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gregsdarkcorner-blog · 6 years ago

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The Rain Box (Excerpt)

My hands are shaking as I write this. For the past three days the rain hasn’t stopped. I’m questioning my sanity, feeling it slipping like ice melting against smooth glass. I could hear leaks throughout the house. I’ve had tried to patch some leaking spots, but it seems the rain still finds a way in these walls; a new leaking spot sprouts out of nowhere. I’ve set buckets throughout the entire house, a surreal scene I can’t describe (nor do I want to). I know they’re out there--whatever they are. They come from the strange glowing lights in the storm. It’s almost pitch black out there, dark as a starless night, when it’s almost noon during the day. I cannot tell you what day it is, to be quite honest. I’ve lost track of time. It’s hard when it’s been raining a lot and the storm grows darker and darker and the glowing lights glow brighter and brighter, coming closer to my home. The shotgun is on my bed, waiting to be used. I don’t want to use it, but I know sooner than later I have to. Every now and then I look away from this to sneak a quick glance outside. It seems to get a lot darker out there, as if I’m staring at the abyss at the bottom of the ocean. It sure feels like that too, with the rain keep pouring down and flooding the world. I see those lights, blinking in and out of existence, moving inch by inch toward my house. Lightning flashes, and I could see the wheat getting taller and taller, almost as tall as my house. It seems to be waving at me, like many arms all moving at once, swaying side to side. Strange, just a week ago my land was nothing more but a crumbling desert with hundred of grasshoppers hopping about and hundred of rabbits running to chase these maddening creatures. Now my fields are full of wheat, though I’m quite sure it’s just something mimicking as wheat, something that I will never fully understand (nor do I want to). I don’t know if I’m going to survive this storm. I could use the shotgun on my bed for myself. One pull at the trigger and I’m as lifeless as a doorknob. I don’t want them to get me: the way they’d had gotten the others. I cannot let that happen. Thunder roars in the heavens, and the window rattles in its frame and the paintings I have hanging on the walls vibrate with great intensity. The Rain Box also shakes on the desk near me, nearly falling off. It is the thing that started all of this, this odd Rain Box. I had purchased it from a queer salesman last week...and it seems like years ago instead of days. I wish I’d never purchased it. But it’s too late. I cannot go back in time and change my actions, how I wish I could. I can’t. I don’t know if this is a suicide letter or a confession. I’m not sure who is going to read this. I need to write this, incase that I die today. I cannot die with this guilt in me. If it wasn’t for me buying the Rain Box none of this would have happened. None of it. What I am about to tell you--whoever you may be--may sound like a horror fiction tale, but I could put my hand on the Holy Bible and swear to God Himself that the things I’m about to describe really had happened. I don’t care if you don’t believe in the following pages; I don’t blame you either. However, these events happened, and I was lucky enough to survive them to write this. I honestly not sure if you’re going to read this, since it keeps on raining and it might as well be the end of the world. It feels good to write. My sanity is slipping. I’m going mad. I need to write, to tell, about the Rain Box and its amazing but terrifying power it has. The price I’ve paid is too great. I’m living with tremendous guilt. It’s been eating at me since what I’ve seen the Rain Box had done to my neighbors, to my friends. It’s a huge, crushing stone I’m carrying. I cannot live with this guilt. My name is Jody Foster. I’m 35 years of age. I live in Bonham, Oklahoma, and this how I’ve purchased the Rain Box. It was Saturday, June 15, 1935 when the salesman arrived. I had come from hanging snakes on my fence that separated Eli Cotton’s land and mine. It was a foolish act, I know, but I needed to do it just the same. A part of me knew this old wise tale of hanging dead snakes on fences wouldn’t bring rain. A part of me knew that, but another part, a desperate part, was also hoping that somehow by sacrificing snakes will bring forth rain. It has been weeks without rain--so long I couldn't remember the last storm we’ve had--and each passing day the land drys, decaying into a cracking desert where nothing roams but sand and grasshoppers and rabbits--a lot of grasshoppers and rabbits by the hundreds! I was lucky enough to find the snakes (there quite a few of them, slithering around within the loose dirt and catching grasshoppers, but there were a few and far between), and a quick blow of the boot would make them thrash, wriggling around like ropes being untangle from twisted knots, and a few kicks to the head would stop that thrashing all at once. I hung five snakes, letting blood drip onto the land from their hanging mouths. I glanced at the cloudless sky. The sun was at high noon, baking down and scorching the land. There wasn’t a slightest breeze, and if there was clouds of dirt would blow across the land, threatening to become dust storms that could reach across states. Even if there wasn’t a breeze, I still wore my handkerchief. My nose burned from the sand, and it hurt so much I couldn’t smell. Every so often it’d bleed, and it’d bleed for a few minutes to an hour. I knew it was best to see Dr. Thompson about it, but I didn’t have money for him, and I wasn’t too concerned about my health. The land was more important to me than anything. That was why Charlotte left, taking Caroline with her. Oh, how I miss them! I got back to the house, trying to kill as many as grasshoppers as I could on the way, and I was about to pour a drink when a dark blue Ford Model 40 pull into my driveway. An elderly man got out with a suitcase, and his suit was too clean, too well polished, and I knew he was going to approach me to sell something I didn’t need. I stepped out of the house in the blazing sun to tell him off, when he smiled and said, “Well, hidey there, mister. It’s sure a hot one, eh? Could use some rain right about now. Would you like that mister, some rain in the near future?” “If you’re planning to sell me something I’m not interested,” I said. “Nor do I have the money. You’d better be on your way now and bug some other poor joe who’s gonna tell you the same thing. In case you haven’t noticed, but out here nobody has money. Our land is crumbling, turning to dust, and what crop we can grow is being eaten away by grasshoppers and rabbits. We don’t need a salesman to sell us uselessjunk. Have a good day sir.” I didn’t like salesmen at all. I always thought they were schemers, always selling bad products while getting a good amount of money out of your wallet, going house to house and trying to earn as much as they could. I didn’t want him in the house, either. I let him stand in the baking sun, making him uncomfortable in his too well polished suit (it looked like a heat death trap, and I was surprised the man hadn’t passed out) . But to my surprise, he stopped a few feet from me, enough for me to look at him in every detail. He was a thin man, oddly thin, and I thought he was, more or less, a walking skeleton. His old skin was oddly yellow, and there were a lot of purple spots on his face. I looked at his fragile hands and saw they were covered in purple spots too. His lips were dark, almost black. His eyes, however, were deep and I couldn’t tell you what color they were (they seemed almost colorless). He tilted his head toward the sky, his strange eyes focusing on the infinite cloudless blue sky above us, and said, “I’m not here to sell you uselessjunk, mister. I understand your hatred toward salesmen, believe me. I never wanted to be one myself. Never imagined of being one. But here I am, at your doorstep, and already you’re trying to kick me off your property when I haven’t have the opportunity to show you what I’m about to sell you, sir, because you’re more willing to buy it once you see it. “You’re a desperate man in a desperate time. Now, maybe you believe in the old folktale or maybe you don’t, but I saw you in the field while I was on my here. I saw what you’re doing. The land is as flat as the sky above us. I have a good eye, mister, an eagle eye. What you did out in that field, on your fence, was a desperate act. Now, maybe you believe in superstition, or maybe you don’t. Whatever. But you’re willing to try anything to bring rain. “You know as well as I do that hanging those snakes is not the answer. Waiting for rain during a time like this is like waiting for God to show Himself to you. It’s not going to happen anytime soon. But, what if I tell you there is a way? What if I tell you it’s possible to bring rain to a struggling farmer like yourself? But not just a single storm. No. We know that one rain storm isn’t the cure for this drought. You need multiple storms.” He set his salesbag on the ground, stirring a little cloud of dust. I knew right there and then what he was planning. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re not going to sell me rain. Get off my property!” Instead he opened the salesbag, his hands disappearing within, and within seconds he pulled out a small wooden box. He held it up as high as he could toward the sky, both hands cupping the box. There was a string of water dripping from hands, spilling onto the ground. The water struck like bullets, producing clouds of dust with each hard drop. He started walking toward me--careful not to get wet--lowering the box to his chest. His feet and the drops of water stirred dust. I shook my head and said, “It’s full of water. What the hell are you thinking trying to sell me something that’s full of water? Get out of my sight before I--” “Oh, is it full of water, mister? I think not!” He got about an arm’s length from me, me in the shade of my porch, standing above him a little, and him in the baking sun, looking up at me with an odd expression of joy on his face. He held the box with one hand toward me, as if to hand it to me. I saw the box more clearly. The box had been painted with two colors. The top half was entirely black, but in the middle the black began to fade into dark blue, where it took over the lower half of the box. The box was wet, condensation dripping down the sides and onto the man’s palm. With his free hand, the salesman pulled the black lid off. What I saw inside I’d never expected to see. I had to take a step back, not sure what I was seeing was real. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Don’t tell me that’s actually a--” “Oh, yes, mister. It sure is. I don’t call it the Rain Box for no reason. I’m not here to sell you junk either. This is the real thing, and I know you need this. Go on, hold it. It’s not going to hurt you, mister. As you can see, it’s not hurting me. Go on, I know you want to hold it.” It’s not possible, I thought. What you’re seeing isn’t real. It’s some kind of magic trick, an illusion for my eyes to see what they’re thinking of seeing. There’s no way in God’s name that’s possible. Yet they were telling me otherwise. I didn’t want to hold it, but my hands reached out, and the salesman placed the box in those desperate hands--the hands of a stranger, it felt like: not my hands. To describe the power I felt is impossible; there is nothing on this earth to describe such force. What was inside of the box was a living, breathing storm. It is why I cannot tell you what it’s like to hold such wonder. I saw flashes of lightning within the swirling gray clouds, heard (felt, really) crackling thunder, and most importantly I heard rain. It sounded like an ocean were being poured upon earth, though what earth the box held I didn’t know. I felt each swirl of clouds through the walls of the box. I felt each lightning strike, little shocks of electricity running through my fingers. I felt the roars of thunder, shaking at the walls of the box and rattling my joints. What I really felt the most was the rain. I felt every single drop hitting the bottom of the box, felt each sprinkle hitting against the wood. I was suddenly overtaken by how surreal all of this was, for I swayed like a drunk and about to fall backward. The salesman noticed this, for he said, “Sit down, mister. Sit sit sit sit sit!” I don’t think I sat. I think I fell on my ass, right against the hardwood of the porch, my legs spilling out into the hot sun. The box never left my hands. My hands were dampening from water soaking through the wood, but never once it slipped when I crashed. “How?” I asked. “How’d you get a storm? How’d you get this box?” The salesman only smiled, and as quick as the lightning flashes within the box, the old man grabbed the box and took it out of my hands. As he placed the lid back on, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t answer those questions, mister. What I can tell you is, there is a lot more in life than meets the eye. You can call it God’s work, whatever. If you believe in God, that is.” I shook my head. “Not since when everything went to hell. I prayed and prayed for rain. And you know what we get? We get dust storms. We get nothing but heat and drought. We get plagues of grasshoppers and rabbits eating all of our crops we could barely manage to grow. We get our prayers unanswered. I don’t think God will allow us to struggle. Not like this. If there is a God, I know He would help, give us storms, give us rain. But He doesn’t. Therefore, I think he’s nothing but the fragment of a plagued imagination, or if He is real, He’s a cruel bastard. “I lost my faith when my wife took my daughter and left me behind. Right after a dust storm, it was. Since then, I’ve been questioning about our Lord, about nature and how man fits in this cruel world. I think we’re a mistake. If this is all God’s design, as the good book tells us, then it’s flawed. Very flawed. And this,” I kicked the ground to stir up dust. “This is our fault. I think we know how to tame land with our new tractors, new equipment, but we don’t. It’s really our fault. We caused this drought, desperate to live in one of the worst times we humans had ever experienced. Sometimes blood writes the book of history, but sometimes it’s suffering as well.” The salesman was quiet for awhile. It seemed like a long time he was quiet, but he nodded his head and sat right next to me, the box still dripping in his hands. “You may have lost your faith, mister, and may question why on earth you’re going through this. While I do believe with you that man also caused this mess you’re in, but you, mister, you’re about to get all of your prayers answered. It may not be directly from God, but here I am, holding this very box that contains something impossible to grasp, to hold. You never imagined you could catch a storm and placed inside of a wooden box. Nobody has. But here it is, in my own two hands, and you’ve held it yourself! You’ve felt the power running through your fingers, I know you have. That’s why you nearly keeled over. I don’t blame you one bit of losing faith. I would too if I were in this hell, but you must still have faith. If this isn’t proof that something out there exist, something no human could grasp, I don’t know how to convince you. But I can see it in your eyes, that little sparkle, that small pinch of faith. “And I know you have your questions. But I really can’t answer them. I’m just a salesman, trying to sell you something that you desperate need. What we need is a harvester, mister. Someone who could grow wheat and harvest it. Plain and simple. We need our farmers too. Everybody does. And all you need is rain to help grow your crop.” “But I don’t have much money. I’m fighting against the bank. They’re planning to foreclose everything I have. It’s not like they have money to spend either. Probably gonna give it to the government anyway, since they’re killing off cattle and turning the meat over to us. It’s not like we can’t do it ourselves, but here they are, killing livestock and feeding us with the very animals we raised. The irony in life sometimes.” The salesman shook his head. “I don’t need money, mister. What I need is blood.” Of course, I wasn’t expecting what he’d said that very day! I must have given him a horrid look, for he said, “Now now, I don’t expect you to kill someone. Heavens! But I am going to be blunt and forward about it. We know you don’t have money. Who doesn’t? You even said yourself you doubt your own bank has money! No, what I need is blood. Please don’t ask why. Please oh please don’t! That’s something I can’t tell you.” I had my questions, sure, and I thought, for a very brief second, that this was all a fraud; there was no way for me to purchase that box with blood. Yet it seemed simple enough: just give him what he wanted (and it wasn’t money he was after, as I’d feared) and he’ll give me what I desperately needed. It seemed, in an odd way, fair. I thought about Charlotte taking Caroline after the last dust storm, how Caroline had coughed up blood and Charlotte begging me to leave; and me not leaving at all, only watch in horror as Caroline coughed blood in her small hands. I closed my eyes and fought hard to press the image away. I had refused to leave my farm behind, thus Charlotte taking Caroline with her to California and leaving me behind with a crumbling farm. And the image of the swirling, living storm inside of the box pushed those images and emotions away. It was too late for me to leave and abandoned my farm, even with a threat of the bank trying to take it away. Charlotte and Caroline were gone, and I may never see them again. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Besides, the salesman was right: I was a desperate man in a desperate time. “What kind of blood do you want?” I asked. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his smile. It felt like a cold knife was about to penetrate me. I welcomed the feeling. “Like I said, I’m not expecting you to murder someone, but I do need you to kill something. I heard there’s going to be a rabbit drive here shortly. That’ll do. Kill as many as those bastards as you can, and collect as much blood as you can. We need a harvester. A reaper, more like, and I know you’re capable of it.” A rabbit drive. That was tomorrow! “I don’t usually attend those,” I said, which I don’t. Though I knew about them and what they were for, I wasn’t the type of man to drive to one and beat a rabbit to death with a club. I knew they were overtaken the land and killing what crops other farmers could hardly grow, but I never had the desire to go out and beat them to death. “But I’ll make an excuse to go to one. How do I collect the blood? How much do you need?” “Whisky bottles will do. Oh, let’s see, maybe three will do. If not, two will do it. But I’m sure you’re able to get three.” I wanted to ask why three, but I knew better not to. I didn’t to bite the hand that was about to feed me. The salesman got up then, as if our business was already over. He started walking toward his Ford, not daring a look over his shoulder. “Wait. When are you coming back?” I asked. Without turning around, he said, “Monday morning. Be up and ready then. You have a long day ahead of, Mr. Foster. A very long day ahead of you!” It was the first time he said my name. “How’d you know my name?” I shouted. He reached the Ford, opened the driver side door, and gave me a smile that sent chills down my spine. “Oh, Mr. Foster, you’ve got so much to learn!” He disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him. I watched him back out of my driveway, turning the Ford back the way he’d come, and heading down the lonely road. I watched him until he disappeared on the horizon. I don’t know how long I had sat there, but it seemed almost like the entire day! I was reeling what had transpired: the odd salesman, the box which a storm was inside of, me about to kill rabbits so I can have the very box to myself! It seemed all surreal, like a bad dream, but it happened. I thought of Charlotte, Caroline, and the crumbling farm I refused to leave. It was everything I ever knew. I grew up farming; it was all I had. I thought about Charlotte and Caroline in California, not knowing where they were or what they were doing. I imagined them being here, Caroline coughing blood and Charlotte begging for life for me to leave with them...and me showing them the Rain Box, telling the girls that everything is alright, this is the answer to everything. At last my stomach growled, and pain shot throughout my body. I got up, knees popping like firecrackers, as if I suddenly aged twenty years just be sitting on the porch, lost in my thoughts. Maybe I’ve had aged, right there and then, as if just be agreeing the salesman had somehow put a curse on me...for which at the time I didn’t know it was somewhat true. The government had been killing off Joe King’s cows and had been donating the meat to the local farms. I made a couple of burgers (I know Joe would approve of me eating one of his cows the government had slaughtered, but he didn’t know and I didn’t care) and sat the diner table where some dust had lingered and gathered upon. I looked at the two empty seats before me while I ate. The burgers were a little tough, a little chewy, but I needed to feed myself for tomorrow. I already had two empty whiskey bottles, and one was just half full. I finished that up and watched the sun faded and the sky darkened and the stars twinkling in the night sky. I thought about the snakes I had hung that early morning, and how no storms had come. That’s alright, I thought. Soon you’ll have the Rain Box. Then you can have any storm you want. How arrogant and foolish I was!

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ysc003 · 5 years ago

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