A Spectral Hue

by Craig Laurance Gidney

  But, meth often came bundled with anxiety: the crystal harp was too tightly strung. Plucking the strings drew blood, changing the tone. And then, there was the come down, an untuned harp playing songs of rage and paranoia.

  Now, he felt the same way. No, he felt better than then. There was no anxiety, only wild, unfettered joy. Every atom of his being was filled with this emotion. This was real, and not synthetic emotion.

  He walked for a while. Maybe miles. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t check the time. The immensity of the Shimmer Marsh spread out on his left side. Even in autumn, Linc could feel the life surging in the waters, in the grasses. Things swam, or slithered or flew there. The smell of salt and algae was pungent. Just a thin ribbon of tarmac held it back, barely containing the wet wilderness. Not even the lights lining the road could penetrate the darkness. But that was okay. Linc could see, now. Every blade and every ripple. He heard every whisper of wind, every bird cry.

  On and on the orb went, around bends in the road.

  I could follow her forever, he thought.

  And, just as he thought that, the orb stopped.

  There was a cement building, covered in vines. It was once white, but the paint peeled off. It was probably an old garage. There were rust stains in the shape of long-removed signs. What windows had been there were long gone.

  The will-o’-the-wisp fluttered against the wall that was most free of vines, and then smashed itself against the wall. It vanished.

  Linc laid down his backpack, and pulled out a can of red spray paint. It was the wrong color, of course. But that didn’t matter. He had no particular skill, and that didn’t matter either.

  She would guide him.

  17: Fuchsia (1870)

  They told him, There’s haints in that house.

  The house was in good, if not pristine, condition. Shadrach heard that it had been abandoned a couple of years ago, that the family had lost money after the war and had moved to a major city, in search of steady work. It was a large house that faced the saltwater marsh. Three-story, red brick with a wide wooden porch. It still had intact windows, and the yard, while overgrown, wasn’t yet wild. He’d seen, and slept in, burnt out houses. Places where the floors were rotted through and rain fell from the roof. Places where wildlife nested. Once, he had shared a house with an ornery weasel and her pups. Furthermore, haunting wasn’t necessarily a deterrent. He stayed in a supposedly haunted house with a bunch of other fellow drifters somewhere in Pennsylvania. The “haunting” consisted of a couple creaks and what sounded like footsteps. Shadrach was the only one who had stayed through the night. In the morning, he’d found a nest of decidedly unghostlike raccoons.

  ***

  After the war, the world was full of haunted houses. He’d traveled with a carnival, as a part of the Gallery of Human Oddities and Curiosities up and down the East Coast for three years, passing through towns still damaged. North of the Mason-Dixon line, the crowds were mainly composed of women bereft of husbands and sons. South, there were entire ghost towns full of burned and abandoned buildings. Everyone, Negro or white, had the same bleak, hard-bitten look. Only children were immune to this mood, as pervasive as an illness.

  Kids were the best audience, eager to see Magda the Werewolf Woman, Petra the Pinhead or even himself: Shad the Spotted Negro. Their faces lit up with wild, untrammeled joy or horror when members of the troupe walked on stage. Sometimes, their laughter would encourage a smile or two from the adults.

  It was that innocent joy that got him into the traveling carnival business in the first place. He’d been a worker at a textile factory in Ohio then, toiling over the dye vats, immersed in chemical fumes, stained with a rainbow of dyes. People tended to notice that, instead of the skin condition, and for a while, that was a blessing. He had been fourteen when the first patch showed up on the back of his hand. He had worn gloves to cover the patch, which looked like someone had grafted a white man’s skin there. When Shadrach turned sixteen, the splotch had grown and was joined by pale pink circles around his eyes. By that time, he had given up wearing gloves and dealt with endless stares, awkward questions and overheard insults. Was it leprosy? That man looks like an appaloosa. Is it contagious? He looks like a reverse raccoon. When Cecil Barrett asked him to join the show a few years later, the prospect of entertaining people, especially kids, was appealing. It was much better than the exhausting shifts at the factory. Besides, he would get to travel.

  The work was easy. Shadrach had no extra talent. He was, instead, a living statue with a rapidly developing deformity. He just sat on a stool in a wagon that had been transformed into a kind of stage and let people gawp at him. The adults murmured among themselves, cruel and curious things he was, by now, thoroughly used to. I think it’s paint. It’s like he’s molting—like a snake! That’s the ugliest nigger I ever seen. The children, however, were guileless. There was no spite in their observations. He saw wonder and terror on their little faces.

  Also, he was not the only one they came to stare at. Hirsute Magda, or gentle Petra were more popular attractions. The small group went from Ohio to Pennsylvania and then to New Jersey, mostly visiting small towns, though sometimes they would set up on the outskirts of large cities. Sometimes Mr. Barrett would come across other human oddities and added them to his show. That’s how he met Luigi.

  Luigi was a dwarf, standing just under five feet tall. He was well-muscled and had many tattoos beneath his dusky olive skin. He had curly black hair and piercing black eyes beneath his prominent brow. He joined the troupe somewhere in New Jersey, south of New York City. In addition to being the resident little person (he was dubbed “WeeGee”), he could also juggle. Pins, balls, and knives. (He tried to juggle flaming hoops, but he did not succeed.) Luigi and Shadrach became fast friends, sharing meals, moonshine, cigars, and, eventually, their bodies with each other. When Mr. Barrett caught wind of the buggery, both them were kicked out of the troupe. Luigi returned to New Jersey, and the troupe left Shadrach behind in the small Eastern Shore town where the last show had been.

  ***

  Shimmer was a strange little town, in a limbo area between Maryland and Delaware. The marsh wrapped around the town, making it prone to flooding and bad for farming. A community of colored watermen eked out a living in this harsh environment, harvesting and selling crabs and oysters to more affluent areas. They were a clannish, taciturn bunch. None of the adults cracked a smile at the show and some of the overheard chatter wasn’t that flattering. I already know a dwarf, one woman mumbled. Someone else claimed to have known other Negroes with his skin condition. In spite of this apparent familiarity with ‘freaks,’ no one would rent a room to him.

  So here he was, on the outskirts of town, looking for a way into a haunted house. Except, of course, it wasn’t haunted. It was just abandoned. From what Shadrach could glean, in addition to the money troubles, the Whitbys moved because of the mistress’s ill health. Something about a nervous condition, one that made her see things that weren’t there. He suspected that this was the germ of the ghost rumor. Even if there were a haint or two, surely he would not be the target of their ire. It/they would just probably ignore him, like most of the living did anyway.

  Shadrach found some unlocked cellar doors at the back of the house. Opening them released a gust of dank, stale air. It was dark down there, and he could see that there had been some minor flooding. He kept the cellar doors open for the sunlight and walked down the stairs. He walked through several large puddles. The unfinished floor was slippery with mud that made a squelching sound with every step he took. He wiped his boots on the first stair that ostensibly led up to the house.

  Behind the door at the top of the stairs was a bare room, the wooden floor coated in furry dust. He saw the impressions of furniture shapes. There was where the couch was. Here, the trapezoidal shape of a pianoforte. The house was utterly empty, as he had expected. Entering each room set off a flurry of dust. He traversed the entirety of the house, looking for a suitabl
e place to sleep. Shadrach intended to stay only one night, and then leave this Godforsaken waterlogged place.

  On the second floor, he found that the last room at the end of the hall, presumably the master bedroom, had one piece of furniture. An armoire. It loomed in the corner of the room on its wooden paws. It was a three-paneled monstrosity, one that was firmly shut. It was in pristine condition, with warm walnut paneling, and looked like it had just been varnished. Why did it disturb him? He’d seen abandoned furniture before, perfectly usable canopy beds and chests. Then, in the waning light, Shadrach saw what was wrong with the armoire. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the thing. The rest of the rooms were filled with dust. And yet, somehow, this lone piece was speck-free, and shone with a dark luster.

  It’s just an armoire, he told himself. Maybe someone had been in the house recently, someone who impulsively cleaned the wood. That, of course, was ridiculous.

  I’ll bet that it’s not as nice as it seems. The inside is probably rotted or stained somehow.

  He opened one of the panels, the middle one.

  It was a fairly wide space, perhaps the size of a ten-year-old child in height, and the width of a shoulder. The space was filled to the top with linen. Shadrach thought, At least I’ll have something to sleep on other than the wooden floor. He pulled out a piece, laid it on the floor. It was a tapestry of some kind, one with clashing colors and shapes that didn’t make any sense. Splotches of blue, brown and purple were arranged in childlike blobs full of clumsy stitching. Shadrach did not particularly care for the blanket’s pattern. It managed to be both deliberate and wild. No wonder these pieces were abandoned along with the armoire. The loud colors and strange shapes were disturbing to look at, because he could almost perceive an order to the thing. Was the blue a river, or lake? The brown, earth? And was that purple blob a flower or a person? In the end, it did not matter. Shadrach pulled out a few more of the folded blankets, and found that they were variations on the same theme, as if their creator were obsessively perfecting their work.

  Seven or so quilts made Shadrach’s makeshift bed. They were in immaculate condition, as if they had been laundered the day they had been entombed.

  ***

  When Hazel died, Fuchsia tumbled in darkness. She saw Hazel’s soul leave, a tremulous pearl-shaped thing that floated up, up, up into the endlessly roiling sky of black clouds. Fuchsia, however, fell. Drifted downwards, also pearl-shaped but not the starry white of Hazel’s soul. She was the wrong color. Hazel went up to the sky beyond the clouds. Fuchsia sank down into the soil, like a seed.

  And there she waited, a weak light against the loam that surrounded her. Did she sleep? Maybe. She forgot her name, shed her color for a while.

  Things came back to her, stirred her in her grave. They did not make sense, but they were comforting, just the same. She remembered sunsets in the marsh, the way the sun melted into the water, the way the water drank the sun until its light spilled across the surface. She remembered the sound of frogs and birds as they echoed across the marsh. The insects that looked like glittering jewels as they flew among the grasses. And the moon on clear nights, a bright coin of silver.

  I had a name, she thought. It was buried. Deep, deep. Like she was buried, now.

  I have a new name.

  The soil could no longer contain Fuchsia. She grew, like a plant. Up through the layers of dirt, through water, through topsoil.

  ***

  Shadrach awoke in the misty grey predawn. He was refreshed. It had been ages since he’d had a good sleep. After being kicked out of the carnival, he’d slept in barns, on the bare earth, on beaches, and beneath the porch ceilings of abandoned houses. His nights were interrupted by mosquitoes, stray dogs, and, a few times, by armed and angry white men. There were days where he stumbled through, exhausted. Sleeping on the nest of quilts had been a great idea. He thought he might stay around for a while.

  Shadrach went to the town later that day, picking up dry goods and some lamp oil with the few coins he had left over. People stared at him with suspicion. Nothing that he wasn’t used to. He was a pariah. He might as well live in a pariah house. Back in the cellar, there had been a couple of abandoned kerosene lamps, and a few battered pots. These were probably meant to be used by the servants. He cooked his meal outside, a thick gruel of cornmeal sprinkled with some salt pork, facing the marsh, over a small fire. There was a fire pit that was probably used to boil water for laundry and bath water, and a working well.

  He stayed in the house for a week. The days were filled with him looking for odd jobs in the town. At the carnival, in addition to being an attraction, he was a handyman. By the end of the week, widows and women whose husbands were watermen asked him to fix broken stairs, carry groceries, and mend broken fences. It was satisfying work. He wandered back to the house at the edge of the marsh just as evening fell. He would eat a quick supper, which the women often sent home with him in a covered basket, and fall asleep on the quilts.

  Over time Shadrach pulled all of the quilts from the armoire. He laid them down on the floor, and pinned up the ones he found particularly interesting on the wall. He hung them on the stair banisters, draped them in window alcoves. Soon, the top floor was covered with the quilts. Fully spread out, the quilts formed a kind of landscape map. They described the topography of a marsh, the idealized version of the one surrounding Shimmer. He would still sleep on several of them as a makeshift bed. He had never slept so well.

  ***

  Birdie Vogt was a handsome woman, light-skinned and freckled, with a reddish tinge to her hair. Ever since she had been widowed, single men hovered around her like they were bees and she was a nectar-full flower in bloom. They bought her flowers and sweets, hoping to woo her. When that failed, they took her ten-year-old son Cephas out fishing or offered to apprentice him to one trade or another. But Cephas, like his mother, was distant and as nonreactive as a rock. She claimed to be waiting for her husband, missing for four years and most likely dead. Shadrach thought that she just wanted to be alone, that she was tired of being married. Some folks liked to be alone, like himself.

  When he went to her small homestead to deliver goods from the general store, he overheard people talking about her.

  The men would say things like, It’s a damn shame that a woman that fine is frigid!

  The women would say, Poor thing, she ain’t been right since Ira run off!

  Miss Birdie was not talkative during his visits. She’d often sit on the porch knitting or sipping coffee, and watch him as he worked. She was a gentle, comforting presence. That suited him just fine. She allowed him to teach Cephas how to paint, to mend a fence, to drive a horse and wagon, and how to fish. In return, she let him stay for dinner some evenings.

  The Vogts were a reticent bunch, and the meal would often pass with nary a word spoken.

  One evening, Miss Birdie called Cephas and Shadrach to dinner. The days had gotten shorter by then, and the sun set around five, so dinner was earlier.

  “Word around town is that you’re squatting over at the Whitby place,” she said after the grace was said. “People seen you walking from that direction.”

  Shadrach nodded. “Ain’t nobody living there,” he said. “It’s as good a place as any to stay.”

  “That place is haunted!” said Cephas. His eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “Hush, child,” Miss Birdie said.

  “I haven’t seen any haints. But if I do, I’ll be sure to tell you about it.” Shadrach winked at Cephas.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Miss Birdie said. “I used to know the folks that lived in that house. The colored folk, anyway. My mother was friends with the housemaid, Judith. They would meet each other in town when they were doing errands. The stories she would tell about that family!”

  “What stories?” Cephas asked.

  “Stop playing with your food, child,” Miss Birdie said. “Well, Mr. Whitby liked his liquor, and he had a reputation for being a mean drunk. He was a lawye
r, and he lost quite a few clients. Judith also said that his wife was a nervous wreck. The two sons were like night and day. The older one went to Harvard, up north, and he never came back. And the younger one was a drunk, like his daddy. The younger one racked up a bunch of gambling debts. He was terrible at cards and dice. His daddy had to pay off Junior’s debts many a time.”

  “Get to the ghost part!” said Cephas.

  “I don’t know if there’s a ghost in this story or not. But there’s a whole lot of strangeness. Judith worked alongside some mighty strange Negroes. Caleb, the house steward, had once been a freeman. He never told Judith how he ended up being the Whitby’s slave.”

  Shadrach said, “I heard that some white folks would get a free nigger high on morphine, slipping it in his drink after being all friendly-like. When the nigger wakes up, he’d be in the South, on some auction block somewhere.”

  Cephas gasped, his eyes as wide as saucers.

  “Well Caleb wasn’t just any freedman,” Miss Birdie continued. “He was an educated one. He knew a couple of languages. Even a few dead ones.”

  “How can a language die?” said Cephas. “Are they even alive?”

  Miss Birdie ignored her son. “Then there was the other maid. Hazel. She was younger than Judith. They had bought her when she was a child. She was a little touched, even then. My daddy was a white man who had taken my mother as a wife. We were ‘owned’ by him in law, but we was more or less free. I remember Daddy taking me to the Whitby house for some reason or other. It doesn’t matter. But I met Hazel a couple of times. I remember one time in particular. She was maybe in her twenties, and pregnant. Daddy had her watch over me while he conducted his business with Mr. Whitby.