by Kwame Mbalia
“Yeah.”
Granddad looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, yes, sir.”
He held my eyes a moment longer, then went back to looking at the road.
“Well,” Nana continued, turning around and picking up her knitting, “despite what your granddad said earlier”—she gave him a glare—“let me know when you are. Your mama told me you ain’t been eating much, and we’re gonna fix that. And don’t you have some writing to do? That’s what your counselor wants you to focus on.”
“Boy don’t need no counselor,” Granddad rumbled. “He needs to work. Ain’t no time for moping when horses need feeding and fences need mending.”
“Walter!” Nana scolded. “He needs to—”
“I know what he needs—”
I shook my head and stopped paying attention. After spending a day in the car with them, I’d realized that this was what they did. They argued, they laughed, they sang, they argued again, and they knitted. Well, Nana knitted. But they were two sides of the same old coin.
With Granddad, everything was about work. Work, work, work.
Bored? Here’s some work.
Finished working? Here’s more work.
Need someone to talk to? Obviously, that meant you didn’t work hard enough, so you know what? Have a little bit more work.
Nana, on the other hand, sang and hummed when she wasn’t talking, which almost never happened, because she always had a new story to share. “Do you know why the owl can’t sleep?” she’d say, and off the story would go, and you’d sit there and listen, just being polite at first, but by the end, you’d be on the edge of your seat.
I smiled. Eddie had loved listening to my grandmother. When she’d come to visit earlier this year, he’d practically followed her around, his journal in hand.
Speaking of which…
My left hand rested on top of it in the seat next to me, and I traced the symbol stitched into the front cover.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
I looked up to see Nana peeking back over the seat.
“Hm? I mean, uh, yes…ma’am?”
Granddad nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief.
Nana smiled. “Is that for your writing?”
I hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.” I held up the book so she could see it, and her eyes widened at the symbol on the cover.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked. Granddad turned to see what she was looking at, but Nana flapped a hand at him. “Watch the road, Walter.”
“From Eddie…” I began, then paused. “I mean, his mom gave it to me. It is…was for us. For our school project. Why? What’s wrong?”
Could she see it? Could she tell that the book was glowing, even in the daylight?
Nana pursed her lips. “That symbol. I just haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“You know what it is?”
“Well…” She glanced at Granddad, who’d tuned us out as soon as we started talking about writing. “It’s the spider’s web, an old African symbol for creativity and wisdom. It shows how tangled and complicated life can be. But with a little imaginative thinking, we can solve most of our problems and those of others.”
“Do you notice anything else about the journal?” I asked her.
Nana laughed, a bright, joyous sound that infected anyone listening. “Is this a test?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I don’t see nothing but procrastination. Go ’head and give it a try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I frowned. So Nana could see the symbol, this spiderweb, but not that it was glowing. Well, that didn’t make me feel any better.
Granddad smacked the steering wheel. “Y’all need to stop filling his head with that mess about symbols. He needs to stay in the real world, think about what he did wrong last night. The boy need to focus! Boxing ain’t gonna just happen—you got to train your body and your mind.”
“Granddad, I don’t want—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a Strong, and—”
“Walter,” Nana interrupted, “don’t be so hard on the boy.”
“He needs some toughening up—y’all being too soft on him!”
“Now look—” Nana started whisper-lecturing Granddad, who shook his head and grumbled beneath his breath.
I slid down in my seat and tried to block out the argument. I let my thumb trace the cover of the journal, and before my brain could tell me not to, I yanked it into my lap and flipped to a random page. So what if it glowed? It was still a book, and reading it would be better than listening to any more of Granddad’s insults disguised as life lessons. Or reliving that bus accident.
I mean, really, what could go wrong?
TWO FIGURES CROUCHED NEAR THE base of a giant oak tree. Huge knotted roots sprawled in the center of twisting, creeping shadows. The first figure—a large Black man with arms of mahogany, fists like rocks, and shoulders broader than mountains—went down on one knee in the soft, damp earth. He rested his hand on a smooth log beside him.
“You sure this is necessary, BR?” His voice rumbled like a thousand trains all heading to the same place.
The second figure—a rabbit as big as a kindergartener—twitched nervously and snapped, “Of course I’m sure, John! Hurry up! We need to get this over with.” Something clanked in the distance and the rabbit jumped. “Now!”
“Okay, BR, okay,” John said. He straightened up…and up…and up, until his silhouette seemed larger than the old tree. “But you need to lend this ole tool some power. I can’t do it alone.”
“Whatever, just get on with it!”
John picked up the log, except it…wasn’t a log. It was a handle—the smooth shaft of a massive hammer. Carvings were etched up and down the wood, and it hummed as giant hands found familiar grooves.
John. With a hammer. No way…. I knew that name. Those characters. John Henry, and BR…BR…Brer Rabbit? But—
Brer Rabbit put his paws on the huge iron head of the hammer and began to speak in a low tone. His whispers swirled and grew until they sounded like shouts and drumming and stomping feet. The hammer’s head—a thick metal block marred with pits and scrapes—began to glow with blazing, red-hot light, and John pressed it against a tangle of roots.
A yawning black hole opened in the ground at the base of the tree.
John bent over and picked a small object off the ground. I couldn’t make out what it was. “Go,” he said to it, setting it gently into the hole. “Go now and find it. Find it. FIND IT!”
Click click click
I yanked my hands off the journal with a gasp. Sweat poured down my face, and I was pressed against the back seat of the Cadillac as we motored along. The storm clouds had finally dissolved, and the sun was almost at the horizon, its orange and red rays pouring through the window.
What was that? A dream? Had I fallen asleep while reading?
Then why had it felt so real? And why was the journal closed on the seat next to me?
“You okay, baby?” Nana asked without turning around.
Click click click
Her knitting needles moved furiously. Was it my imagination or was she sweating, too?
“Tristan?”
Click click click
But the pressure of that…whatever it was still sat on my chest and locked my mouth. It felt hot and cramped and smothering in the car, like I’d been tucked in with a giant itchy wool blanket, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I somehow managed to lurch over to the door and open the window to try to get some fresh air.
“Tristan!”
“Boy, put that window up!” Granddad barked from the front. “Lettin’ all the dust get in here. Is you out your mind?”
One breath. Two breaths.
“TRISTAN!”
Granddad twisted around, but it was Nana who placed a hand on my knee, and suddenly the pressure was gone. I reluctantly shut the window, then took a deep breath. The feelings of something pressin
g down on me had faded to a lurking presence. I could handle that, though it made my neck itch. Nana removed her hand but kept peering at me, a worried look on her face.
“You okay, baby?”
I nodded.
“Answer your grandmother when she—”
“Hush, Walter,” Nana scolded. “Mind the road.”
I shook my head. “Just…got a little carsick, I think.”
Nana watched me as if she suspected that wasn’t true, but she didn’t pry any further. “Why don’t you try to take a nap, dear. Only another hour or so and then we’ll be at the farm, and you and Granddad have some work to do before supper.” She turned back around, but, just for a second, I could’ve sworn her eyes glanced at the journal.
Click click click
Nana continued knitting, and I looked at the journal on the other end of the seat. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached over and shaded it with my hands, already knowing what would happen but checking anyway.
The journal pulsed quicker and stronger, with a bright green glow.
Sometime later, Granddad slowed down and turned onto a bumpy gravel road that climbed up a long hill. “We’re here,” he said.
I jerked out of a daze. I slipped Eddie’s journal into my backpack, then stretched and looked warily out the window. Everything looked…well, it looked like the country.
Yay.
“We are? Where?” I asked.
“Home, sweetie,” Nana said, packing up her knitting and turning to smile at me again. “Just in time for me to get dinner started.”
“Still about an hour left of sun,” Granddad said. “Can at least get part of that old fence fixed.”
The car chugged to the top of the hill, and I sat up as the Strong family farm sprawled out to the horizon. A patchwork quilt of green and brown fields surrounded a huge barn and a slightly smaller house. Rows of corn stood at attention as the Cadillac ambled past, like a chariot returning with the land’s king and queen. And Nana and Granddad did seem to sit up straighter as we got closer to the house. Even I could feel it, a tug from something that had been in my family for generations. This was our duchy, our territory. The Strong domain.
My nose pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass, I spotted a stand of trees at the far corner of the farm. They were old, like a section of forest that time had forgotten. Their twisted, giant trunks were bunched together like some sort of crowd…or guards. As I stared at them, the pressure on my chest came back—the feeling from before. Someone…or something was out there searching.
Searching for me.
A flash between the branches caught my eye as we drove past.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What’s what, sweetie?”
“In those trees over there. Something’s shining.”
Granddad shook his head. “More foolishness, that’s what it is.”
“Hush, Walter,” Nana said. “That’s just the Bottle Tree forest, baby.”
“The what?” What sort of trees were those—and there was another one! Something flashed again, like light on a mirror or glass.
“Bottle Trees. Oh now, would you look at that? I skipped a stitch. What was I saying? Oh, the Bottle Trees. I could’ve sworn I’ve talked up one wall and down the other about this before.” She turned around in her seat. “Slaves carried the practice over with them from Africa as a way to capture and dispose of any haints wandering around.”
“Haints?” I pressed my nose against the glass and squinted.
“Evil spirits, baby. Lord knows, plenty of those ramblin’ about, what with…Well, anyway, don’t you worry about it none,” Nana continued. “I don’t want you messing around over there. Them old trees aren’t for playing on. You liable to hurt yourself.”
“Need to cut ’em down,” Granddad grumbled, but Nana just shooed the words away with her hand.
“Hush, Walter. Now look, Tristan, over there….” She started playing tour guide as we drove up to the house, and I settled back, unable to shake the tingling feeling that something weird was going on.
“Grab that end, boy, and lift. Lift! Stop half-steppin’ and put your back into it.”
I heaved at the end of a log as Granddad and I slid it into the empty top slot of a pole. We dropped it into place, and I sagged against the repaired fence with a sigh. We’d been working for the last hour, racing the sun to get this section of fence fixed, and I was exhausted. I hadn’t even had a chance to drop off my bags. I picked up my backpack, and Eddie’s journal nearly fell out of the open compartment. I could’ve sworn I’d closed the zipper….
Granddad watched me put it away and shook his head. He mopped his forehead with an old rag he kept tucked in the back pocket of his overalls, then put it away and rolled his sleeves down.
“You need to leave that writing nonsense alone, boy. Ain’t gonna get you nowhere but confused.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What you got to write about, anyway? Video games? TV? All that city life got you boys soft. I would’ve had your dad out here at the break of dawn. How you think he got them heavyweight shoulders? Strongs work, boy.”
I squeezed the straps of the backpack until they cut into my palms, but I still didn’t say anything.
He spat out the twig he was chewing. “Hmph. Go on, then, and run that extra wire back to the barn. Then clean up for dinner. Hurry up, now—your grandmother’s waiting.”
I grabbed the spool of wire and stalked down the trail toward the barn. I heard Granddad grumbling to himself, and I tried to ignore it. No matter what I did or where I went, someone always wanted to tell me what I was doing wrong and what I should do different.
You’re pretty big, Tristan. Go play football.
Stop reading comic books, Tristan, and go read a real book.
Stop…
I looked up, suddenly aware that the world had gone quiet. I mean, nothing made a sound. No birds, no squirrels, no rustling leaves—even the wind held its breath.
The old stand of trees loomed in front of me.
How long had I been walking? How had I found myself here?
The shadows on the ground deepened and stretched toward me. Thick vines around the trunks seemed to curl like fingers beckoning me closer. They felt desperate, needy. The trees grew larger and larger, and it took me a second to realize that it was because I was walking toward them.
FIND IT.
The words boomed and crashed in my head, a thunderstorm of a command, and I froze. They were the same words, the same voice, from my dream in the car. That had been a dream, right?
I had reached the edge of the trees. A breeze gusted softly from the dark center of the forest, almost like a breath. It smelled…old. Earthy. Like whatever was in there hadn’t been disturbed in years. I didn’t want to be the first new intruder.
And yet…
I took a step forward.
“Tristan? Tristaaaan?” Nana’s voice broke whatever spell had fallen over me, and I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. My right foot hovered in the air, inches away from entering the shadows. I slowly placed it on the ground, then retreated a few steps. I squinted into the trees. Something was in there, and it wanted me. I could feel it.
“Tristan, dinnertime!” Nana’s voice floated out of the sky, riding the breeze in the way only an elder’s voice could.
I backed up farther, then turned and ran through the cornfield to the farmhouse.
No way are you going in those woods, I told myself. No way.
I was wrong.
WHEN THE ATTACK CAME, I was half-asleep.
The car trip, the weird dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream, working on the farm…By the time I went to bed, my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. Still, I couldn’t quite get to sleep.
It wasn’t the darkness, though I wasn’t used to nighttime in Alabama. I was used to the almost-night of Chicago—with the glow of streetlights and the flicker of neon signs outside my window.
Here, the complete l
ack of light made everything seem…different. A flashlight lay on top of the blankets next to me. Not that I’m scared of the dark, you get me, but in case I had to use the bathroom or get a drink of water.
Man, what I wouldn’t have given for a couple of streetlights.
It wasn’t the silence, though it was also way too quiet. Instead of the comforting sounds of cars and trucks and sirens and people talking on the street, I heard cornstalks rustling in the wind. The window wouldn’t close all the way because of the warped wooden frame, and that was good and bad. Good because I didn’t feel so pressed in, so enclosed, but bad because of the crickets.
Maaaan, those crickets. Talk about annoying. How could anything so small make that much noise? It was like a million of them surrounded my window and were screaming the lyrics to the most annoying song you could think of.
Yep, that one you’re thinking of right now.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
And yet it wasn’t the darkness, or the strange sounds, or the unfamiliar house that was keeping me up. The pressure I’d felt on my chest in the car was back, waiting for me to relax. I knew that as soon as I did, it would seize me like an opponent in the ring, clinching my head between its gloves and waiting for the right moment to let go and hit me with that perfect punch. I could feel it. As soon as—
Thump
The noise had come from across the room, by the window, like something falling to the floor.
Instantly, I sat up, straining to see in the dark.
Now, if I were back in Chicago, I’d just stuff a pillow over my head to block out the noise, figuring it was a neighbor. Our walls were so thin in that apartment, you could sneeze and people two floors down would say Bless you!
But this definitely wasn’t Chicago. So, when something went bump, I paid attention. Especially because I was already on edge. Double especially because the sound was followed by sticky, mucky, stepped-on-a-piece-of-tape footsteps.
I stared around the room. There wasn’t much furniture—a dresser with my backpack (Eddie’s journal still zipped up tight inside), a coatrack, and a chair with my clothes from the day on it. Still, nighttime eeriness turned the shadows of ordinary objects into something twice as creepy. Fingers stretched out of empty space. Shapes combined into creatures that crept toward the bed.