Page 81 of The Premonition at Withers Farm

She spun in the opposite direction. Darkness.

“...falling down...”

Perliett’s breath caught in a horrified sob. What sweet child would be out in the middle of the night, singing nursery rhymes in a cornfield?

“London Bridge is falling down...”

A cornstalk snapped just beyond Perliett’s right shoulder. Jerking her head up, she froze, fear invading every part of her and pinning her to the ground.

The girl was scrawny. Her dress hung from her body like a flour sack. Her head tipped to the side, studying Perliett, the whites of her eyes making them piercing.

“Help me,” Perliett whispered. She tried reaching toward the girl, but pain shot through her shoulder at the attempt.

The little girl smiled. It was not friendly. She tilted her head in the opposite direction.

“Please,” Perliett tried again.

The child studied her, the night’s breeze lifting tendrils of dark hair to brush across her face. She opened her mouth. “‘Who’ll dig his grave? I, said the Owl, with my pick and trowel, I’ll dig his grave.’” The girl lifted her hand, and Perliett pushed herself backward with a whimper.

Fingers wrapped around a handle. The strange girl held up a small gardening shovel.

“I’ll dig your grave,” she whispered with a grin.

Stalks slapped her face as Perliett plowed through the corn. She fled, praying that the darkness would hide her, begging for God to keep the clouds in place, obscuring the full moon. What could a girl, no more than ten or eleven, do to her? But whathadbeen done to her already?

Energy surged through her, masking the pain from her earlier assault. Perliett held her arms in front of her, pushing the corn away. The road had to be nearby. Ithadto be!

She looked wildly over her shoulder and saw no menace behind her, no child chasing her. Her feet were unsteady on the rutted, dry earth. The smell of mold and corn slammed into her senses with a persistence that made it impossible to forget where she was. Lost in a Michigan cornfield, in the middle of the night.

Perliett was certain she’d run for hours by the time her body broke free from the prison grid of stalks that surrounded her. It had probably been minutes, but regardless, Perliett burst into a shuddered sob as she spotted the road before her. In the distance, she saw the peak of a roof.

The Withers farm? It didn’t appear to be. Where was she?

She didn’t care. Perliett aimed for the house, barely noticing the congestion in her lungs that made breathing difficult, not paying attention to the bottoms of her feet that throbbed with pain.

The night was eerily still. The breeze had settled down as if finally retiring for the night. The crickets seemed to have hushed in reverence of Perliett’s attempt to flee the frightening child with the shovel.

Dig her grave?

It was a garden spade, but how morbid! What terrible words to come from the mouth of a child! But whether in the form of a child or something far worse, death licked at her heels, and it was the thought of death that catapulted Perliett up the porch steps to the door of the house. She brought her fists down with urgency again and again, pounding against the wood until her hands ached.

She heard a man holler from inside, “I’m coming! I’m coming!”

A light flicked on. She heard the sound of the latch turning, and then the door opened.

An older man peered through the screen door at her, holding up an oil lantern to see her better.

“Please let me in! I beg of you!” Perliett clutched the front of her filthy, torn nightgown.

“Laura!” the man yelled as he pushed the screen door open. “Come in, come in, child!”

Perliett stumbled through the door, vaguely recognizing the man as Mr. Hannity. A local farmer. He had a small farm just up the road from George Wasziak’s place.

Mr. Hannity grabbed on to Perliett as her legs gave way and she collapsed. He held her up, steering her past a parlor and into another sitting room, where he lowered her to an overstuffed chair.

“Laura!” he barked again.

An older woman’s voice responded, “Coming!” Then sheappeared, tying the strings of her wrapper around herself, her gray hair hanging in a loose braid flung over her shoulder. Her eyes widened at the sight of Perliett. “Oh, good gracious!” Laura—Mrs. Hannity—rushed to Perliett’s side. “Are you all right?”