The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  “Your father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he—”

  “He went to rest here. Yeah.” Her muddy hands wadded her shirtfront. “He went to rest here. And I hope maybe he’ll share a bit of it with me.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Resting.”

  “When did he . . . go to rest?”

  “Couple weeks ago. I don’t count.”

  “And why here? Why in this place? The mill?”

  “A lot do. This is a good spot. A shallow place. Everyone goes to a shallow place.”

  The desire to jump on those last words surged, but he caught himself. Grabbing too hard might cause a break, especially with someone so fragile. He kept his voice low. “Did your dad have a full life?”

  “Oh, he was real old. And my mama was, too, when she went. Real old.”

  “I’m sure you got to spend many happy years with them.”

  A sagging nod. “What about your daddy? Has he gone to rest?”

  Somewhere up in the guts of the building, a bit of debris fell.

  Tap.

  “Yeah. He’s gone.”

  “It’s a chopped-off feeling when someone goes, isn’t it?”

  “I know.” Then he said, “Have you got someone to take care of you? I remember it’s not nice being alone.”

  Her hands refolded. “That’s why I come here. Then I’m not alone.”

  “They must have really loved you. Were they old when you were born?”

  “Yeah, I was born from old parents.”

  “Do you remember the mine across the river? Do you remember when it closed down?”

  “They had me right after that happened. That was right at the end, when everything started dryin’ up.”

  Either she had eased to his presence, or weariness had asserted itself, for she sank back down to sit in the mud puddle. Maintaining his distance, Brad crouched so their voices would stay on the same level. “You said this was a shallow place. Are there other shallow places?”

  “A couple.”

  “Where are they?”

  Her smile broadened. “One of them’s the house. Where you live is a real shallow place. That’s why I can’t wait for you to invite us over. It’ll be so nice, then, like it used to be.”

  “You remember how it used to be?”

  “No. Like I said, things were dryin’ up when I was born. But my momma and daddy told me about when they were small. And before them, and before them . . . ”

  “You think it will be that way again?”

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  He paused. “I don’t think the sheriff would appreciate that.”

  Recognizing his tone, she lowered her own voice. “You’ll just have to go careful for a bit. But you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t pulled you down here.”

  Had he missed something? “What is . . . what is it?”

  Her grin became conspiratorial. “My daddy used to say no one knows why you yawn, but it’s why. ’Cause you want rest. And that’s what it is. God threw us out of Eden, made us work, but it . . . ” She chuckled. “Momma’d say, if you look deep inside your mouth when you yawn, you’ll see it looking out.”

  “Adamah,” Brad whispered.

  She drew up a bit. “Not respectful to say its name.”

  “Other folks around here say it.”

  “Other folks drive out to that church on Sundays ’cause Sorrel makes them. They’re fraying. That’s what Momma would say, fraying their bond. But you’ll bring it back. And she will. And bring more folks, too.”

  He thought of Jennifer sitting alone in the house, in that dim bedroom.

  Softly, he said, “Why did you cut off your eyelids, Harlow?”

  “They got too heavy.” She chuckled again, bending her head toward her kneeling knees until blackened hair pooled in the mud.

  “Did it tell you to?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I told you, they got too heavy. I wanted to be able to see better. So now . . . ” Scraping up more mud, she rubbed it into her helpless eyes.

  He chewed back an objection, an urge to grab her arm, to stop her. “I don’t like prying people, either. When I was young, I would go to a library and look at pictures of disasters on the computer. The people who worked there called my mom and she took me to a psychiatrist, a mind doctor, because she thought I was going to hurt people. I didn’t like her because of that, and never went back to the library. I hated how they didn’t trust me. But still . . . it’s important to be safe, to not hurt yourself, especially when you’re young, and—” He stopped as he saw her objection rising.

  But when it came, Harlow’s voice was gentle. “It’s okay.”

  He barely kept back frustration. “What about infection?”

  Although she remained hunched over, her head came up, like a sheltering animal surveying the underbelly of a forest. “This heals.” She lifted hands filled with seeping earth.

  Brad rose as revulsion boiled through him.

  Matted hair swaying, Harlow tracked his movement. Blind eyes pinpointed him, as if a vestige of sight remained. Her whole face widened in a babyish smile of dawning excitement. “I know you need rest. Why don’t you come down and try it?”

  Always the same lies. The same promises of healing if he just believed the proper thing, performed the proper ritual. “I can’t do that,” he said. “Can’t rest right now.”

  As he left, her laughter followed him across the floor. “Soon you will.”

  19

  This Adamah was depicted the same in all the artwork I came across: a human form with two legs and six arms spread-eagled. Masculine language was used in reference, but the figure had no sexually defining characteristics. And no face.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  How odd the sun is today, Missy thought. Hard. And not a shred of cloud to blunt it.

  The car lurched as Ezra turned it off the road onto an unpaved drive that stretched across dull green lawn and up a low hill to a solitary house. Where they were exactly she wasn’t sure—somewhere south of Three Summers, after crossing some tracks and curving through some woods and making a turn at one intersection. She could probably remember the way home if she needed to.

  An ache formed behind her eyes as the car jostled and dust seeped up outside her window, forming a tail behind the car. She gripped the door with one hand, steadying the cat’s basket with the other. Inside, the creature was motionless. Almost there.

  “Just here in the grass is good,” Ezra murmured, nudging the car up the incline before steering off into the front yard.

  Her blood churned in her temples as the car stopped sideways on the slant. A headache was coming on. Lack of sleep, probably. She hadn’t drank enough water this morning, and she had no gum to salivate her mouth. And her hands were still dry as—

  “Would you like me to carry the animal?” The sheriff was studying her from his seat.

  “No, thank you.” Hoisting the cat’s basket from the floorboard at her feet, she popped the door and slid out on the hill. She heaved the door shut and met Ezra at the rear of the car, where she squinted through the saltwater light at the driftwood-colored house atop the lawn. Its twin peaking roofs were arched eyebrows. A central section that connected the two wings was a high forehead of faded shingles that stopped just above a broad porch.

  “So, there’s a vet here?”

  “His name is Irons. I can’t vouch for his credentials, but I can for his character.”

  Shrugging, Missy hefted the basket. Ezra fell into place on her left as she climbed the hill. How was he not melting in that suit?

  “At least take my arm. So you don’t fall.”

  “I won’t fall.”

  �
��You’re still afraid of me, aren’t ya? No need for that.”

  She shook her head, looking west toward the tracts of land at the bottom of the hill. “Just cautious. But I do appreciate you driving me out here.”

  The claws of a huge burrowing beast had broken through the green skin of the field, tearing up grass from the base of the hill to the fringe of the woods a half mile distant. The claws had then withdrawn, but the scars remained: deep trenches, five of them, sunken in the face of the ground.

  “Then tell me about your tooth.”

  Her tongue flicked, feeling the jagged place.

  The trenches had not been left to heal. They were planted as vegetable gardens. Cornstalks and okra stalks occupied the ground between them, and vines tapestried the walls within.

  “I bit someone the wrong way.”

  Within the trenches, people were moving about, their big straw hats just below the lip of the troughs. They were tending the plants from battered wheelbarrows and harvesting them into tattered baskets. The air coming off the hill rippled and obscured them, like looking into the bottom of a lake.

  “You can’t just leave it at that,” Ezra said with a chuckle.

  “It happened when I was nine,” she said, face still turned away. “A man hit my grandmama. So I bit his ankle.”

  “You were living with your grandmother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your parents?”

  “They . . . Because of me, my daddy didn’t want my momma. And so my momma didn’t want me. And so my grandmama had to want me.”

  “An orphan who wasn’t really an orphan,” Ezra said reflectively. “You seem like a very interesting person, Missy.”

  That made a smile break through. She looked at the ground to hide it. The grass bending beneath her shoes and the swath of the field stood limp and pale, a doldrum sea exhausted by days of relentless sun. She repeated his words in her mind: A very interesting person.

  “Hungry for some fruits of the earth?” he asked with the same softness.

  Shaking her head, she shifted the basket’s weight and looked ahead. Nearly to the house.

  “It’s community run, so feel free to take some. If you’re hungry.”

  “Thank you.”

  A paved path snaked from the drive to the porch steps. Hanging pots dangled along the porch eaves and dead vines spilled from each, the thick strands reaching down, brown and rigid, toward the railing like stiff hair from trophy heads.

  As Missy proceeded down the path, she heard an undulating creak from the porch, gentle as a wrinkle on a pond. Creak . . . cak.

  Stepping into the shade after the brilliance of the sun, the porch was a fuzzy daguerreotype. She turned right, following the sound, and something coalesced from the gloom.

  A man, sitting in the only chair on the barren porch. Above the chair, a fan rotated. Missy peered at him as the sun haze cleared from her eyes.

  Bony legs in cuffless khaki pants propelled the squeaking chair. Waxy hands with bulging blue veins gripped the chair’s arms. The man wore a red sweater and a pair of sunglasses with small round lenses that perched on a gently crumpled face.

  “Joash!” Ezra approached the chair, hands on his sides. “Time to get up. I’ve found some work for you.”

  “Joash?” The man’s voice was the coo of a mourning dove. “Now who gave you permission to call me by my front name?” Chuckling, he added, “I saw your guys from town. Is it noon yet?” Pulling up his left sleeve, he examined a shattered watch face. “We’ll be gathering in the meeting room at noon.”

  Ezra stopped short of the chair and his voice flattened. “They came here? They were supposed to wait.”

  Mr. Irons looked up. “It’s been almost three weeks, Ezra, practically a drought for— Ah!” He shot from the chair with jack-in-the-box abruptness. Missy jerked. She resisted the urge to retreat as those tiny round sunglass lenses closed in on her. “So, this is our newest neighbor? At last. So good to meet you, Miss . . . ?”

  “Oh. Holiday. Missy Holiday.” She clawed back her hair and then offered her hand when he demanded it. In spite of his frail appearance, the man’s grip was as hard as his name.

  “Holiday? Now, I thought your husband was named Collins: Walter Collins.”

  “We’re not—well, we’re about to be, but we aren’t yet.” She coughed out a laugh and glanced at Ezra. He still faced the empty chair.

  “I see,” Irons replied. He clutched her hand. “And I understand. You’re a very beautiful lady. With a dozen disappointed suitors.”

  Missy finally got her smile on. “Well, that’s what I came through this dusty day to hear!”

  Irons grinned. “What is this task you have for me?”

  She shifted the basket on her arm. “It’s . . . it’s not eating.”

  Irons let go of her hand and reached into the basket. He drew the cat out and turned it before the dark disks of his glasses. Slowly, he massaged the bony frame. “What happened?”

  “He—that little boy who attacked me? Roy, he’s called?”

  Ezra turned around. His brows had slid so far down they obscured his eyes.

  “Well, he was trying to bury this poor thing outside my house. The way he was hittin’ at it, I guess he must have damaged its brain.”

  “I don’t think that’s far from wrong,” Irons said. “And if that’s the case, well . . . ” He shook his head. “But for you? I’ll try. Come inside.”

  “Thank you.”

  Missy followed them off the porch into the slightly cooler cavern of the main hall.

  The air was dry and sweet, like hay. No lights were on, and doors lined the left wall, letting into dim rooms. The right wall was almost unbroken, except for doors at the front and back of the house, as if between them was concealed a much grander space. As she followed the men toward the back of the house, her gaze caught a huge, delirious sort of painting hanging on the right-hand wall. Her head turned to study it as she passed.

  The elements were arranged in strata: a night sky, a dark canopy of trees, and a road beneath the trees. A horde of people holding crimson lanterns struggled with empty eyes along the road toward some unidentifiable destination. But she knew those eyes; she knew those smiles of communal frenzy. And she knew that road and where it led.

  The island. Our house.

  The brief rustle of a whisper drew Missy’s eyes to the two men. They were almost to the back of the house. Abruptly, Irons turned. “It might be best for you to wait out here, Ms. Holiday.”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ve seen things. I’ll be fine.”

  “You haven’t seen this,” Irons said. “This is not your regular case of—”

  “Irons has a process,” Ezra interrupted. “It’ll just take a minute. You should wait out here.”

  She blinked and let the basket handle slide down into her fingers. “Okay, then.”

  “Why not step into the kitchen?” Irons suggested. “There’s lemonade in the fridge and some cream by the sink.”

  “Thank you.” She hesitated. “Cream?”

  Irons hefted the slumping animal and stroked its head. “Hand cream. I noticed when we shook hands . . . ”

  The dryness split on her knuckles like a mask of baked mud. “Oh. Yeah. They aren’t normally this way.”

  Ezra nudged Irons and they continued down the hall, whispers passing between them. They went through a door in the back corner of the hall. It clunked shut.

  Missy set down the basket.

  Were they putting the cat down? Probably. She’d held off coming too long. And if anyone deserved to be put down, it was that horrible little boy.

  She blanched at the thought, then shrugged. It was true.

  She turned and walked back down the hall. Near the front door, a grandfather clock counted out seconds in the noiseless house. Ten til
l twelve.

  She looked at the long, unbroken wall with the painting. Her eyes wandered to the nearby door. What was back there? The kitchen, maybe. Where she’d been invited to go. And she did need a drink. And her hands were so dry.

  She crossed to the door. Against her fingertips, it swung inward.

  On the other side lay emptiness: a large bare room with white walls.

  Holes honeycombed the floor. Oval-shaped gaps, dozens of them, spreading to the corners of the room. Each just large enough for a person to lie inside. Blue smoke drifted from their mouths, crumbling the sunlight entering from the windows, filling her nostrils with ashy sweetness.

  Cautiously, Missy stepped between the two nearest holes and moved in among the bazaar lattice. The gaps were so closely spaced that the floor seemed in danger of fracturing beneath her feet. They must drop down to the foundation of the house.

  Or somewhere deeper.

  She advanced still farther into the room, treading carefully between the holes. They breathed their smoky sweetness around her, and the throbbing in her temples built. What was this place? Then she saw the painting on the wall.

  It was a life-sized six-armed figure painted in red, bounded by a circle. The circle was not complete, however, and the figure stood truncated, the portion of its legs below the knees lost beneath the floor.

  Because it’s rising out of the floor.

  Missy’s fingers flinched together as an asphalt voice said, “Here early?”

  She turned.

  “Or is it time already?” A face was looking up at her from one of the ponds of darkness by her feet.

  Missy retreated as a woman in a green jumper with long steel-gray hair stood up in the hole. The woman’s eyes drew together, squinting. Her mouth widened. She beamed at Missy as somewhere deep in the house, a howl broke out.

  A sound like wet wood being torn apart.

  Missy stumbled backward.

  “Don’t go!” the woman rasped. “It’s time to start!”

  The scream from far away stretched out as Missy turned and staggered between the holes. Behind her, the woman called out: “It’s time to start!”

  Reaching the front of the room, Missy bolted through the door. She nearly collided with a tall ruddy man with red hair. His face jumped to mind at once. He had been there earlier at the Theater Grill when she reported the brat boy.