by Eli Connaughton

            On a day in early November, the year before my father died, Brady and I were in the empty lot next to our cousin Margaret’s house looking for bones. Margaret was two years older than me and knew about things like french kissing, washing your hair with beer, and the more gruesome details of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crash, so I never questioned her assertion that devil worshippers sacrificed goats next door.

            My cousin lived in Hartsville, SC, and from what I could tell in 1977, there wasn’t much else to do there except worship Satan and catch minnows in the muddy waters of Lake Prestwood. They didn’t even have a McDonald’s. Brady and I would tell our friends back in Greenville, and they would look at us and shake their heads in shock and pity.

            Frankly, the lot looked like a place one might worship Satan. The ground was covered with dead grass like hay strewn over a barn floor. It grabbed at my shoes when I walked, releasing clouds of gnats that flew at my mouth. Tall pines edged the property on all sides and, if you looked up at them for too long, you felt they were all straining toward the middle. I imagined it was like being inside a whale’s mouth on the verge of closing. In the middle of the lot was an iron drum that had probably been a well at one time. But we believed it was a cauldron where the goats were boiled, the spells were cast and the devil was summoned.

            It was a cool day, and the sky was a crayon blue somewhere between cornflower and aquamarine. Margaret and I had magnifying glasses. Brady had a pair of Aunt Teeny’s bifocals which she placed on the end of her freckled nose. We combed the grass for pieces of hooves or fur.

            “Look at this,” Margaret said, and Brady and I jerked our heads up in anticipation. She held out a crumpled beer can. “It’s pretty fresh I think.”

            “Let me see,” said Brady. She pushed the glasses higher along the bridge of her nose. They were black and pointed at the corners which made her look much older than her seven years. Brady sniffed the beer can. Caressed its aluminum folds. She was clearly in awe. I was not so sure, unable to shake the nagging suspicion that my cousin was out of her mind.

            “C’mon y’all,” Margaret said. “I want to find some goat bones.”

            Brady also wanted to find goat bones because she wanted to take one home and threaten Steven Lowery with it if he tried to kiss her hand again. I didn’t really think we would find much else besides beer cans and cigarette butts. And yet there was a part of me, a part I was slowly learning to protect, that hoped we might find something. Something that would turn this empty lot into a place where things happened. The kinds of things that just because they happened and we discovered them, would make us into different people.

            “Y’all come over here,” Margaret said. She was leaning over the cauldron.

            “Don’t do that,” I said.

            Margaret popped up. A grin moved over her face. “You scared Libby?”

            “No,” I said. “I just don’t want you to fall in and get us in trouble.”

            “You looked like you were scared,” she smiled wider. “Brady, are you scared?”

            My younger sister fixed her distorted eyes on us from behind the bifocals. “No,” she said. “But my head kind of hurts. Can I use your magnifying glasses for a while and you wear these?”

            “I don’t want my head to hurt,” Margaret said. I agreed.

            “It’s not fair,” Brady said. She crossed her arms, put her chin down to her chest and began to sniffle.

            “Alright,” I sighed. “Take mine.” I held it out to her.

            “I’ll only borrow it for a minute,” Brady said. Almost immediately, I wanted to take it back.

            “Y’all really need to see this,” Margaret said. She leaned farther into the well so that we could no longer see her head.

            “Let me see,” Brady said. She left me and flung herself at the side of the well. She had to stand on tip toe to be able to bend over the edge.

            “Gross,” Brady said. “What is that?”

             “A rat. I bet it’s a sacrifice,” Margaret said.

            I moved to one side of Brady who was now yelling things into the well to hear her own echo. “Booger! Orange juice!”

            “Shut up,” I said and peered into the well. I didn’t see anything at first. The well had been filled in over time, the bottom not even five feet away. It was covered with wet leaves and weeds. Inside the well was dark, but the sunlight sneaked over our shoulders in places, illuminating its mossy sides or the occasional bloom of a tiny wildflower. And then I saw it. A dark lump, a snake-like tail. Flies rose and settled, one or two at a time.

            “Butter beans! Basketball!” Brady yelled.

            “We need a stick,” Margaret said and marched away in search on one. “C’mon.”

            Brady skipped away, but I leaned over even farther, squinting into the dark. It was probably just a leaf, a triangle of sunlight reflected from its slick surface. But this was the year before my father would collapse in the bathroom while brushing his teeth. The year it was still possible to believe whatever you wanted.

            “Brady,” I called. She reappeared and leaned into the cauldron again.

            “Do you see that?” I whispered.

            “Apple tree. Cootie butt!” The words tangled among the weeds before floating back to us. Brady laughed at her own joke.

            “Cootie butt,” she said to me. She held the magnifying glass to one huge warped eye, moved her face closer to mine. “Do I look weird?” she asked.

            “Can I see that for a second?” I said.

            She pulled her head from me, assessed me with a suspicious eyeball.

            “I’ll give it back,” I promised.

            She handed it to me and skipped off again. “Margaret, wait for me,” she yelled.

            I leaned over the edge of the cauldron and looked through the magnifying glass. There it was. A sliver of white, half buried in the leaves. A splinter of bone. Evidence.

            I could hear the chanting. I could see them, heads swallowed by dark hoods. They circled the cauldron, conjuring up death in an empty lot in Hartsville.