Ring Shout

by P. Djèlí Clark

  His grin returns. “Who’s grand plan do you think this is?”

  “I came here to stop her. From coming to this world!”

  “Stop her?” He laughs again. “But, Maryse, she’s already here!”

  I follow as he sweeps an arm to the crowd of Klans, at first not understanding. Then I see it again, the wrongness in all those faces. As if answering a summons, one in the front steps forward, looking up with a blank gaze as rain streams lines down his face. Then he starts to shaking, his whole body convulsing—before he collapses.

  I hear Chef curse beside me, but my eyes are on that Klan, or what used to be him. His white robes lay there on the wet ground, and from inside slithers out what looks like raw, bloody flesh without no shape or form. Like his body been turned inside out. It crawls across the wet stone just as another Klan steps forward and does the same, then another, and another, and—

  “What you do to them?” I ask, holding my belly from heaving.

  “Why, we only gave them the sustenance they craved. This they did to themselves all too willingly. Like I told you already, they’re just meat to us.”

  Meat. What he was feeding them in his shop. The living flesh.

  “She’s already inside them,” he boasts. “They swallowed her up, fed her on their hate. Now she comes to claim her due.”

  I watch as the oozing mounds of flesh slither their way to the burning cross. They reach up, wrapping about the flaming timber, sending up an awful stink that burns my nose. In moments they all over it, one atop the next, until the heat of that undying hellfire fuses them to the wood and each other. Looks like a giant hand is sculpting them, piling that flesh onto a skeleton like clay, pulling and shaping it into something with long fleshy limbs, a torso extending across the ground, and curving body, growing taller and bigger by the moment. The Klans that come to join now don’t even collapse no more. They just walk into the wall of living flesh and get sucked in whole. I can see them in there, bodies dissolving, so all that’s left is their faces, mouths wide as if they screaming—screaming forever. When it finally stops, I bend my neck to stare up at the monstrosity born this night, rain pelting my face like the heavens weeping.

  The Grand Cyclops don’t look like nothing I ever seen. It reminds me of a long, coiling snake. But it got arms too, thick trunks that split into curling and writhing tentacles. The whole of her is made of people, their flesh now bound to her service, her vessel into this world. All along that awful body mouths open to let out a shriek of birth and triumph that shakes me to my bones.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Butcher Clyde asks, face like he caught the ghost.

  The mouths on the Grand Cyclops all open and shriek again. No, not just shrieking. Talking, in an ungodly chorus.

  We come to claim what is ours. This world. Bring forth our champion. Let us see!

  “She wants to meet you, Maryse!”

  Just as he says it the Grand Cyclops lowers her neck, until the stump where a head should be is bent just above me. A hundred eyes open up in her rippling flesh, every last one all too human. They squirm through her body like tadpoles swimming through muck, until they reach the stump, pooling into one big mass and focusing on me.

  Behold the one who will accept our gift—our blessings.

  The Grand Cyclops spreads out her arms, those writhing tentacles enveloping me within. Little nubs like human fingers break out along their length, and I can feel them sticky and wet sliding across my clothes and skin—touching, feeling, sizing me up. If a giant centipede with man hands hadn’t done near the same to me a night previous, pretty sure I might have passed out then and there.

  Yes! Oh yes! This one carries the anger of her people. Pure yet untapped. We could do much with this. We could do much for you!

  “You only have to say yes, Maryse,” Butcher Clyde urges. “Accept this gift!”

  Should be easy for me to say no. To damn these monsters to hell and beyond.

  But … Butcher Clyde’s words are in my head and I can’t shake them out. What they offering me is power. Power to protect. Power to avenge. Power over the life and death of my people. When colored folk ever had anyone offer us so much? When we ever had the power not to be scared no more? Ain’t we been suffering and dying all this time, at the hands of monsters in human form? What difference then if we make a pact with some other monsters? What we owe this world that so despises and brutalizes us? Why lift a hand to save it when it ain’t never done a damn thing to save us?

  So close you are to seeing the truth, the Grand Cyclops croons. Give over your anger. Let us show you how to wield it. How to make you strong. Without fear of your enemies or mercy. Do not flee from it. Embrace it. Who is to blame for the hate that hate made?

  I can feel the heat of that anger rising, hot enough to burn. In my head are all the visions I ever seen. Men, women, and children who look like me, under the lash, in chains, whipped until the flesh hanging from their bones, hurt so bad their souls cry out. This why they chose me. Because I carry not just the anger of what I seen with my own eyes but centuries of anger—growing up in me. Auntie Ondine’s fears was right. In giving me that sword, they were molding me for the very enemy I’m meant to fight.

  Be careful now, Bruh Rabbit. My brother’s voice comes so strong, it feels like he’s right in my ear. We the trickster—the spider, the rabbit, even the fox. We fool those stronger than us. That’s how we survive. Watch out you don’t get tricked yo’self!

  His voice is followed by another.

  They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.

  The words of the girl, my other self from the dream place, strikes with sudden understanding. The places where we hurt. Where we hurt. Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice.

  But not hate.

  They ain’t the same thing. Never was. These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that’s what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them. Only I can’t forget, because all those memories always with me, showing me the way.

  I smile, and a cleansing breath cools the fire beneath my skin. This was my test. And I think I just passed. I flick eyes to Butcher Clyde.

  “You said tonight, they all just meat.”

  He look confused for once. I appreciate that.

  “That’s what you call these Klans, just meat.”

  “Not sure we follow—”

  “First time, back at your shop, you said we was all meat. No matter the skin. You say we all here for you to use up.” I nod to the Ku Kluxes. “You’d do to us what they let you do to them. If I gave you the chance. That right?”

  He don’t answer, just puts on a jack-o’-lantern grin. But it speaks well enough. I smile back, lowering my hand—and call up my sword.

  The visions swirl about. Only there’s no frightened girl threatening to pull me under. And with that fear conquered, seems like I opened a floodgate. The spirits that come now not just a few, not even hundreds. More like thousands, rushing to the sword, pouring out the songs of their lives, the strength of it running through the iron and up into me. Drums and shouts and cries, shrieks and laughter and howls, rhythmic chants and long keening moans. An archive of endless memories, from watery graves in the Atlantic to muddy rice fields and cotton plantations, from the stifling depths of gold mines to the sickly sweet smell of boiling sugar that consumed up people, devoured them in jaws of whips and chains and iron implements to shackle and ruin. I’m swept up by that maelstrom and I’m singing too, spilling out my own pain. The bound chiefs and kings shout at our cries, rousing old gods, and the cool silver slides into my waiting grip, black smoke stitching into a sharp leaf-blade. Somewhere near I hear Butcher Clyde choke, his voice st
rangled.

  “We broke you!”

  Don’t know if he means me or the sword. Maybe both.

  I wink at Chef before turning back to the Grand Cyclops, whose tentacles still writhing about me.

  What is this? What is happening?

  “You ever hear the story of Truth and Lies?” I ask. “Well, I’ll get to the good part. You the Lie.”

  Bringing up my sword, I grip it with both hands and plunge it into that nest of eyes on the monster’s stump of a head. The blade bursts into light, scorching all it touches. The Grand Cyclops shudders as white fire courses through her massive body, showing beneath the glistening flesh, sending hundreds of mouths screaming in agony, flames erupting from their parted lips. Across the mountaintop, Ku Kluxes scream too, like they feeling that pain. Good! I pull out my sword just as she whips back her long neck, sending blood and charred flesh flying.

  Chef whoops. “That’s what I’m talking about!” She pulls out two bottles from her jacket, shaking them until the liquid inside glows bright. A special concoction Molly helped brew: part explosives and pure Mama’s Water. Running forward she hurls one into a screaming flaming mouth on the Grand Cyclops’s torso and then the second into another. When she drops to the platform, I follow, just as the detonations go off—blowing big holes in the monster’s body, so that I think she might come crashing down. But she bellows a roar that shakes the mountaintop. And I know, we only done made her mad.

  I stand up just as something jumps past me and I realize it’s one of the Klans. I look down to see more swarming and climbing up the platform. But they not coming for me or Chef. They running to the Grand Cyclops, leaping to meet her and getting sucked into that flesh, their bodies healing the damage.

  “Shit!” Chef says.

  She don’t get another word out as a tentacle whips out, hitting her full on to send her flying. I shout as she goes spinning into the night. Then a whole mass of tentacles rain down, tearing apart half the movie screen and smashing the platform, taking me and whoever else down in a shower of splintered wood.

  The world goes spinning and it seems forever before it stops. I lift up from where I land, bruised all over, to crawl from beneath the debris. Lost my cap, and now I blink away rainwater looking for Chef. Michael George got to be here too. I make it to my knees, to find the Grand Cyclops waiting, raised to her full awful height. With the screen torn near to shreds, moving pictures reflect off her body—ghostly images of Klans riding horses across translucent flesh. She bends down, glaring with one mass of endless eyes burning with anger. No, that there’s hate.

  You would deny us! Wound us! We will wipe you from this world!

  I raise up, planting feet firm and lifting my sword.

  “Well.” I pant slow. “Don’t take all day.”

  But those mass of eyes not looking at me no more. Something else caught their attention. I turn to see a figure stepping sideways out of nothing, his body flat as paper before filling out into a brown-skinned man in an all-white suit and a matching bowler cocked to the side.

  Dr. Bisset.

  “You’re late.”

  Notation 7:

  When President Lincoln send out the emancipation, the stingy masters them didn’t want the slaves to learn about it. But slaves had they own ways of knowing. One named John, he raised up in the kitchen, and stole away how to read watching missus teach her young’uns. He come with a letter on the emancipation, and everybody in the cabins gather ’round as he read. That’s why we call this Shout Read ’em, John, Read ’em for the day he come to tell the people about they freedom!

  —Interview with Uncle Will, age sixty-seven, transliterated from the Gullah by EK

  NINE

  Dr. Bisset stands there blindfolded, not a bit wet, like the rain afraid to touch him.

  “There is no early or late with us,” he answers. “Just a matter of time.”

  He definitely been around them haints too long. Wait—us?

  The dead Angel Oak tree up and appears right behind him, branches going every which way across the mountaintop. Around it stand half a dozen figures, untouched as well by the rain and too tall to be men, with wrinkled skin for faces.

  Night Doctors.

  The Grand Cyclops roars, endless mouths gnashing teeth as she pushes past me to meet this threat. One of the Night Doctors lifts an arm to throw out a bone-white rope of chain with a curved hook. It latches onto her trunk, digging in and pulling. She brings down a thick tentacle, crushing the Night Doctor flat and throwing up chunks of stone. A second tentacle crushes another. My heart drops, thinking she killed them dead. But the two slide out from under the tentacles and stand back up, whole! Just like that! They lift arms to throw new chains, one hook catching the Grand Cyclops’s neck and another latching to a snarling mouth. More chains fly, each digging into her monstrous body. Something shimmery travels down those links to the Night Doctors that quivers their wrinkled faces, and I realize they feeding on her. Feeding on her hate, and the hate of all the people that make her up. It must hurt something fierce, because all those mouths scream. Not in rage no more, but pain. And fear.

  She tries to pull free, scrambling back. But the Night Doctors already turned away, chains slung over their shoulders. Some Ku Kluxes shed their human skins, running to protect their god. But the Night Doctors swat them away one-handed or snap their necks like chickens. Them frightful beings never stop their stride, walking into the dead Angel Oak tree one by one. The Grand Cyclops is dragged along, caught like a fish even as she struggles to break free, dozens of human hands erupting from her body to grab hold at anything. But there’s only the smooth mountaintop, and those fleshy fingers skitter across stone and rainwater in vain.

  When she reaches the tree its bleached-white trunk opens wide, like a gaping mouth. The Grand Cyclops’s tentacles lash at the branches, trying to tear off limbs, desperate as she sends out frightened shrieks. But it’s no use. That dead tree swallows her up, where the dissecting hall waits. Bet she not gon’ like that. Under my breath, I whisper Chef’s ditty:

  Night Doctors, Night Doctors

  You can cry and carry on.

  But when they done dissectin’

  Every bit of you is gone.

  “A bargain kept,” Dr. Bisset’s voice comes. Then a pause. “On your left.”

  It’s the only warning as a silver cleaver slices for my neck. I jump back, bringing up my sword in time to block it. Butcher Clyde. He wearing his true face now—eyes turned to orifices ringed with teeth, while more mouths howl under his wet robes, spitting their rage.

  “You betrayed us! Ruined our plans!”

  He so mad he not so much fighting as battering me with those cleavers. But they powerful strong, striking dazzling sparks off my sword.

  “Going to kill you! Then eat you! Make you meat!”

  A rumble bubbles up from somewhere deep inside him and the front of his robes shred away, revealing a gaping mouth where his belly should be—same one from my dream! It opens to show curving teeth like needles, and a long, darting tongue. That nasty thing shoots out at me, and I slice it clean off, leaving it flopping in the rain. Been waiting to do that. He screams, staggers, then comes at me again, mouths open and singing.

  It’s like the night at the juke joint. A mashed-up chorus, with no real timing or rhythm. As if it was created to unmake music. Like before it threatens to take me off balance, and I stumble under it. But no! I got songs too! I listen to my sword, letting those chanting voices fill me up. For a moment it seems the two are battling: my songs and his uneven chorus. But it was never a real fight. What I have is beautiful music inspired by struggle and fierce love. What he got ain’t nothing but hateful noise. Not a hint of soul to it. Like unseasoned meat. My songs crash right through that nonsense, silencing it, just as my sword takes off his arm. He falls back and I dip low, slicing away everything under one knee.

  When he lands on his back I walk over, watching him fight to get up. Dr. Bisset appears beside me, studyin
g the thing on the ground with interest. I bend close, easily avoiding the cleaver slashing at me uselessly. His mouths hiss, and I get to work, hacking away at the meat of him, the lie of him, all to the beautiful songs in my head. About halfway through, his whole body falls apart. Pieces of flesh go slithering and crawling out across the mountaintop, like a broken hive of insects seeking escape.

  But Dr. Bisset is there—a blur, everywhere at once. He picks up each one of those pieces, dropping them into what looks like a white medical bag. When he’s done the bag the same size but bulging, as shrieking things inside fight to get out. He nods and I follow his meaning to a small dark shape in the distance, fleeing for the trees below. Butcher Clyde’s head by that red hair, grown legs like tubes. I catch up with it quick, planting a foot atop his forehead. Under the heel of my boot, two mouths where eyes should be gnash jagged teeth.

  “Didn’t I say that one day I was going to cut you to pieces?”

  When he open his other mouth wide to snarl I plunge my sword inside. The blade goes hot and there’s a melding of shrieks as Butcher Clyde’s head smokes and chars from the inside. I don’t stop until there’s quiet and nothing but a lump of ash that the rain begins to wash away.

  “A shame,” Dr. Bisset says. “I would have liked to examine that specimen.”

  I look to his bag. “You ain’t got enough?”

  He answers with a tip of his bowler, then walks toward the dead Angel Oak tree.

  “How did you convince your lords?” I call out. “To help I mean?”

  He glances back. “I’ve told you. You intrigue them. They will be keeping … a watch on you.”

  Now that, I don’t like one bit.

  He sets out again, his body turning sideways when he reaches the dead Angel Oak, going flat as paper once more. Then he and the tree, fade from the night. The full weight of all that just happened almost drags me to my knees. Then I remember.

  Chef! Michael George!

  It takes some digging to find them. First Chef. She got a nasty bump on her head. Out cold, but still breathing. I come across two other women before finding Michael George. He bruised some, but alive. Though his eyes still turned up into white marbles. I look to the sky, catching rain on my face. The Grand Cyclops is gone. Butcher Clyde too. But this don’t feel over. Right about then I realize, we not alone.