The musty shed with the slanted roof collects rot like the Blair Witch collects teeth. Inside it there are two freezers, one that buzzes, full of ribs, ground beef, and pigs’ feet, and the other which is coated on the inside with old blood and sits dark under a veil of cobwebs. Beyond them are the cornstalks that grow six feet tall every summer and their seeds that spill over the edge of the field and sprout, creeping up towards my house in uneven lines.
When the summer nights are cool, Mommy and Daddy leave my window open, and the sway of the corn lulls me to sleep most nights. It is usually enough to distract my eyes from tracing the dark outline of the shed, except on nights when there is a cloud covered moon. The rustling corn is angry on those nights. I hear it anxious, close, and reaching. I feel it curl around my ankles and tug. I try my hardest not to look at the black spot that is the shed morphing under shadows and wind. I try to forget that it whispers, Outside wants in. I try to forget that it weeps at night in the long pauses when everything else is still. Forced into my memory is the distinct hum and drip of pus from the one meat freezer while the other is quiet. Forced into my memory is Daddy telling me to keep out of the shed.
…
All I know about the vacant freezer feels like a dream. The older kids aren’t watching me. I am running; a screen door bangs closed behind me; there is a carpet of moss under my feet, a splintered wood entrance, a sick, sweet smell.
Inside my bedroom it is night now, but it’s different than my real room. There is no door just black corners. There is only the window and the dark shed and the corn. There is Sissy, my Cabbage Patch doll. I call out and no one comes. I crawl to the window and look out at the corn’s frantic waving. It’s too cold on this night, so I climb back into bed and curl my body around my doll and pray,
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
…
Why am I awake? All I want is to sleep. I hear something familiar. Yes. It’s the tracks past the cornfield. A train’s distant wails are a distinct warning of it coming to pass as the glow of its headlight grows smaller. It leaves only a trail of steam as it goes. Daddy loves trains. Daddy said the blood moon is coming into the sky soon, where the train cuts through the corn. I look around for Daddy, but he isn’t here. I look up, and the moon is in the sky, omnipotent and crimson. It illuminates the shed’s tin roof revealing a different landscape than most nights. A corner of the dead freezer peeks out under the red moon while the other one hums steady. I leave the window and curl up once more and because I can’t wake up from night, I sleep.
When I open my eyes again, I can tell it’s a new night by the shape of the moon. I don’t feel as tired, so I search my room for something to do. There isn’t much here, but I a find a purple crayon in a crevice of the floorboard and begin drawing the shape of the moon, a turtle shell standing on its end, dead, all its arms and legs trapped inside somewhere.
When I’m done coloring my moon, I sit in a sliver of light holding Sissy, who shares my birthday. She has blonde hair like mine, a soft body, and a hard head. I braid her hair and ask her questions only Mommy and Daddy know the answers to. I ask her, Where is Mommy? And when she doesn’t answer I scream and throw her across the room into one of the dark corners. Afraid of being alone, I run to retrieve her and while I’m in the dark corner I feel for my doorknob, but there’s nothing there.
I grab Sissy and hide our heads under the sheet of my bed. It is all dark now as I feel for the indentions of her green eyes, the small ridge of her nose, and her lips, last, to make sure she’s still there. I pull her body in close and whisper, Tell me a pixie story, Sissy. She tells it in a voice a few pitches higher than mine. Sissy starts,
Once upon a time, there was a little girl no more than four years old with tangled hair down to her waist. She wore a blue Cinderella dress, and everyday, she played princess in the hallways of her house. She lived in a cardboard tower that was painted bubblegum pink. On the walls of the castle were sticky rhinestones of varying shapes and colors, gold stars, green diamonds, fuchsia hearts, and sky blue teardrops. The princess once used them as earrings until the backs got too hairy. She tried first to revive them with the glue from her craft box, and when they wouldn’t stay on her earlobes, she decided they belonged on the wall, and there they stuck very well.
I lay my head next to Sissy’s, thinking of the rhinestones as she continued on,
The princess ate only ice cream sandwiches and wafer cones full of Blue Bell Dutch chocolate ice cream and macaroni and cheese shells covered in Velveeta.
I clutch my stomach as I realize I haven’t eaten or drank anything in days, yet I’m not hungry or thirsty. There is no food or water in the room. I said I wanted a pixie story, Sissy. This one is too scary. Sissy ends the story there. I peek out from the sheet and stare at my dead turtle moon until my eyes are too heavy to keep them open.
…
It is night when I wake up. There is a half moon in the sky. I grab my purple crayon and draw it, then I walk over to the wall where my door should be, holding Sissy’s hand, and draw a door as tall as me. I hold the crayon tight in my hand and run it around and around in a dark, chaotic circle. I pound against it, dulling the end of the crayon and snapping it in two. It falls and rolls away as I continue to pound until my hands feel bruised and my nails peel and bleed. I only stop because I hear a familiar sound. Barking.
It’s my dog, Roly’s bark. He knows I’m here. He hears me! I run to the window calling his name. I see the place underneath my window where he dug a cool spot to sit watch. I don’t see him, but I hear him clawing so loud it echoes, and I have to cover my ears. Where is he?
I scream his name until I cough up a handful of something thick. I squint to see what it is in the darkness as Roly’s barks fade. I smear my hand against the wall in line with the other moons in a circular motion and make my own blood moon next to the dead turtle before collapsing on my bed.
Sissy comes in close to tell me the rest of the story,
The princess loved to play outside. She made mud pies out of corn starch and flour. She sprinkled small pebbles across the tops of them and left them to dry in the sun all afternoon. She flew her Fairy Winkles all over the yard and around the house past the shed with the slanted roof and onto the swing set below her bedroom window. She teeter-tottered, and her dress and hair drug on the ground when she sat on the swings or laid back, pumping her legs higher and higher.
Across the road the princess picked wildflowers and brought them in handfuls to the queen as a surprise. The queen put them in vases, and all through the castle were bluebonnets, brown-eyed Susan’s, Indian paintbrushes, sunflowers, and milk thistle. Most were dead which is why the princess always brought more.
The princess was an only child, and sometimes, she got lonely playing by herself all of the time, so the king and queen would invite her older cousins to play. They played games like truth or dare, chess and Chinese checkers with the princess and though she was too young for some of the games, they always included her. The princess’s favorite game of all to play with her cousins was hide and seek. They always let her hide because she was so good at it, and she loved to jump out and scare them when they finally found her.
Her cousins came to play on a special day, the princess’s fifth birthday! There was a chocolate cake with sugar roses all over it and dozens of multicolored balloons tied on trees and doorknobs; some were free floating in the castle.
I look up and see a red balloon clinging to my ceiling and stand to reach for it. Sissy tugs at my Cinderella dress and I sit next to her after a few failed attempts to reach the balloon. Sissy continues,
After everyone eats, the kids go play in the yard and all through the castle. The princess is wearing a silver crown with plastic gems that look like real sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. The king picked it out for her and wrapped it. Before the party started, she was allowed to open it to wear for the day.
I reach up and feel the sharp plastic points and smooth stones of my crown. Sissy pulls my hand back and goes on,
She ran through the yard in her Cinderella dress and held up her magic wand with the mix of glitter and sequin stars and moons. She was going to find the best hiding spot ever, a place where her cousins would never think to look.
I shift uncomfortably in my bed as Sissy says this, and when I do, something falls off my bed, hits the hard floor and rolls all the way to the window. Sissy, is this a pixie story? I ask. She says,
The princess ran to the shed when no one was looking. She walked to the back where the quiet freezer sat and tugged the door open.
I walk over to the window and pick up the wand that’s rolled away. No, Sissy, I don’t want to hear the story anymore! Sissy’s voice is shrill,
The princess crawled inside the dark freezer. She tried to leave the door cracked. She wanted to be able to peek out, so she would hear her cousins coming, to scare them all once they’d found her.
I lift my wand and notice that the sequin moons floating down match the moon in the sky. I notice my hand looks as blue as my Cinderella dress in the small sliver of light. The red moon on the wall is brown now like the shed with its splintered wood, past the carpet of moss, past the screen door. I close my eyes and cry,
If I should die before I wake…
The freezer door closed. The princess pushed with all her strength, but the door wouldn’t open. She screamed until her throat hurt. She beat on the door until her hands bled.
…I pray the Lord my soul to take.
I see Daddy go into the shed. I hear him pull the quiet freezer open. He is grabbing me out from the darkness. He is running. It is night.
