Nancy Swanson had a peculiar feeling nag at her all morning. In some moments it lessened. And in others, such as when she set out three glasses of cold milk for her family, it grew stronger. Initially, she thought the feeling was a strong sense of déjà vu, but as the morning rolled along, that no longer seemed accurate. Nancy didn't think she was experiencing a vague memory of something that had already happened, but more that she was forgetting a vague memory. As though her past was a watercolor left in the rain with all the paint smearing together and losing any definition that might have existed.
This sensation did not slow the normal business of the Swanson Dairy. Her daughter, Emily, was charged with surveying the lower field that morning. The cattle herd was due back from their little vacation in two days and it would cause any level of trouble if a spot of unmended fence sent forty dairy cows wandering into Carter Anderson's property. Meanwhile, her husband, Eric had business off the farm, expecting to be away for the majority of the day. Buying supplies and likely wasting considerable time at the hardware store before driving the two hours to their wholesaler for some contract renegotiations. These trips had been a monthly staple of her life as long as she could remember, though her memory didn't seem all that trustworthy. When they were younger, Nancy worried that Eric used the trips to have an affair with an older woman, one closer to his age that let him escape the trouble of marrying an impish girl with girlish ideals. That worry passed as Nancy became a mother and had better things to worry about. Eric never gave her any real cause to worry either.
Instead, she looked forward to his absence a little more each month, especially as Emily grew up. It gave them a nice reprieve from the constant pressure of extracting profit from the dairy. That near panic to remain financially stable had faded as well, but the mild pleasures of having the man out of the house didn't. But, of course, they weren't without a male influence any more. Not since Cain had taken the job as a farmhand. Over the years, plenty of young bucks had lent their labor to the dairy, but none like Cain. Seasonal workers came in two varieties. The first a group of hard, honest workers pulling themselves and their families out of whatever hole life had put them in. The irony of their quality being that they soon no longer needed to do the kind of work at which they excelled. The other type never made much of themselves. They weren't inherently bad people, but usually carried a fatal flaw that weighed them down. Cain, as far as Nancy could peg, sat right in the middle of these two groups.
Eric kissed her on the cheek before he went out the door. Emily yelled that she was heading out before slipping out of the back door. Nancy was alone in the house, draining the last few drops of milk from her glass. She dropped it in the sink, washed her hands, and went to put on her boots.
When she emerged from the house a few minutes later, she wondered where a radio was playing. The weather had been unseasonably pleasant as of late. This morning was no exception with a nice cool breeze taking the heat out of a stunningly bright morning sun. On that breeze, Nancy could hear the faint words of a very distant song. She wondered if Cain or her daughter had left a radio playing in a shed somewhere, not an uncommon occurrence. Looking over at the milking house, she saw Cain's truck already parked out front. She hadn't expected him in early that morning. If she had, she'd have asked him up for breakfast, but he knew as much as she did that with Eric out of town, it was meant to be a lax day around the farm. Figuring the music was coming from the milking house, she headed down the hill to say good morning.
As she walked, the music shifted around her coming from a new direction with every step. Nancy felt flushed as she grew closer to the milking house. It looked slightly wrong, as though the long familiar angles of the roof had changed. Or that the shade of faded red paint had darkened. The building looked cleaner and more ordered. The bits of loose twine or the clumps of dropped sod that created the debris around the house were gone, leaving neatly organized plots of grass and gravel. With each step, a clutching feeling gripped Nancy's chest, constricting around her lungs as an indefinable fear took hold. She finally stopped when the door to the milking house swung open in a slow creak and the music grew louder.
Nancy Swanson believed in ghosts and demons. It was a belief she'd tried her whole life to shake, but her parents had done too good a job. She'd rebelled and left the cultish belief system behind, the one that told her that touching herself would cause her to burn forever in the fires of hell. It was the one that told her that demons waited in the dark places of the world, ready to snatch the soul of the unfaithful. Nancy had resolved to live her life and raise her own daughter free of that kind of superstitious foolishness. In part, she had succeeded. Emily had little inclination toward religion of any kind, but certainly not toward the fundamental insanity that Nancy had escaped. The other part though, the part that lurked at the back of her mind and surfaced more easily in the dark of night, stayed with Nancy. And it reared its ugly head when the milking house door opened slightly, seemingly of its own accord, and Nancy knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that a demon waited inside.
As Nancy stood rooted to the spot, the song on the wind grew louder. An arm wrapped itself around Nancy's shoulder. She would have screamed, but found herself unable to move. Looking to her side, she saw a woman so utterly beautiful and perfect that Nancy thought she might cry.
This is what a goddess would look like if one came down and wrapped her arm around me.
Lucy's head lolled to one side and her eyes squinted at the door. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "I think he's a little too eager," she said. "You wouldn't believe how much he's wanted you, Nancy. I don't even think he understood it. Humans are so wrapped up in their own worries that they can't see how much the other forces of this world pull on them. If you had gotten to him before I did, I don't think anything I could have offered would have moved him. So many people are walking around broken that they don't even recognize the thing that can fix them. Until its too late." Lucy walked around in front of Nancy and put both hands on Nancy's shoulders. "You're broken too, of course. A different kind of break than dear Cain, but broken nonetheless. So many of my new friends are damaged before I help them. You were infected from the day you were conceived. Told to be ashamed of what you were simply because you were a woman. When I was given this power, I believed that I could save every single soul in Small Creek, but looking at your past, Nancy, I don't think that's true any more. But I can save you."
"What are you?" Nancy mumbled, her eyes locked with Lucy's. The specter of beauty's heat radiated off her and filled Nancy with desire that she could barely control. "What have you done to Cain?"
"I made him a prophet. A prophet of freedom, of fecundity, of sin. I fixed him. Just like he can fix you. All that old damage, rotting your soul from the inside out. He can absolve you of it. The wicked lies that your parents told you about a god who would damn you for being human, they have festered in your soul for the whole of your life. And no, you did not spare your daughter or your marriage or your friends from that infection. It spread even as you denied it. In small words and small actions, taking root in the minds of those around you. Some, like your husband, resented it. And others, like your daughter, harbored it, letting it take root. She's more pious than you know. At least for now."
"I don't know what you want from me," Nancy said. "I'm not an evil person. I will not give in to you."
