The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  “And what field is that?”

  “True crime.”

  “Novelist?”

  “Magazine. Southern Gothic.”

  “Pretty popular?”

  It would be if you found a good story, his editor said in the back of his mind. He was grateful for the approaching mouth in the tree tunnel. “Right or left?”

  “Left,” Sorrel said. “We’ll take her to the old Simmons Creek Cemetery.”

  Fat drops splattered heavily on the windshield as they turned out onto Adamah Road. Streetlamps glowed to life back toward Three Summers. Brad hit the defog, and Sorrel rolled up his window. On either side of the road, behind narrowing fields, the forest edged closer. His hands quivered on the wheel.

  “You okay?” the sheriff said.

  “What was your relationship to her?” Brad asked.

  “I thought we dropped that subject, Brad.”

  “You mentioned back at the house that the property was yours now. I thought you two might be related.”

  Sorrel’s knuckles tapped the glass. “So you are looking for a story.”

  Was he? That itch on his neck burned through the haze. He imagined the old woman’s dead hand rising up from the back seat, her fingers burrowing beneath the headrest and coming out behind his neck, her dirty nails stroking his skin. Offering relief. A story.

  The car bumped across a set of railroad tracks, rusted and weed-infested and desolate in both directions.

  “Turn right up here on Simmons,” Sorrel commanded.

  They arrived at a road called Simmons Pike, bordering open fields. Across the road, in the distance, a house crouched on a low hill, silhouetted against the slate-gray sky.

  Sorrel leaned over and punched the car horn.

  Its startled bray broke the silence and Brad jerked. “I’m driving! Please don’t touch the wheel when I’m—”

  “That wasn’t for you,” Sorrel said. “It was for the folks out there. I want them to come. They need the closure.”

  Brad’s gaze hovered on the field as he turned right onto Simmons Pike. The fading horn blast bounced like a pebble off the side of the lonely, distant house. And then, through the rain-streaked window, he saw figures coming out of the ground at the base of the hill. One after another, they appeared from the earth; they paused to look toward the road, then climbed toward cars and trucks parked on the slanted lawn before the house.

  It was impossible to tell from this angle, but they must have clambered out of some sort of pit or ditch. A series of depressions or trenches must run across the field parallel to the road. Irrigation, maybe. But irrigation of what? It was a sea of empty grass.

  The itching on his neck was maddening. He blinked, and they were past the field, trees enveloping the road. Sorrel turned and reached into the back seat.

  Brad heard the flaps of a cardboard box parting. The man sat forward again, nose wrinkled, pinching a seven-by-ten-inch pulp paper booklet between two fingers. “Southern Gothic,” he murmured. “My, my.”

  The cover painting depicted a lighthouse on a dark and stormy night, flashing its yellow beam on a capsized yacht. “The Breakwater Sirens,” by Lamar Hughes.

  Sorrel flipped through the pages. “You folks play up the supernatural, huh?”

  Chewing down his annoyance, Brad said, “That was a Halloween issue. I only do real stuff.”

  “Huh.” He examined the back cover. “What kind of circulation do you have?”

  “Around three hundred thousand.”

  A church spire pierced the forest skyline on the right side of the road, tapering up toward the barren clouds. Adverse winds had stripped it, leaving flapping tar paper and dangling shingles. “Is that the place?”

  Sorrel closed the magazine. “That’s it.”

  The church and its cemetery sat on a peninsula above the Locust River.

  Kudzu swarmed from the trees and the creek bank to the left of the church, blanketing the structure. Vines ringed the windows and clung to every inch of board and crawled across the roof. Only the spire had been spared. It strained upward like the arm of a drowning man pecked and flayed by seabirds.

  None of the surrounding trees or ground had been swamped by the Kudzu; the invasive vines had been unusually selective.

  Brad swung the car off the road, continuing on a gravel track that led through high grass, past the tilting headstones in the graveyard. A white wooden sign stood by the church doors: simmons creek baptist church.

  Brad stopped near the church. The rest of the caravan filled the drive behind.

  “Looks like you’ll have to stick around for a few minutes,” Sorrel observed. “I’m sure that’s no problem.” As he leaned toward the door, he paused and bent down to retrieve something from the floorboard. “Well, that’s pretty. Belong to you?”

  A ring. Four prongs on a white gold band clutching a solitaire diamond.

  Her ring.

  For an instant, it wasn’t the sheriff in the passenger seat; it was his fiancée. Her wheezing filling the car. Her body crushed against the door, trying to get away. Her palms smearing down her face; her lips stretching toward a scream.

  Brad leaned over and snatched the ring.

  Sorrel’s fingers hovered a moment. Then he got out and opened the back door and retrieved the body from the back seat. The rain had lightened. He laid the body in the grass outside Brad’s window. All along the drive, people climbed from their vehicles. “Line up,” Sorrel called. “Might as well show some respect.” Then he turned and walked toward the church.

  Brad opened the glove box and tossed the ring inside. It clinked softly against the RIA .38 Special cushioned atop the yellowed owner’s manual. His fingers hovered for an instant before he slammed the hatch shut. Squirming the fractured pill bottle from his pocket, he threw it on the floor mat.

  Outside, people filed around the car. Some stopped by the body, others processed out into the dripping grass and headstones. There were over a hundred of them, he guessed, and most were over fifty, though their sun-battered faces made age hard to judge.

  It was their eyes. They weren’t ragged eyes, blistered by grief like those he’d seen earlier in the day at the funeral with his fiancée, those eyes that withered what they looked at. They weren’t even like those that had filed past him at a funeral much further in the past. The ones that had crinkled into sad smiles for his mother and then turned scornfully on him, a boy wearing headphones to the service. He’d had to. He’d needed to drown the feeling of gathering pressure. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear the pastor. It was better, in fact. His dad was dead. He wasn’t coming back. Lies wouldn’t lift the weight.

  No, the eyes of the people in this cemetery were round and so wide open, they reminded him of those belonging to cave creatures, beings of perpetual darkness.

  Too late he remembered that he had wanted to study the old woman’s face.

  The people had formed a double-sided line between the body and a spot two hundred feet away among the gravestones. Those nearest bent and lifted her between them. Together, they passed her slowly along the line, her body rising and falling along the row of arms like an item on a conveyor belt.

  Sorrel came out of the church and walked briskly to the end of the line. He began to dig rapidly, tossing chunks of earth into a heap. By the time the body reached him, he already stood in a knee-deep trench. Maybe he was also the town undertaker, Brad mused.

  Again, the buzzing sensation touched his neck. He reached back finally to scratch. But instead of giving relief, the tingling spread to his fingers. He brought them in front of his face.

  His hand was smeared with pale dust. The same dust he had found on the rocking chair at the house.

  Brad twisted around. His toes bunched together inside his shoes.

  The rear seats were hazy where the body had lain. Reaching out, he
scraped his fingers across the upholstery, gathering the dust under his nails. He examined it under the light of the windshield, rolling it between his fingers. The woman had been digging among flowers, so perhaps it was a garden chemical, like Sevin Dust. Or maybe a powder she had worn? That would reconcile with its presence on the arm of the rocking chair.

  His arm tremored as he opened the car door. He stepped out and crouched down, rubbing his hands in the sodden grass. An erratic wind scraped the high stalks against the headstones and set the trees around the cemetery singing. Brad glanced up as a silent group of birds soared across the river. They swirled like leaves and came to rest on a derelict industrial tower on the far bank. It was gray, matching the clouds behind it, and streaked with rust. He imagined he could hear cries echoing up the side of that tower and being broadcast across the water—long hopeless cries.

  Brad blinked. The sound was coming from this side of the river. It was coming from the people. He stood up.

  The line of people had spread out among the graves, and a low murmur rose from the assembly. Hesitantly, he moved forward.

  They were all talking among themselves. But none seemed to hear the other. Each was carrying on an intimate conversation with themselves. Delivering their own eulogy. Preaching their own sermon. The eyes, so wide a few minutes ago, drifting closed. The hard lines around the mouths were softening, melting each solemn expression into soft contentment. Lax lips forming words. One word. A sighing-sounding word.

  His heartbeat lurched faster. As he moved through the murmuring mass, Brad tried to recall similar rituals in his ten years crisscrossing the South. This wasn’t Full Gospel or Pentecostal. Was it some other fringe Christian sect? Yet the whole ceremony seemed somehow disconnected from the church. There was no pastor present, just the sheriff.

  Sorrel was standing waist-deep in the grave. The shovel was stabbed in the mound of earth behind him. The body of the woman lay before him in the grass. He scooped the slender body in his arms and crouched down, disappearing into the earth.

  Abruptly, the people around Brad began to sink to the ground. The younger ones dropped to their knees in the grass, while the older ones braced themselves on gravestones as they knelt. The silver-haired woman who had directed him to the house walked through their midst, eyes half-closed, holding a shovel.

  Sorrel’s head appeared above the surface. His face was down, mouth flat, as he examined the body beneath him. When the woman approached, he glanced up and took in the scene. “No!” It was like a gunshot in the quiet.

  Scrambling from the hole, he spread his arms, black sleeves smeared orange with mud. “It’s over! Y’all go home now. It’s finished.”

  The murmuring stopped. The eyelids lifted. The faces hardened.

  “You’ve paid your respects,” Sorrel said a little more softly. “It’s time to go.”

  Like disenchanted worshippers, the people rose to their feet. Their faces seemed to sag, burdened with weariness. They flashed glances at one another and gathered their plaids and denims around themselves tighter. For a moment, Brad felt it, too: A viscous chill seeping up from the ground. Warping the air. Seeming to stretch the sheriff’s voice as he repeated his command: “Go.”

  Then, just as quickly, the aura was gone. Brad looked around.

  The hiss of grass snaking around shoes was the only sound as the people departed. The silver-haired woman was the last to go. She threw her shovel down and stalked away.

  When the last car and truck pulled out of the churchyard, Sorrel rubbed his brow, turned back to the hole, and began to shovel dirt. The shovel crunched. Rain splattered the leaves of the kudzu-shrouded church.

  Blood hammered in Brad’s skull. He couldn’t leave. He stepped forward.

  “You, too,” Sorrel said over his shoulder as he approached. “Don’t mind me. I can walk back.”

  Brad ignored him, picking up the fallen shovel. His muscles were jittery. His mind, too. He gripped the shaft and approached the grave. Ramming the shovel into the dirt, he hefted the loaded blade and turned toward the grave. He extended it out over the void and looked down.

  The old woman lay at the bottom, her lower body obscured by dirt. The white dress was damp with rain. Her arms were at her sides, hands turned up—an almost plaintive posture. Slowly, he turned the shovel. The dirt fell.

  And then her face moved. Her eyes.

  They opened.

  They turned toward him.

  The pupils expanded like sudden sinkholes.

  And then the dirt hit her face.

  Brad stumbled forward. The slick edge of the grave crumbled beneath his feet.

  As his shoes galloped on the collapsing brink, a hand grabbed his collar, yanking him away from the edge.

  “You’ll fall in!” Sorrel shouted in his ear. “Stay back!”

  The sheriff released him. Brad collapsed, coughing into the grass. Loosening his collar, he tried to swallow the swarming mass of astonishment that filled his throat. The woman’s gaping eyes burned like sunspots in his vision.

  It couldn’t be. It was the pills, so thick in his system, warping his mind. He could feel it coming from his stomach now, surging up his throat—stale water and dissolving chemicals.

  He wretched it all out and stayed hunched on the grass for a while, fists clenching the stems, shivering as the weight evaporated. The endless cycle had reasserted itself. The aim that had driven him onward for ten years would not release him. He could not break free. He could not leave. He had to know.

  When he sat up, a stooped, bald-headed man dressed in black was standing halfway out of one of the church doors. He was gripping the door to support himself, and he was staring at Sorrel. The sheriff, his face shedding sweat, was steadily refilling the grave.

  Brad stood up. He walked over, cleaning his glasses on his shirt. When he spoke, the flat sound of his voice was startling against the stillness. “I want to rent out that house.”

  “Not for rent,” the sheriff panted.

  “Just a couple weeks. Maybe a month. I can give you five hundred dollars right now.”

  The flat of the shovel came down on the grave, packing the dirt. “What are you hoping to find?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  The sheriff straightened up and glanced back at the empty drive, rubbing the rainwater from his brow. Brad followed his glance to the church. The stooped man was gone.

  “Look, I . . . ” Brad imagined the woman beneath the soil, blinking back the mud, screaming into the smothering wet blackness. He replaced his glasses. “I’m sorry if this is an annoyance. It is to me, too, sometimes. But it’s what I do. I’ve got to keep doing it. If you say no, then I’ll get a hotel in the nearest town and come snooping around every day.”

  Sorrel slammed the shovel into the dirt and offered a bland smile. “That ring in the car . . .”

  The rain fell between them.

  “What about it?”

  “There’s two of you, isn’t there? There’d be two of you in that house.”

  “There might be.”

  “There would be,” Sorrel said. He stared heavily at the grave. “So, what’s her name?”

  HER FEET

  GO DOWN

  4

  In early February 2018, my editor, Heather, called me from Atlanta to complain. She did it in an unusually subtle way. Lily Verner, Heather explained, was a bright recent university grad who was writing a series of five true crime articles set in an allegedly haunted oil field in Alabama. After reading the first one, Heather had bought the series. They would serve for almost a full year’s worth of issues. She let an ensuing silence tell me the rest: after eight months of nothing from me, Southern Gothic was seeking fresh blood.

  When I called Heather in May, asking for money and promising a blockbuster, it took an hour to convince her. I told her the story of a strange town in which
the kudzu came only for the church. I painted a picture of decay, of rot. Of our times. But in the end, it was reminiscing about my very first article that won her over. My fiancée took even more convincing. The prospect of a secluded life in western Tennessee did not initially appeal to her. But the financial and emotional extremes we were facing persuaded her that a strategic withdrawal from the world might do us both good.

  So on the first Saturday in May, we exited the I-40 ramp, she in her Chevy pickup and I in my Accord. We followed the curvy single-lane road from the state highway to Three Summers, and then the tree tunnel road from Three Summers to the island that Sorrel called Angel’s Landing. It was a very quiet two o’clock when we passed beneath the live oaks along the drive. It only occurred to me then that the trees were hundreds of miles beyond their natural coastal habitat.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  “What do you think of that?” her fiancé asked.

  They stood with their backs against the truck, looking up at the house.

  “A real eyrie compared to our two-room Nashville nest, huh?”

  Missy smiled halfway and tilted her head, jaw working. The two-hour drive had turned the gum in her mouth to a tacky-tasting lump. She dug the wrapper from her pocket while examining the house’s sallow façade.

  There was something sad about the crooked way the shutters hung. Something pitiful about the warped, shrunken boards around the windows. Something embarrassing about the vines clinging to the pillars like flies on the face of a dead loved one.

  “Well?”

  Spitting out the gum, she rolled it up in the piece of foil. “If it means you’ll be around more, then I utterly adore it.”

  “That bad?”

  His tone plummeted so much that she scooted over and kissed his cheek. “Course not. On second thought, I just adore it.” Looking up, she added, “Seems kinda scrunched up, though, like it needs to breathe.”

  “Then here are the keys. Let’s let it breathe.”

  Slipping the key ring around her ring finger, she advanced on the porch. He followed just behind, hand gentle, yet trembling, on her lower back, propelling her forward with almost childish excitement.