“Blue,” Patricia said. “Come.”
He flew out of bed and grabbed her around the waist. She walked them in a straight line, stepping on his books and action figures. Plastic men snapped beneath their feet as they rushed to his bedroom door.
“Korey,” she said, quiet and urgent from the hall. “Come on.”
Korey flowed out of her bed and ran to the other side of her mother, and Patricia herded them both down the front stairs and sat them on the bottom step.
“I need you to wait here,” Patricia whispered. “I’ll check the doors.”
She walked quickly through the dark downstairs den to the back door and turned the deadbolt, expecting to see the shadowy shape of a man through the door right before he smashed through the glass and yanked her out into the wild night. She made sure the sun porch door was deadbolted—they had too many doors—then went down the steps to Miss Mary’s room, turning on the light as she went.
Miss Mary came to life on her bed, squirming and moaning, but Patricia kept on walking to the utility room, where she made sure the door to the garbage cans was deadbolted, too.
She went to the front hall and turned on the porch lights, then went to the sun porch and snapped on the floodlights that lit up the backyard.
“Korey,” Patricia called from the sun porch, her eyes glued to the merciless white glare of the backyard, the floodlights picking out every blade of yellowed grass. “Bring me the portable phone.”
She heard feet running from the front hall across the living room, and then her children were beside her. Korey pressed a hard plastic rectangle into her palm. She had the upper hand. The doors were locked, they could see everything around them, and they were secure. She could call the Mt. Pleasant police department in a flash. Maryellen said their response time was three minutes.
She kept her thumb over the dial button and they stood, eyes glued to the windows. The floodlights erased every shadow: the strange hollow depression in the center of the yard, the trunks of the oak trees with their bark stained yellow by the iron-rich Mt. Pleasant water, the geranium bushes against the fence separating their property from the Langs, the flower beds on the other side separating their yard from the Mitchells.
But beyond the reach of the lights, the night was a black wall. Patricia felt eyes out there looking into her house, watching her and the children through the glass. The scar tissue on her left ear began to crawl. The wind tossed the bushes and trees. The house creaked quietly to itself. They all watched, looking for something that didn’t belong.
“Mom,” Blue said, low and even.
She saw his gaze fixed on the top of the sun porch windows. The roof of the sun porch was a shingled overhang outside her bedroom windows, and along its edge Patricia caught something slowly and deliberately move and she knew immediately what it was: a human hand, letting go of the edge of the overhang and withdrawing back up out of sight.
She had the phone against her ear in an instant. Sharp static cracks made her yank it away.
“911?” she said. “Hello? My name is Patricia Campbell.” The line ZZZrrrrkkKKKed in her ear. “My children and I are at 22 Pierates Cruze.” A series of hollow pops covered the faint sound of a human voice yabbering on the other end. “There is an intruder in our house and I’m here with my children alone.”
That was when she remembered her bathroom window was wide open.
“Keep trying,” Patricia said, thrusting the phone into Korey’s hand, not giving herself a second to think. “Stay here and dial again.” Patricia raced across the dark living room and heard Korey say behind her, “Please,” to the operator as she turned the corner and ran up the dark stairs.
From the overhang over the sun porch it was just a short chin-up to the main roof, then up one side, down the other, and a short drop onto the porch roof right outside her bathroom, then in through the bathroom window. She’d opened it earlier to let out the smell of her hairspray.
She felt something dark and heavy above her on the roof racing her to the open window. Her legs pushed her weight hard up the stairs, chest heaving, breath burning in her throat, pulse cracking behind her ears, hurling herself around the banister at the top of the stairs and into her dark bedroom.
To her left she saw the harbor out the windows; to her right she felt hot air blowing in from the bathroom window, and she threw herself toward it, running down the dark tunnel of her bedroom and into the bathroom, closets on one side, smashing her stomach into the sharp edge of the counter, reaching for the window, slamming it shut, turning the latch, and something dark flashed past outside, cutting off the night sky. She yanked her hands back like the window was on fire.
They had to get out of the house. Then she remembered Miss Mary. She wasn’t capable of running, or probably even leaving the house and walking across the backyard in the middle of the night. Someone would have to stay with her. She raced through her dark bedroom, back down the stairs, and into the living room.
“The phone doesn’t work,” Korey said, holding out the portable handset to her.
“We have to go,” she told Korey and Blue. She took their hands and led them through the dining room and into the kitchen toward the back door.
Someone wanted to get into the house. She had no idea when Carter was coming home. They had no way to call for help. She needed to get to a phone, and she needed to get whoever it was away from her children.
“I want you to go into the garage room with Miss Mary,” she told them. “And lock the door as soon as you’re inside. Don’t let anyone in.”
“What about you?” Korey asked.
“I’m going to run to the Langs’ and call the police,” Patricia said. She looked out over the bright backyard. “I’ll only be gone a minute.”
Blue began to cry. Patricia unlocked the back door.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Mom?”
“No questions,” she said. “Lock yourselves in with your grandmother.”
Then she turned the handle and opened the door, and a man stepped into the house.
Patricia screamed. The man grabbed her by the arms.
“Whoa,” James Harris said.
Patricia swayed and the floor rose to meet her. James Harris’s strong arms held her up as her knees gave out.
“I saw the lights on back here,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a man,” Patricia said, relieved that help had arrived, speaking over her pounding heart. “On the roof. We tried to call the police. The phone isn’t working.”
“Okay,” James Harris reassured her. “I’m here. There’s no need to call the police. No one’s hurt?”
“We’re fine,” Patricia said.
“I should check on Miss Mary,” James Harris said, gently pushing Patricia back against the counter and stepping past her and the children. He moved away from them, going farther and farther into the den.
“I need to call the police,” Patricia said.
“No need,” James Harris told her from the middle of the den.
“They’ll be here in three minutes,” she said.
“Let me check on Miss Mary and then I’ll look on the roof,” James Harris said from the far end of the den.
Suddenly, Patricia didn’t want James Harris in the room alone with Miss Mary.
“No!” she said, too loud.
He stopped, one hand on the garage room door, and turned slowly.
“Patricia,” he said. “Calm down.”
“The police?” she asked, stepping toward the kitchen phone.
“Don’t,” he told her, and she wondered why he was telling her not to call the police. “Don’t do anything, don’t call anyone.”
Which was when a blue light flickered across the walls and strong white lights flooded the den windows.
* * *
—
“Patty?” Carter called from the front hall.
“We’re in here,” she hollered, and a moment later he came down the steps into the garage room.
Patricia had decided they should all stay together in Miss Mary’s room. James Harris had already spoken to the police and left. He’d returned to make sure Patricia was all right after her mother-in-law had broken up their book club meeting, and come around back when he saw the backyard lights on.
“Is everyone all right?” Carter asked.
“We’re fine,” Patricia said. “Right, everyone? Just scared.”
Korey and Blue hugged their father.
“That guy saved us,” Korey said.
“Someone got on the roof and they would have gotten us if he hadn’t come,” Blue said.
“Then I’m glad he was here,” Carter said, and turned to Patricia. “Did you really have to call out the national guard? Christ, Patty, the neighbors are going to think I’m a wife beater or something.”
“Hoyt,” Miss Mary said from her bed.
“Okay, Mom,” Carter said. “It’s been a long night. I think we all just need to calm down.”
Patricia didn’t know if she would ever feel calm again.
CHAPTER 11
After they put Blue and Korey to bed, Patricia told Carter everything.
“I’m not saying it was your imagination,” he said when she’d finished. “But you’re always keyed up after your meetings. Those are morbid books y’all read.”
“I want an alarm system,” she told him.
“How would that have helped?” he asked. “Listen, I promise for the next little while I’ll make sure I’m home before dark.”
“I want an alarm system,” she repeated.
“Before we go to all that trouble and expense, let’s see how you feel after the next few weeks.”
She stood up from the end of the bed.
“I’m going to check on Miss Mary,” she told him, and left the room.
She checked the deadbolts on the front, back, and sun porch doors, leaving the lights on behind her, then went to Miss Mary’s room. The room was lit by the orange glow of Miss Mary’s night-light. She moved softly in case Miss Mary was asleep, then saw the night-light reflecting off her open eyes.
“Miss Mary?” Patricia asked. Miss Mary’s eyes cut sideways at her. “Are you awake?”
The sheet moved and Miss Mary’s claw struggled out, then ran out of energy and flopped down on her chest without getting where it was going.
“I’m.” Miss Mary wetted her lips. “I’m.”
Patricia stepped to the bed railing. She knew what Miss Mary meant.
“It’s all right,” she said.
The two women stayed like that for a long quiet moment, listening to the hot wind press on the windows behind the drawn curtains.
“Who’s Hoyt Pickens?” Patricia asked, not expecting a reply.
“He killed my daddy,” Miss Mary said.
That took the air out of Patricia’s lungs. She’d never heard that name before. Besides which, Miss Mary usually forgot about the people who floated to the surface of her mind seconds after she’d spoken their names. Patricia had never heard her link the person and their importance together.
“Why do you say that?” she asked softly.
“I have a picture of Hoyt Pickens,” Miss Mary rasped. “In his ice cream suit.”
Her ragged voice made Patricia’s scarred ear itch. The wind tried to open the hidden windows, rattled the glass, looked for a way in. Miss Mary’s hand found some more energy and slithered across the blankets toward Patricia, who reached down and took the smooth, cold hand in her own.
“How did he know your father?” she asked.
“Before supper, the men and my daddy used to sit on the back porch passing a jar,” Miss Mary said. “Us children had our supper early and played in the front yard, then we saw a man in a suit the color of vanilla ice cream come up the road. He turned into our yard and the men hid their jar because drinking was against the law. This man walked up to my daddy and said his name was Hoyt Pickens and he asked if my daddy knew where he could get himself some rabbit spit. That’s what they called my daddy’s corn whiskey, because it could make a rabbit spit in a bulldog’s eye. He said he’d been on the Cincinnati train and his throat was dusty and it’d be worth two bits to him to wet it. Mr. Lukens brought out the jar and Hoyt Pickens tasted it. He said he’d been from Chicago to Miami and that was the best corn liquor he ever had.”
Patricia didn’t breathe. It had been years since Miss Mary had put this many sentences together.
“That night Mama and Daddy argued. Hoyt Pickens wanted to buy some of Daddy’s rabbit spit and sell it in Columbia, but Mama said no. It was ten-cent cotton and forty-cent meat back then. Reverend Buck told us the boll weevil had come because there were too many public swimming pools. The government taxed everything from cigarettes to bow legs, but Daddy’s rabbit spit made sure we always had molasses on our cornbread.
“Mama told him the snake that stuck out its head usually got it chopped off, but Daddy was tired of scratching a living so he ignored Mama and sold twelve jars of rabbit spit to Hoyt Pickens and Hoyt went to Columbia and sold those right quick and came back for twelve more. He sold those, too, and soon Daddy had a second still and was gone from the house from sundown to sunup and sleeping all day.
“Hoyt Pickens sat regular at our table every Sunday and some Wednesdays and Fridays, too. He told Daddy all the things he should want. He told Daddy he could get more money if he laid up his rabbit spit in barrels until it turned brown. That meant Daddy had to lay out considerable and he wouldn’t see his money back for six months until Hoyt took it to Columbia and got paid. But the first time Hoyt laid that thick stack of bills on the table we all got excited.”
Something sharp tickled Patricia’s palm. Miss Mary was scratching her nails against Patricia’s skin, back and forth, back and forth, like insects creeping across the inside of her hand.
“Soon everything became about the rabbit spit. Once the sheriff saw what Daddy was doing he touched him for a taste of that money. Daddy needed other men to work the stills and he paid them in scrip while they waited for the rabbit spit to turn brown. Banks closed faster than you could remember their names so everyone held on to their money, but Daddy bought a set of encyclopedias, and a mangle for the wash, and the men all smoked store-bought cigars when they sat out back.”
Patricia remembered Kershaw. They’d driven the hundred and fifty miles upstate many times to visit Carter’s cousins, and Miss Mary when she lived alone. They hadn’t been in a long while, but Patricia remembered a dry land populated by dry people, covered in dust, with filling stations at every crossroads selling evaporated milk and generic cigarettes. She remembered fallow fields and abandoned farms. She understood the appeal of something fresh, and clean, and green to people who lived in a small, hot place like that.
“Around then the Beckham boy went missing,” Miss Mary said. Her throat rasped now. “He was a pale little redheaded thing, six years old, who’d follow anyone anywhere. When he didn’t come home for supper we all went looking. We expected to find him curled up under a pecan tree, but no. Some people said the government inoculation men took him away, others said there was a colored gal in the woods who churned white children into a stew she sold as a love spell for a nickel a taste. Some folks said he fell in the river and got carried away, but it didn’t matter what they said—he was gone.
“The next little boy to vanish was Avery Dubose. He was a tin bucket toter and Hoyt told everyone he must
have fell in one of the machines at the mill and the boss lied about it. That stirred up bad feelings between the mill and the farmers, and with so much rabbit spit around tempers ran hot. Men started showing up at church with their arms in slings and bruises on their faces. Mr. Beckham shot himself.
“But we had presents under the tree that Christmas and Daddy convinced Mama sweet times were here. In January her belly got tight and round. I was their only baby who’d lived out of three, but now another baby had taken root.
“They’d never have found Charlie Beckham if that combine salesman hadn’t stopped his horses at the Moores’ old place and seen the water from their pump flow thick with maggots. They had to let that little boy’s body sit in the icehouse for three days to let all the water drain before he’d fit in his coffin. Even then, they had to build it extra wide.”
White spit formed gummy balls in the corners of Miss Mary’s mouth, but Patricia didn’t move. She worried that if she did anything to break the spell this thread might snap, and Miss Mary might never speak like this again.
“That spring, nobody could afford to plant nothing,” Miss Mary went on. “Nobody had nothing in the ground so Daddy and Hoyt had to spend big to bring corn all the way from Rock Hill, and they had all their money tied up in the rabbit spit barrels. The banks didn’t care about no scrip and they started taking everyone’s tools, and their horses, and mules, and no one could do nothing. Everyone waited for those barrels.
“The third little boy to go missing was Reverend Buck’s baby and the men got together on our back porch and I heard them speculate through my window about one person or another, and the jar kept getting passed, and then Hoyt Pickens said he’d seen Leon Simms around the Moore farm one night, and I wanted to laugh because only a stranger would say that. Leon was a colored fellow and something had happened to his head in the war. He sat in the sun outside Mr. Early’s store, and if you gave him candy he’d play something for you on the spoons and sing. His mother took care of him and he got a government check. Sometimes he helped people carry packages and they always paid him in candy.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 10