipe my eyes and see my mother reaching for me, smiling, and I recoil along the hall, then stumble down the stairs, down through the sitting room, the kitchen, down, down to the milk, splashing through it to the dollhouse, and in there, crammed and doubled, Sarah. And in the wicker chest, Meg. The toys not on the floor for Sarah to play with, but taken out so Meg could be put in. And both of them, their stomachs slashed open, stuffed with sawdust, their eyes rolled up like dolls' eyes.
    The police are knocking at the side door, pounding, calling out who they are, but I am powerless to let them in. They crash through the door, their rubber raincoats dripping as they stare down at me.
    "The milk," I say.
    They do not understand. I wait, standing in the milk, listening to the rain pelting on the