When I can see again I’m back. In the dissecting hall. There’s a new sound in my head—shrieking, from a dozen voices.
Too much! Too great! It is too much!
The Night Doctors. They bent over, hands to their heads, like they trying to block something out. Their power over me seems broken, and I can move and sit up. My shirt is open so I can see my belly. Everything is how it’s supposed to be. Only sign my insides was ever spilled out is the tiniest scar I feel under one finger. In my other hand is something even more amazing. My sword!
It’s as bright as it was in the dream place, and whole. The blade hums, vibrating as the souls drawn to it sing out their lives. These Night Doctors, who would snatch away slaves in their ones or twos, got more misery and pain coming from those songs than they ever know. And it’s too much. I take some pleasure in seeing them squirm.
Then Dr. Bisset is there.
“Enough!” he snarls.
Suddenly I’m lifted up from the dissecting table and moving in that odd way he do down corridors. When we stop my back slams against a wall, the one I came through.
“You have overstayed your visit,” he says. “Time to return.”
“What about your lords? Will they help?”
“You are fortunate you still live after what you’ve done.”
“We had a bargain! That you would talk to them for me!”
He leans forward, looking at me through the white blindfold he got back on. “Were I you, I would take what I have gained and never come back here again.”
He gives a hard shove, and I fall into stone, passing through darkness, soft and fleshy, before tumbling onto earthen ground. I lift up to see I’m a ways behind Nana Jean’s farmhouse. The forest of giant bottle trees is gone. And looming up before me, the dead Angel Oak tree is fading. I watch it go, before lying down to stare up into the night, clutching my mended sword to my chest.
EIGHT
It’s raining the Sunday night we make our way up Stone Mountain.
Not no Presbyterian rain neither. I’m talking a shaking and hollerin’ Baptist downpour.
We an odd bunch. Me and Chef. Emma and three of her “comrades,” including two dark fellas she say Sicilians. Molly’s apprentices, Sethe and Sarah, in wide-brimmed hats and rifles over their shoulders. Nana Jean here too, with Uncle Will and the Shouters. I tell that Gullah woman this no place for old folk, but she say they fixing to do some big root magic. And when she set her mind, no changing it.
Ain’t easy going neither. Stone Mountain just as it’s named: a dome of gray touching the sky. The bottom is surrounded by trees and shrubs. But the top is mostly bare stone and the trail we taking been turned into a mess of water and sediment. Flashlights help, but even then it’s hard going. Traded my Oxfords for boots and gaiters, some moss-green knickers, a dark shirt, and a navy-blue poncho Molly stitched from rubbery cloth that hard to stay wet. Nana Jean sensed rain was coming, and had us pack proper. Seems her premonition more literal than I thought. Still envy Chef’s soldiering outfit. Not to mention that hat what water just slide off of. I got my own brown cap pulled tight. Make it hard to see, but keeps the rain out my face.
About a half hour past we met with other bands who answered our call. Most from nearby Atlanta, veterans easy to pick out in their rain slickers and rifles with silver bayonets. Smaller groups come from Marietta and Athens. Even so, only about thirty of us can fight. Which ain’t much.
I wonder about Dr. Bisset keeping our bargain. Though remembering his face when last I seen him, wouldn’t bet on it. Memories of my insides being pulled out sends a hand to my stomach. Was that just a night ago? Took shifts with Chef in the six-hour drive from Macon. But what sleep I got was fitful, full of things I’d like forgetting. Now a dull ache weighs on my limbs. Not sure what keeping me going. Maybe just anger.
Sometimes I forget, and glance over to check on Sadie. I imagine the complaints she’d be making over this rain. Or the nonsense she’d be going on about—some story from her tabloids. Feels like them Ku Kluxes cut her right out this world, leaving behind a hole where she supposed to be. Now they got Michael George. It all set a fire burning hot enough in me I think the rain might sizzle on my skin.
Trees start getting sparse, leaving only steep wet rock ahead. That finally convinces Nana Jean to stop. Say she, Uncle Will, and the Shouters to rest here and join us later. Chances of that is next to none. But fine by me. She puts a blessing on us before we go, leaving them sheltered under a crop of trees to make our way to the mountaintop.
Slippery don’t begin to describe this climb. The bare rock feels smooth beneath me, and I fight to keep my footing. As we get closer, I can hear noise like someone talking as light reflects off the sky. It gets louder, blaring by the time we reach near the top. A man’s voice booms into the night, competing with the rain. The anger in me boils as I recognize it. We gather everybody under a last patch of brush and trees, allowing them to catch their breath, while me and Chef creep forward to see what we arrived to.
The sight that greets us is out of a nightmare. A broad stretch of gray stone full of Klans. Never seen so many. Must be hundreds. They stand in rows, seeming unconcerned their robes getting soaked to the skin. Their hoods are pulled back, and wide, staring eyes are fixed straight ahead, at a movie playing on Stone Mountain.
The Birth of a Nation.
I asked Molly how they’d show a movie outside. She said all they needed was a projector that generated its own power and something to bounce the picture off of. Seems they built a screen. Thing must be fifty feet tall and twice as wide. Don’t know where the projector is, but it’s beaming moving pictures big as ever. At the bottom of the screen, a wooden platform been built. On it stand six men and women, with arms tied in front and sacks over their heads. My heart catches at seeing their dark limbs in the light coming off the screen. One got to be Michael George.
A giant cross of timber is propped up on the stone ground. And standing beside it on the platform is a man. Can’t make out his face this far out. But he broad and big, recognizable enough in his Klan robes. Plus it’s his voice we been hearing.
“Butcher Clyde.” I spit.
Chef nods. “That him. Talking all kinds of nonsense.”
That he is. This movie should have music blaring like an orchestra. Instead, there’s Butcher Clyde, his voice echoing through the rain, going on about the white race and the like. The crowd stands there dazed, hanging on his every word, eyes glued to that great big screen.
“Must be Klans from all over,” Chef mutters.
“And Ku Kluxes.”
They ain’t hard to spot, faces shifting and bending even through this downpour. Some spread out between the people. Others stand in long lines, holding fiery torches, the strange flames undisturbed by rain.
“So many in one place,” Chef says. “Feels like Tulsa.”
Look like Tulsa. All here to see their god be born.
Grand Cyclops is coming. When she do, your world is over.
“Something off with these Klans to you?” Chef asks. “The ones ain’t turned?”
“You mean other than standing on top a mountain in a storm?”
“It’s their faces. Don’t look right.”
Hard to see between the rain. But I lift my cap and squint, glimpsing faces in the light of the movie screen. There is something off with these Klans—different from the Ku Kluxes. Can’t say what it is, though, or what it means.
“We don’t have the numbers to take on all that,” Chef says.
I look to her. No fear on her face. She seen too much for that. But there’s an expectation that we won’t win. She’ll still go charging into the fight. Same with Emma, Molly’s apprentices, and all those resistance folk we leading. Every last one, knowing they won’t see the sun rise. Only, I’m not about to let that happen, if I can help it.
“I’m going out there.”
Chef’s face screws up. “Come again?”
“Butcher Clyde. You heard
him last night. He invited me here.”
“It’s a trap. A hundred Ku Kluxes gonna come raging at the sight of you!”
I shake my head. “He want something from me. Been wanting it.”
“What the hell he want from you?”
“To make an offer.”
Chef stares like I done lost my head. I ain’t told her or Nana Jean about this. But now I take a breath and speak all of it. She listens quiet, and when I finish takes a moment before saying, “Devil wouldn’t be the devil if he didn’t know how to tempt. You know what this offer is?”
I been thinking on that. About how Butcher Clyde slipped in my head that first time. Through that memory I kept locked deep.
I nod slow to Chef. “Think I do.”
“Then you probably already made your choice.”
There’s a sudden whoosh! We look out to see the giant cross go up in flames. Just like the torches, that blaze seems untouched by rain, transforming the timber into a beacon of hellfire against the black night. I turn to Chef, catching its glare in her eyes.
“I have to go now. Maybe I can stop this.”
“Or get yourself killed.”
“Might be so. But I have to try.” I remember Auntie Ondine’s words. “Time to balance the world on the tip of a sword.”
Chef looks at me hard, then says. “All right, then. But I’m coming with you.”
I start to protest but she cuts me off. “Sadie wouldn’t let you go out there by yourself, and I won’t neither. Make peace with it, because we going over that trench together!”
I think of throwing a punch, knocking her clean out and taking off. More likely, though, she’d just whoop my behind. And I’m in no mood to take a licking before I face my possible death. I give in, guilty at feeling relief I don’t have to do this alone.
“You never asked what choice I made about this offer.”
Chef shrugs. She puts a Chesterfield to her lips, moving to light it before remembering the rain. “Got to trust the soldier next to you will do the right thing. No use worrying about it.”
When I walk out onto the mountaintop it’s still pouring, thick droplets forming pools on the stone ground. Chef beside me, in her Hellfighter uniform, the unlit Chesterfield clamped in her teeth. Don’t think I been happier to see that easy smile. The rows of Klans keep their eyes stuck to the screen, ignoring us as we stroll a wide path up their middle. A Ku Klux holding a torch the first to see us. It peels back human lips and starts up squawking. Butcher Clyde’s sermon cuts off from the platform and as one big beast, that whole sea of white turns in a ripple toward us.
We keep on, like we ain’t two colored women walking into a pack of demons, human and otherwise. But none try to stop us. Not the Ku Kluxes. Nor the Klans neither, who definitely looking not just off but wrong. A knot grows in my stomach at that sea of wrong white faces. Something here I ain’t put together yet.
I pull my eyes from them, reaching the platform.
Butcher Clyde stands there, rain-slick skin shining in the glow of the fiery cross and grinning down from under that suit of flesh.
“Maryse! We almost thought you might not come!”
That’s a lie. He always knew. This whole thing like a story he been writing.
“Please come up! You arrived just in time! But just you. Don’t need the spare.”
“She comes with me!” I nod to Chef.
His smile tightens, but he waves a hand. “However you want it.”
Together, me and Chef march up the platform steps. If you’re thinking, it must be a strange thing, being who we are, to stand there in front of hundreds of hateful faces, I assure you it is. Some of the Ku Kluxes got their mouths open, drinking up rainwater while the Klans all got that wrongness to their faces. I turn back to Butcher Clyde, the movie behind us playing bigger than life while the flames of that unholy cross lick at my soul. My eyes go then to the others on the platform—six in a row, and colored. Take one glance to find who I’m looking for.
“Michel George!” I call. But he don’t answer, don’t even turn.
“Oh, your beau can’t hear you,” Butcher Clyde says. “None of them can.”
He walks over to pull the sack off Michael George’s head and there’s relief and pain at seeing that familiar beautiful face, unharmed. Except …
“What you done to his eyes?” I demand.
“Oh, that?” Butcher Clyde moves a hand in front of Michael George’s blank face. He don’t flinch. Just stares out with white eyes, no pupils or nothing, as rain rolls down his dark skin. “Don’t fret, he’s just doing a kind of sleeping. But don’t you worry. You do right by us, and we’ll let him back to you, no worse for wear. The others … well, she’s going to be a might peckish when she shows up.”
She. This Grand Cyclops.
I stare into Michael George’s empty face, craving to reach out and touch him, hold him. But that’s what Butcher Clyde wants. I can see it in his grin, delighting at my pain. Clenching my fists to hold back the rage, I turn to the crowd.
“So this it, then? You call me here to see your little revival?”
Butcher Clyde’s smile stretches into a jack-o’-lantern’s grin. And I remember he just some things playing at being a person. “We’ve invited you to witness the grand plan.”
“What I tell you the last time about your grand plan?”
He chuckles. “I believe your precise words were, ‘Fuck your grand plan.’ But we haven’t told you the role you’re to play in it. Wouldn’t you like to know? We’ve been planning your part so long.”
When I don’t answer he goes on.
“As you know, we specialize in that thing you call hate. To your kind, it’s just a feeling. A bit of rage behind the eyes that can drive you to commit all sorts of beautiful violence. But for us, those feelings are a power of their own. We feed on it. Treasure it as life.” He turns to the gathered Klans. “Look at all that delightful hate. We didn’t put it there, was always growing inside. Just gave it a nudge to help it blossom. A few reels of celluloid and they come to us whole and willing. But sustaining as that hate is, it’s not very … potent.”
I raise an eyebrow. Seem these Klans can hate well enough.
“You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like … watered-down whiskey. Now your people!”
His eyes light up, and he steps closer.
“Y’all got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous—so strong!”
His body shudders, like he imagining the sweetest wine.
“What I got to do with any of that?”
“Oh, Maryse, you’re our top candidate!”
The confusion on my face stretches his grin impossibly wider.
“Told you we’ve been watching you. We knew those interlopers were going to crown a champion to wield their little magic against us, as they done before. But what if we could guide that choice? Instead of fighting their champion, we could help mold her. Let her see what it’s like to hurt. Let that wound fester. So that she keeps that little seed of hate deep inside. Then we feed it. Water it with our dogs. Let her hunt them, kill them, and enjoy it. And you do enjoy it, don’t you? Why, that hate will keep growing until it’s good and strong, waiting to be harvested, waiting for you to just tap into it.”
The rage in me shakes my voice. “This the part where you make your offer?”
“Indeed it is,” he purrs.
“Well, no need, I know what it is! And I don’t want it! Not from you!” He looks at me funny. And the heat in me rises higher. “You offering to bring back my family! Power over life and death
, you said. Give me what I want more than anything. You think offering me that can make me switch sides? Come over to you? After what you done!”
There’s a quiet from Butcher Clyde, which is unusual. All I can hear is my own deep, angry breathing and the beating rain. Then he does something unexpected. He laughs. Real hard. So that he’s almost doubled over, slapping his thighs. And I imagine all those hidden mouths laughing too. He looks up at me, wiping away tears or rainwater.
“Oh, Maryse! You have quite the imagination! Bring your family back? That’s what you’ve been thinking our offer is? Hoping for it? We can’t bring your family back.” His mirth cuts off and he turns cold serious. “They dead and gone. Forever.”
His words wound like I didn’t know words could, tearing into the deepest part of me. I feel my cheeks heat in shame. He’s right. I had been hoping for it, yearning it, even as I struggled and fought not to take it. I wanted a thing like that to at least be possible. To know there was the chance.
“No, Maryse, you misunderstood our meaning,” Butcher Clyde goes on. “You see, we’re not asking you to switch sides. We’re offering to come over to you.”
I blink, his words chasing everything out my head. “What?”
He stares intently with those gray eyes. “Be our champion, Maryse. Lead our armies. Give your people the one thing they lack—”
“Hate?” I cut in.
“Power,” he corrects, voice now intense. “What I told you all along. You bring us their righteous justified hate, and we will grant you power—enough to never need fear anyone again. Power enough to protect yourselves and defeat your foes, to make them cower and tremble before you in true fear. Power to avenge all those wrongs. Power over life and death, yours and your enemies!”
I stare, speechless. There it is—the offer. One I never saw coming.
“What about them?” I gesture to the gathered Klans.
“They already served their purpose.”
“And this Grand Cyclops? She fine with you switching sides?”
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