Thousands and Thousands

The stars were in her basement, hung up high. Carolyn stared at them, watched their silent burning, watched with her fingers over her keyboard. Waiting, patient and quiet, for the ghosts.

She turned her neck and looked up the stairs. The door was closed. Her daughter had gone to sleep without a fight, mercifully, but Carolyn still eyed the door occasionally. Suspicious. Not willing to complete trust the spurious silence in the house above her. Being an author and a parent didn’t mix sometimes; her daughter had a tendency to open that door during her writing sessions, accidentally chasing off the ghosts. And she needed the ghosts. Needed them as much as she needed her keyboard and her fingers. What would she do with either if the ghosts didn’t tell her what to write?

The small window was open, letting through a wisp of breeze and night. Her fingers twitched. They were impatient. They wanted to start. They knew that dawn was coming fast, but there was nothing she could do about that. Night was the only time for ghosts like these—a time when the forgotten could sing their dirges to her.

“I was sixteen years old,” a voice croaked from the darkness.

She jumped in her seat. The ghost had come as they always did: sudden, unseen, and without ceremony. Carolyn began to type. “You were sixteen years old,” she said back to it.

“Yes,” he said, voice becoming more clear, like a radio being finely tuned to the right frequency. “That’s right. I was sixteen, and my father was a swineherd.”

“Your father was a swineherd.”

“We had forty pigs. Forty beauties. Big, fat pigs—biggest in the county, in fact—and Big Daryl was by far the biggest. He was my favorite, though I tried not to pick favorites. My daddy said it was a bad practice, said that a farmer shouldn’t love the animal today that’ll be stock tomorrow. But I dotted on Big Daryl anyway. I would bring him apples in the autumn, and sweet corn in the summer. I even gave him my Christmas chocolates once, which my daddy didn’t like too much. He’d given the chocolate to me, and I think he was sore that I had given it away.”

“Gave it away,” she said, taking down the words. “Gave it to Big Daryl.”

“Yes. And he was a beautiful pig, too. Everyone said so. Big Daryl had these black patches over his body, kind of like a cow. Hell, you would’ve mistaken him for one if it weren’t for all that pink skin on his hide. Damn near perfect, except he only had the one eye. Big bulk, but one eye. Nothing bad had happened to him or anything like that. He was just born without one, I suppose. Yet despite the eye, all the farmers in town agreed he was a great pig. Bigger than a damn wagon, you would’ve thought. And no one cared about the eye, either. Who ever thought pig’s eyes were things of beauty, anyway?”

“You loved Big Daryl,” she said. Not asking, but not forceful either. Just stating a gentle truth, so they could move forward.

“I loved Big Daryl,” the ghost said, its voice warbling. “He won the county fair in 1818, and then the state fair that same year. Never was a better pig in all of Massachusetts. I’m telling it true.”

When the ghost stopped, she asked: “What happened to Big Daryl?”

“The Panic of 1819 happened, that’s what. Money flew out of the damn banks like startled crows. Soon enough we couldn’t afford the taxes on the land we owned, and then couldn’t afford to feed the pigs. My daddy did his best to keep the place going, but there wasn't nothing for it. We were running out of food, both in the sty and in our house. So, seeing no other choice, he started slaughtering the pigs. Had to sell the pork, he said. I told him he’d never sell it all before it started to turn, but he was determined. Damned determined. I told him he was being a son of a bitch. I told him he was a bastard. But he just shook his head, all sad like. Said I had broken his rule about loving the animals. Said I was acting like the damn pigs were more important than my family—which didn't make no sense.” The ghost paused. “An awful day. You could hear the pigs screaming halfway across town. I know. I tried to get away. I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t get away.”

“No.”

“And you loved Big Daryl.”

“I did. Same as I loved the dogs my daddy gave me. Maybe more.” The ghost paused again. She thought she could see something in the corner of her eye—a deeper darkness moving in her near-black basement. “He didn’t trust me. He didn’t think that I knew what I was talking about. I cursed him, I told him again that he was being a damn idiot. I even tried to fight him at one point. He wrestled me to the ground. Got pig’s blood all over my shirt. My father was set on killing them, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

“So what did you do?”

The door at the top of the stairs opened. Wan yellow kitchen light flooded the basement.

“Mom,” said the girl at the top of the stairs.

Carolyn huffed. The ghost was gone. She didn’t hear or see anything that told her so. She just knew.

She hurried up the stairs. Her daughter had a nightmare, she said. She had a nightmare about a monster, she said. Carolyn nodded and listened as she heated up a glass of milk in the microwave. She watched her daughter drink it, willing the warm milk to go down her throat faster than it was.

Once she was back in her bed, Carolyn was back to the basement. The spirits had been knocked loose; she could feel it. She’d have to wait—very still, very patient—for the night to settle again. For the threads of youth from her daughter’s voice to leave the stuffy basement air.

Hours passed. Her fingers were beginning to cramp.

“I was sixteen years old,” the ghost said.

She didn’t type. “You were sixteen years old.”

“I was sixteen years old, and my father was a swineherd. We had forty pigs. Forty beauties. Big, fat pigs—biggest in the county, in fact—and Big Daryl was by far the biggest.”

The ghost traipsed through his story again—right up to the slaughter.

“So what did you do?” Carolyn asked again, readying fingers to type.

“I took Big Daryl,” said the ghost.

“Where did you take him?”

“The place didn’t have a name. All I knew was that no one would find us there. Not many spots in this world to hide a five-hundred-pound pig. But my friends had showed me this old nest of caves, probably seven miles north of where we were. I stole the wagon and two of the mules. I loaded up Big Daryl while my daddy was sleeping off a drink. Not an easy thing to do—stealing a one-eyed, half-ton pig. But I did it. I got him up the ramp and into the wagon. And my daddy didn’t stir. No, he didn’t stir at all.”

“You loaded up Big Daryl while your daddy was sleeping,” she repeated. She didn’t know why repeating their words back seemed to help. Maybe it was just the comfort of another voice. Besides, in her experience, the ghosts didn’t want to hear very much aside from their own stories. What else was there to talk about, really?

“I was going to bring it back in the morning. I swear I was. My plan was to load up Big Daryl and stash him away somewhere—a spot where my daddy’s knives couldn’t find him. I took as much feed as I could carry and set off north.” The ghost paused. “I know it was a stupid plan, but it was my only plan. And it felt important. Unspeakably important.”

The door opened.

“Mom.”

She slapped her palms on the tabletop. Carolyn took a breath.

“What is it?” she yelled up the stairs, knowing that she shouldn’t be yelling.

Her daughter hesitated, then said, “I had an accident.”

“Can you change your sheets?”

Again, silence from her daughter. She just stood there, looking small and pathetic under the golden glow of fluorescent bulbs. When her eyes had adjusted, Carolyn could see the stain on the front of her pajamas. Her fingers pressed on the table, leveraging her to stand.

Carolyn went up the stairs. Into her daughter's room. She ripped the sheets from the bed, ignoring the sterile piss-stink as much as she could, and threw them in the corner. She tugged fresh sheets over the bed and ushered her daughter back into bed.

“No more talking to mommy tonight, okay?” Carolyn said, her mind already back on the ghost. “Mommy has work to do. Okay?”

Her daughter didn’t respond. She thought she heard a choked sob in the dark, but she didn’t have time for that. Dawn was coming fast.

She went back to the basement. Silence. Stillness. Another midnight breeze huffed through the window. The starlight wasn’t starlight at all; just faint spots of white paint on velvet black. Carolyn was staring at them again, vaguely listening for any noise from above, when the ghost spoke again.

“I was sixteen years old.” His voice seemed to shutter. Maybe he could feel the dawn coming, too.

Carolyn sighed. “You were sixteen years old.”

What felt like hours later, he said: “Unspeakably important. So I took him north. I lit no lamps and drove the mules hard. Once we had reached the path, I hitched the mules to an elm and coaxed Big Daryl from the back of the wagon. I found the path in the moonlight. I led him down, through the woods, and into the mouth of the cave.”

“You led him into a cave.”

“A cave as black as night.”

She nodded, her fingers moving quickly. “As black as night.”

“But the cave went deeper than I had remembered. I led him down—far, far down. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I could feel him getting nervous. He’d squeal when a rock brushed against him in the dark. Which happened a lot, as you can imagine.” The ghost went silent. “I’ve never heard anything so loud as those squeals. We walked for—well, it must have been hours, and that’s all I had down in those caves. The feel of the rock and the squeals of Big Daryl.”

“That’s all you had.”

“Until I tripped. My foot caught on a rock and I fell down. Big Daryl screeched something fierce, I tell you. I fell a lot farther than I thought I would. When I hit the bottom, I knew a few things right away: that my leg was broken, and that I had little hope of being found.”

Carolyn heard padded footsteps above—the obvious footstep of a child trying to go unnoticed. The footsteps crossed the kitchen, went into the laundry room, lingered there for a moment, and then dashed back up the stairs. She cracked her neck.

Instead of starting over, the ghost continued: “Days passed. Days, I tell you. I was hungry. Thirsty. I was bleeding—bleeding too much, have no doubt of it. Big Daryl had gone silent. Silent as the grave. At first I heard him working through the feed I had brought, but after a while, even that tapered off. I didn’t like that, and I liked it even less as time slipped by faster and faster. I had hoped that maybe he had left, worked his way out of the caves somehow, but I could feel a heat coming down the mouth of the cave. The heat of something big. I didn’t know what it meant.”

The ghost’s voice was rising now. She wondered, not for the first time, if she were to flip on the lights, if she could get a glimpse of him. Flat brimmed hat. Smudges on his cheeks. A crescent of dirt under his fingernails.

“I heard his hooves on the cave floor before I smelled him. But I knew he was coming. Big Daryl had worked his way through the stones. He’s trying to reach me, I thought. Maybe he’s coming to help me. Maybe he’ll drag me out of that hole, like the dogs in those stories. Hell, I thought we’d make the papers or maybe even one of the minstrel shows. ‘Big Daryl Saves The Sixteen-Year-Old.’ Something like that, with a big fat fellow to play Big Daryl. But it didn’t work out that way.” He paused again. “It was pitch dark in that cave. I swear it was. But in that moment I thought I saw Big Daryl’s eye. There was something—I don’t know, positively moony about it. A yellowed hue. Jaundiced, maybe. But it was glowing in all that dark. And it was coming closer. I swear it was. Too close, and too fast. I told him so, but he didn’t listen to me. No, Big Daryl never even slowed his pace. Not for a second.”

Her fingers kept moving while he described what happened next. The feeling of Big Daryl’s hooves on his chest. How the pig bit his upper arm first, snapping the bones there with shocking strength. How the pig tore off big chunks on his flesh. How Big Daryl ignored his sobs and punches and calls for his father.

“And all I could see was that one eye,” he said. “Glowing in the dark. Hanging right above me. My God, I thought there were a thousand of those eyes by the end. Thousands and thousands of them.”

For the last time, this ghost left her. She felt the new solitude as she felt all unfeelable things. The way she felt time passing. The way she felt her own weight in the chair. Carolyn leaned back, thinking over the sixteen-year-old’s story. And then she remember that she hadn’t changed her daughter’s pajamas after her accident. Just the sheets.

Her fingers began to tremble. It was still her basement, just without the light. She tried to tell herself that, but it brought her no comfort. Was there a pig in all that blackness? A half-ton beast lurking beyond the edge of her computer screen, stomach growling?

Carolyn looked out the basement window, hoping—praying—for a hint of dawn. But she saw only stars. Thousands and thousands of them.