Mercy's Accomplice

Flash Fiction

This is my first attempt at Flash Fiction. I am a few words over 1200, so I am close.

Please let me know what you think, and if you would like to see more posts like this!

Thank you for reading.

Mercy’s Accomplice

Abel was frantic. Slamming his paws against the front door. Sondra looked up from her chair by the fire. This wasn’t like him. The blizzard outside was howling, the farmhouse groaning; it wouldn’t be safe outside. Yet with the threat of darkness, he added shrill barking.

She couldn’t take it anymore. Looking out the front window, she studied the field between her and the tree-lined dirt road a few hundred feet away. Deep snow, swirling in the wind. It might be safe if they hurried. She bundled up, including her husband’s winter boots.

Abel quieted when she put on her coat, and he sat before her as she offered his leash. She grabbed a flashlight, a meager help if he ran into the coming dark.

When she opened the door, he lunged ahead, scanning the road, searching. Then the frenzied bark returned, and he broke loose, running straight for the woods.

Following his tracks, she found Abel prancing and growling at a man half-buried. The flashlight revealed one leg folded awkwardly beneath him, and the snow around his chest held the tint of old rust.

“Abel!” When he came, she firmly wrapped his leash around her hand. Certainly, a motionless, bleeding man couldn’t have survived long in the storm; she turned back toward home. The sheriff could investigate once she contacted him.

A few steps away from the road, a rustling sent Abel into a register she had never heard from him before. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the man struggling to move. She shuffled across the road, released the leash, and got an arm under the stranger.

It was dark and frigid by the time she had dragged him across their yard and down the storm cellar stairs. He would be warm enough in there until dawn.

Widowed, she lived alone. Injured or not, she didn’t trust an unknown man in her home.

Later, she brought him a blanket and pillow. He told her his name was Clay Bower. He said he’d fallen from his horse at the fork in the road and crawled until he saw a chimney with smoke. He said thank you, ma’am, more times than a man in that much pain should have breath for.

Abel wouldn’t come down the cellar steps. He sat at the top of them while she spoke with Clay. His eyes never left her as he watched the darkness below him.

Around midnight, she checked again. Clay was half-delirious with fever, mumbling about his family, two valleys over. About his wife being gone, and his children too. Between the delirium and his sobs, he was difficult to understand.

She’d brought broth to warm him, but when she heard what sounded like ‘so much blood’, she went still, the ladle full in her hand.

Fever talk, she told herself. She remembered the rust stain in the snow from an injury she’d yet to discover. That was all it was. But she was careful to lock the storm cellar doors before she returned inside.

There was no way she could get word into town this late and in a snowstorm. She’d figure it out in the morning.

Sheriff Norbert Layton and his deputies came with first light. “Morning, Mrs. Grayson. Did you happen to see anyone pass through this way last night?”

She had the whole truth sitting right there, and it would have cost her nothing to give it to him. But snow had covered the bloody drag marks; there was nothing to tell him about the man lying in her cellar.

“No one’s come to my door,” she said. This was true enough; he hadn’t come to her door, and he hadn’t passed through. She’d gone out and brought him to the cellar herself.

Layton nodded. “Be careful. A man murdered his family two valleys over. He was last seen riding this way.”

Abel chose that moment to squeeze past the sheriff’s legs and plant himself on the cellar doors. The rumble wasn’t quite a growl.

“He’s never done that with…” she started to say, then caught herself. Let her dog stand there growling for no reason, she’d say nothing to explain him.

Layton looked at the dog and the locked cellar doors. “Abel’s usually got better manners than that.”

She nodded. “Long night.”

He looked at his hands, then back at the cellar doors. “I expect I’ll swing back through tomorrow. Check on you.” He seemed satisfied, though as she watched them ride off, she wasn’t sure.

“Come, Abel. Back inside.”

Clay’s fever broke that afternoon. The please-and-thank-you politeness thinned out, revealing a colder heart underneath. He asked her, almost idly, whether the sheriff came around often. He looked in her eyes as he asked.

She understood then, with a clarity that came too late, exactly who she’d been protecting.

By early evening, he had healed enough to move about in the cellar. She made sure to have Abel with her when she checked on him. She saw it in his eyes plainly, for the first time undisguised; he was not an innocent traveler.

So much blood. Why hadn’t she listened?

Sheriff Layton came back the next morning, as he’d said he would, but this time Clay stood behind the door, by her shoulder, the whole conversation, listening to every word she gave. The tip of a knife pressed into her back, hidden, but clearly present.

The cellar latch hung open. She was not, ordinarily, a careless woman. The sheriff knew this. She let Abel do what he wanted, which was to stand between the sheriff and the house without moving.

Layton looked from the open latch to the dog, then to her anxious face. “Roads seem clear today, should you need to come to town. The man we were seeking must be long gone.” He did not look back at the cellar or her as he rode away.

She watched as he crossed the road into the woods, taking the narrow path that led toward town. His horse’s blaze flashed briefly as he turned to face her land.

That afternoon, Clay twisted her arm back, forcing her to the barn. He told her plainly what happened to people who saw too much. He smiled when he told her what had happened to the family two valleys over. While she saddled her horse, he wrenched Abel’s collar, holding a knife at his throat.

Then Sheriff Layton peered in the open door.

It was her last chance. She yanked on the cinch and shoved the horse toward the stall wall. He reared as expected, shrieking and striking out. With Clay startled, Abel pulled back and latched his teeth onto his wrist. The knife dropped.

He kicked Abel, who flew, whimpering, into the wall. Layton moved fast, wrestling Clay to the ground. As he reached for the knife, Sondra stepped from the stall, planting her boot on it.

Afterward, with Clay in irons secured to the wagon, Layton didn’t ask why she hadn’t told him. They both knew there’d been a window, and that she’d ignored it.

“Abel,” was all he said, crouching to scratch the dog’s ears, “is a better judge of character than most folks I know.”

She said nothing. There wasn’t a version of the truth that made her even half as good as Abel.