It’s as I blink away fresh tears that the dead Angel Oak tree appears. And I do mean appear, because one moment it’s not there and the next, it is.
Whoever named it, named it proper. The tree bone white, glowing against the black night. Long knotted branches grow out from a thick trunk, going every which way like the twisted legs of a spider—some up or to the side, others sweeping across the ground. There’s no leaves on them gnarled-up things neither. Instead there’s bones. Skulls, rib cages, horns, all kinds, from different animals, hanging and swaying in the night breeze.
I have to drag my feet to keep going, walking between branches I feel might snatch me up. When I reach the trunk, I pull out Chef’s trench knife, the only weapon I brung. I plunge it straight into the white wood, and thick sap the color and smell of blood oozes out. Tightening up my jaw and my belly, I stab again, and again, into wood that spatters me in soft flesh. When I get a good hole formed, I reach in hands to pry it apart. It look like raw muscle in there, moving about and alive. Trying not to gag, I push an arm in up to my shoulder, forcing the hole to grow until the side of my body can get in, then part of my leg. I gasp when the tree takes hold of me and gives a strong tug, sucking me halfway into its flesh. I fight, panicking. But that tree pulls again. Once, twice, swallowing me up.
I’m falling. Tumbling through darkness before landing on something hard—cheek-first. I cough, spitting out bits of what I don’t want to imagine, a metallic taste coating my tongue and the scent of a butchery in my nose. My clothes and hair are soaked to my skin like I been swimming in a river of gore. I almost slip under the slickness of my Oxfords before rising to my feet and looking about.
Sure ain’t Bruh Rabbit’s laughing place, my brother whispers.
I’m standing in an empty corridor so white it looks bleached. It stretches far as I can see. I make out other corridors branching from it, and wonder if they endless too. There’s an unnatural quiet, so all I can hear is my own breathing. Turning, I see I’m against a wall. It got a bloody gash on it like a wound—the hole I cut into this world.
“Traveling here the first time can be jarring,” a voice slices into the silence.
I whirl back around to find someone standing in front of me. A colored man. He’s tall, wearing an all-white suit, even white shoes. He got on a matching bowler pulled low and, strangest of all, a white blindfold over his eyes. But he stares like he sees me plain.
“You’ve caused a bit of a mess,” he notes, waving white-gloved fingers at my feet. His voice got a fancy way of speaking, and never rises above a whisper.
I glance down, noticing my bloody footprints before looking back to him. Do he expect me to wipe it up?
“Messes attract the hound,” he explains.
His head tilts upward, and I follow. There’s something on the ceiling, so white and colorless it’s almost invisible against the wall. Its body is joined together under a covering of bony armor. More limbs than I can count extend from its sides, and antennae longer than my arm twitch on a rounded head. A centipede is what comes to mind. Only wide as a motorcar, and long as—well, I can’t say, because the rest of it disappears down a corridor. But damn long will do.
Everything in me howls to run—to get far away from this thing! But before I can let out one good cuss the man is right up on me. Don’t recall seeing him move, but now he got something cold and sharp pressed under my chin.
“Shhh.” He places a long finger to his lips. “The hound is a scavenger, meant to keep this hall sterile. It will scour you away, as any other impurity.”
Even as he speaks, the centipede thing starts crawling down, detaching partly from the wall. I tense up as its antennae twitch about me, followed by mandibles working like a machine on an eyeless face. Its limbs stretch out, each ending in humanlike hands with slender fingers. They slide along my legs, back, arms, feeling about. I almost bolt, but the sharp thing at my chin presses harder, forcing me onto the balls of my feet.
It’s a mercy when the creature moves on, the armored ridges of its back gliding along my thigh. The sharp thing is pulled away and my eyes follow a silver knife flicking close, like one of Molly’s dissecting blades.
“The hound has mingled your scent with mine,” the man says. “It will leave you unmolested, for now.”
I turn to see the centipede thing working at the gash on the wall. Where its mandibles touch, blood vanishes and the wound starts knitting together. I look back to the man.
“Are you them? One of the Night Doctors?”
“When you set eyes on the lords of this realm, you will not need ask.”
He turns, prepared to dismiss me.
“Then you Dr. Antoine Bisset?”
At hearing his name, he goes still. I go on, relating the story written in my book.
“Antoine Bisset. A colored physician, looking for the Night Doctors in old slave stories. You figured out they was real. Went searching for the dead Angel Oak tree. That was in 1937, in North Carolina. I come here from Macon, Georgia, in 1922. The ones who sent me, who tell me about you, say time don’t matter here. Your tomorrow might not even be mine. But they claim you came looking for something, to understand a secret.”
He turns back to me, first his head, then his body—like it just remember. “And what does your story say I came seeking?”
“Hate,” I say. “You come looking to understand hate.”
He stares at me from behind that blindfold. “Do you know the abandoned practice of humorism, passed down by the Hamites of Egypt to the Greeks and Romans? It held that each of man’s bodily fluids governed a principle: blood for life; yellow bile the seat of aggression; black the cause of melancholy; and phlegm, apathy. I believe one humor is yet unaccounted for. What men call hate. You and I have seen too much to discount its existence.”
“Did you find it? This source of hate?”
His jaw tenses. “I have hunted it in the entrails of men. Brought back specimens for my lords to feast upon, for I have introduced them to this delicacy. Yet still, its source eludes me.”
“What if I could bring you hate? Not from people, but from … beings … like your lords. Things that carry hate pure in their blood. That live and thrive on it.”
He’s in front of me in a blur. No knife this time, but his blindfolded gaze feels as sharp—slicing at me, peeling back layers to inspect what’s beneath. “Why would you come here to gift me such a thing?”
“Because I need your help.” I tell him about the Ku Kluxes. About Butcher Clyde. “I need you to convince your lords, to help us fight,” I finish.
“You are mistaken if you believe I hold sway over them.”
“But you can offer a feast of this delicacy. Bet they like that.”
He takes a while, then asks, “What will you give in exchange?”
My eyebrows raise. “Ain’t the chance to feast enough?”
He grins, showing white teeth. “Do you know why the lords of this place stole away slaves? Because misery fascinated them. The tear of it, the pain. And who had seen more misery than they? But I came here willingly, like you. So I was able to demand the chance to pay the price for what I sought.” He grabs my hand quick, pressing it to his chest. There’s no warmth there. No breathing. No heartbeat. Only … emptiness. As if he been carved out like a gourd. “The price I paid. You will need to pay your own.”
I pull my hand free, remembering Auntie Ondine’s warning, but nod. “Yes, I—”
All at once, something seizes me. I go down, my head smacking the floor. I see stars, then realize I’m moving. Someone got ahold of me, dragging me by my feet. I twist my head up in panic, thinking to find the centipede thing. But it’s a different monster.
They look like men. No, giants. There’s two of them, in long white robes. One has me by a six-fingered hand, pale skin stretched tight over bone. Remembering Chef’s knife at my waist, I fumble for it, get it in my fingers, and plunge it into that hand. Don’t even make a dent. But the one holding me turns a head ab
out on a slender neck, and the fight drains out of me. No doubt about it—this is a Night Doctor.
The face looking at me is colorless and empty—no eyes or nose, no mouth even. Just wrinkled skin on a long head. A set of voices start in my ears, whispering like sliding knife blades. I go stiff, my body caught in ropes I can’t see as I’m hoisted atop a flat block of stone. All about me are Night Doctors, staring down with their no-faces. My eyes all I can move, and I roll them about, like a frightened animal in a trap.
Dr. Bisset walks into my vision, small next to these giants. “As you came here of your own will, my lords will hear your petition of bargain.” He leans in close. “But I cannot guarantee your leaving.”
I try to open my mouth to speak, but find it still shut.
“No need. My lords have their own ways of understanding.”
That whispering comes again. A whole lot of it. Can’t move my eyes no more or even blink. I stare straight up to where another block of stone is descending. It got silver things stuck to it—one like a scissor, another a curved knife, others with needles and hooked ends. They look like things from Molly’s laboratory. Like her dissecting table.
When the first cut comes to my belly, I’d scream if I could. The pain like nothing I ever felt, and the only thing in the world is that suffering. Those six-fingered hands pull me wide open, like they cleaning fowl. One reaches inside, lifting out something I think is my liver. They pass it bloody between them, running fingers along it, each bending to inspect in turn. Between my agony I can hear Dr. Bisset talking.
“My lords were the first practitioners of hepatoscopy, who taught it to the Babylonians and the priestesses of Saturn, to read the mysteries of the entrails. For it is here we keep our secrets hidden.”
In my head, memories flash—watching a mob hunt down colored folk in Elaine, Arkansas; Ku Kluxes rampaging down Greenwood in Tulsa; Sadie’s face gone still. My misery, my pain, served up to these monsters on a plate. They read it all, like some witch sorting through a gutted possum. They cut and take, pulling out my bladder and ropes of glistening intestines, until I’m screaming even with my mouth closed, singing to them all the misery I seen. Somehow I can hear it, echoing through their white halls until blackness takes me.
When I open my eyes I’m at my house, looking at the door hanging off its hinges. My belly is whole, and I’m not covered in tree blood. But it’s night. Always night.
“Interesting,” a voice comes.
I jump, turning to find Dr. Bisset, standing where he don’t belong.
“What you doing here?”
“Observing.”
“Is this in my head? Or is it real?”
He glances to me behind his blindfold. “Would it make a difference?”
I see he been around haints enough to take up their sideways talking.
“Did they send me here?”
“There’s something here my lords cannot see. Something you hold deep. It intrigues them. And that is rare.” He turns, walking inside the house, forcing me to follow. He goes straight for the hatch and I overtake him, grabbing his arm.
“No! Not this.”
But he pulls away, slippery as a fish, and throws open the secret door. His head cocks curious at the girl, before he offers a hand. I’m surprised when she takes it, climbing out the hole in a way she never would for me. She holding something—the silver hilt of my sword, with a jagged piece of black sticking out. So it’s broken here too.
Dr. Bisset bends to one knee. “You’ve been in here a long time.”
The girl nods. “It’s where she keeps me.”
“I don’t keep you nowhere!” I snap, anger bubbling up.
She looks at me, and the fear in her round eyes sets me back.
“Why do you stay down there?” Dr. Bisset asks.
“To hide from the monsters. The ones who came looking.”
“That was seven years ago!” I shout.
Dr. Bisset glances between us, and whatever he got under that blindfold put two and two together quick. “You look young for just seven years past,” he tells the girl.
“She keeps me this way. Think it’s easier to imagine me small.”
“Then let us sweep away all illusions.” Dr. Bisset waves a gloved hand, and the girl changes. She still in a nightshirt, but she’s eighteen now. And she looks more like me. Not quite the woman of twenty-five, but no denying who she’ll become.
“Now,” he says, looking between us. “Tell me about the monsters.”
When I don’t speak, she do.
“They come one night, while we sleeping. Men, wearing white sheets and hoods. Daddy open the door holding his shotgun, and they start quarreling. My brother, he say they look like ghosts. But I can see them proper. They ain’t men. They monsters. I try to tell mama, but my brother put me into the hatch.”
I close my eyes, remembering the rest. The sounds of bullets going through Daddy and the door. The Ku Kluxes rampaging above me. Mama’s screams. My brother’s cries. Me in the hole, shaking with fright. That’s when the sword first come. I still remember its coolness in my grip, sending visions in my head. It was humming with eagerness, willing me to get up there, to fight the Ku Kluxes. But I was so scared …
“—was like I couldn’t move,” the girl says, completing my thoughts. “Like something had ahold of me. I just stayed there in the dark, waiting for it to be over. Stayed down there almost two whole days. When I finally come out everybody was gone. So I went seeking—”
“No!” My heart beating fierce. “Don’t give them this!”
Dr. Bisset don’t even turn to me. “Where did you go seeking?”
My younger self stares me straight in my eyes when she betrays us. “The barn.”
“Take me there.” When I don’t move, he sighs. “That wasn’t a request.” He grabs my arm and the world shifts, like I’m moving without walking. When I stop, we’re out back. In front of the barn, where the door is open slight. It’s morning now. Because that’s when I came here.
“Why you want to see this?” I whisper.
“As I have told you, my lords desire the secret you keep from them, for which you have constructed quite the ruse.”
“When they asked to see your misery, did you just show it to them?” I spit back.
He turns to me, moving a hand to lift his blindfold. I suck in a breath. Where his eyes should be, there’s empty holes, raw and bloody. Like they was … plucked out.
“My lords wished to see the misery I had witnessed through my own flesh. They asked, and I willingly surrendered. Consider this intrusion … slight.”
He walks to the barn door, pushing it open and stepping inside. I stay there breathing fast, feeling like I might drown. Slender fingers twist into mine and I look at my younger self. The fear on her face is gone, because I know it’s all inside me now.
“We can do it together,” she says. Then hands me the broken sword. “More yours than mine. Remember what I told you. They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.” With a gentle pull, she leads me to the barn door, forcing my feet forward.
When I step inside, I’m alone. Whatever she was—a ghost I left behind, some trick in my head—is gone. So it’s through my eyes that I relive the cold December morning seven years back, when I entered to the terrible sight before me. Three bodies. My family. All hanging from the barn rafters by ropes. They swing in the morning sunlight, feet seeming to dance on the open air. Something grabs hard at my insides, and I fall to hands and knees, doubled over, reliving the horror and guilt.
“Such pain.” Dr. Bisset is knelt down beside me. “Sadness for what you lost. Shame at what you could not do. And anger—so much anger.” His empty eyes read me, boring into my deepest crevices. “You used that anger, fled from family and friends, then went seeking your vengeance, to etch your own story in blood.”
I bite down, remembering. I stayed with my mama’s people after. Whole time, the sword was with me, singing its secrets, teaching its d
eadly rhythms. When I was ready, I took off looking for Ku Kluxes. First one I killed, I poured much of the rage I held into its death. Hacked it to pieces. But wasn’t enough. I had more pain and anger to give. Two years I spent wandering, killing Ku Kluxes. Don’t know if I was even fully human no more. Was just the vengeance and killing. Now I hunted the monsters. I was somewhere in the Tennessee woods, descending into a hell of blood and slaughter, when Nana Jean’s call dug me out that pit. Became a person again. But I buried the wound that fueled me deep, stuffing a little girl back into that hatch, and all the horrors she’d seen.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, to her, to myself.
“My lords find your misery … delectable,” Dr. Bisset says. “You are a rare treat.”
My eyes roll up to meet his empty sockets and a new anger rises inside me. This is my pain. My scar to carry. Ain’t theirs to feast on, to suck dry like marrow from a bone. I’ve had enough of monsters, devouring bits of me, trying to eat me up altogether.
“I hunt monsters,” I tell him between clenched teeth.
I don’t know when I extend my hand to call up my sword. I feel the broken piece I hold stir, fresh visions swirling in my head. More than I ever seen at once, coming and going in a blur. Once more there’s the song. The beautiful, vengeful song. It’s stronger too—hundreds of voices in harmony. They pull on those slave-selling chiefs and kings, to cry out and wake up slumbering gods. I look down to the jagged blade to find it covered in black smoke, growing to take the familiar leaf shape, binding together until the dark metal is mended and made whole. It’s then I realize that amid the many visions, the girl is truly gone. No more frightful eyes. No more fear to pull me under. The wound I made of her is still there, but it don’t pulse raw like it used to. It’s mending too, even if it might never fully heal.
Dr. Bisset looks at the sword. And those emptied eyes somehow carry surprise.
“How—?” he begins, but I cut him off.
“This is my place. My pain. You got no right here! Your lords like misery so much? Let me show them!” The black leaf-blade explodes into brilliance as the song goes deafening. The light burns through everything, till I’m blinded.
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