by Noah Broyles
She backed up the hall, trying to remember his name.
People stood motionless behind the man, forming a line to the front door. Men and women, tanned and tired. The people from the garden. Coming to the smoky room. All paused to stare at her.
She turned and hurried up the hall. The door Ezra and Irons had entered wasn’t locked. Heat blared in her face as she pushed through.
It was a bright room. A sunroom with glass walls and a concrete floor. In the middle of the floor stood a metal table. In the center of the table lay the body of the cat.
“Shut the door,” Ezra said. His face was gleaming. Irons leaned on the table.
Missy shut the door and approached. Her eyes watered in the glare, but she didn’t blink. Her gaze clung to the corpse. Something had roused it in its dying moments. It had abandoned its slumping posture and lay like a starkly cast shadow, legs stretched out, back arched. Bloodstained claws were extended.
She looked first at Ezra, then Irons. Thin scratches burned down the side of the old man’s face and the backs of his hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it could . . . it seemed so—”
Ezra pushed his coat back. “Is anyone out there?”
“People are coming in from the garden.”
Irons picked up one of the dirty rags and wiped his face. “Then I guess it’s noon.”
Ezra said, “I’m sorry, Missy. Regrettable how this turned out.”
The entire week of care. Regrettable.
For a second, her lower lip felt quivery, the same way it had when the vet in Atlanta turned her and Mutt away after his leg got run over.
“I’ll take the body.” She started to reach for the cat.
“No need,” said Irons. “I’ll take care of it.”
Looking at the twisted corpse, she was surprised by her rush of relief. “Thank you. I’ll go now.”
“Won’t you stay?” Ezra hesitated. “I’d like you to meet the folks.”
That line of sweaty, staring faces? “No. I should go.”
“This way, then.” He pushed open a dirty glass door at the side. Through it, she saw the hillside that sloped down toward the garden trenches. “Just go around the house and you’ll find your car. I’ll make sure no one else bothers you.”
As she stepped into the sharp sunlight, Irons said, “We pride ourselves in being a hospitable community.”
Then the door closed.
20
The woman at the mine, Jezebel Irons, had said Adamah was an angel. Outside of this Southern backwater, though, I had never heard the name, and my acquaintance with the major religious texts was sufficient to know that they contained no record of such a being.
—“The House of Dust”
Southern Gothic
Outside the Irons house, Missy stopped in the watery shade of a slouching sycamore.
Behind the tree was the row of windows that let light into that smoky room. They were gathering in there, meeting beneath that six-armed symbol on the wall, around the holes in the floor, with the woman who had come out of a hole. And the way the cat screamed . . .
She growled to remove a knot in her throat. Muck was bound to surface when you dredged around in backwater like this. And the Club had taught her all about muck. You had to wash it off or else it sank in.
The cat hadn’t been the only reason she’d come to town. They were running low on food; hadn’t had fresh vegetables for a week. And the gardens were right there, now empty of people because of the meeting. And Ezra had invited her to make use of them.
Brassy sunlight scorched her scalp as she left the shade and hiked down the slope. Shallow roots from the tree reaching down toward the garden clawed at her sandals.
At the bottom of the hill, cornstalks ran out between the trenches. Vines and leaves squeezed up from below and braided between the top of the trench walls, scar tissue sealing wounds. She fished a basket from a tangled heap by the mouth of what was apparently the main trench. A rubber water trough stood beside the footpath leading in. “Shoes” was painted on the side.
“As if this were a religious site,” she muttered. Still, it might not be a bad idea to take her sandals off. She had selected them for paying calls, not shuffling around in the dirt. Tugging them loose, she dropped them into the trough. There were no other shoes in the trough.
What were they meeting about anyway?
The ground sloped down beneath her feet and rose up on either side as Missy entered the trench. The sweaty soles of other feet had packed down the path and polished it smooth. She reached out to steady herself as she went down, and a bit of the earth broke off and clung beneath her fingernails. Light diminished as the thatching plants closed in overhead, forming a long, green, twilit corridor.
At the bottom, it was wide enough that if she stretched her arms, only her fingertips would touch the walls. Specks of sunlight filtered through the netted leaves. The air was dead as ditchwater.
Clutching the basket, she moved along the trench. The shade deepened. The air cooled.
Cucumber vines hung around her thick as coats in a closet. She needed tomatoes.
The soft slap of her feet followed her along the level track. Down here, the sound seemed condensed. Heavier. The wind of her passing reflected off the leaves and they rustled feebly, creating a quiet chorus in her wake. The whisper of her breath sank into the walls and came murmuring back changed; prolonged. She was a bug crawling down the throat of something sleeping.
Missy stopped after about two hundred feet. Tomato vines drooped heavily from either wall. How had they grown so lush, shaded from the sun? What were they connected to that gave them nourishment? Her fingers slipped around a large red fruit. Lush, but firm. Skin flawlessly tight and smooth. So different from the cracked skin on the hand that grasped it.
The stem popped loudly. She looked up and down the trench as she lowered the tomato into her basket. The leaves lay limp. The gloom stood still.
She worked quickly, plucking half a dozen before spotting even plumper fruits deeper among the foliage. The hairy vines itched around her wrist as she reached in and pulled them free. Counting nine, she decided on one more. Her roving fingers burrowed through the leaves. They brushed the trench wall.
Something like a physical shimmer wriggled into her skin from the cool ground.
The tingle was so odd that she almost withdrew her hand. The next instant, however, her fingers encountered a heavy bulbous fruit. She tugged it from the vine.
That would be ten. Ten would be just—
All the muscles in her right arm contracted as her hand emerged. The tomato burst apart. Juice splattered across her face and the front of her shirt. It ran down her wrist as she raised her hand before her face and spread the fingers.
Impossible, she thought.
Beneath the juice, her skin had changed. It looked new. Smooth, lush, ruddy, as if it had just been vigorously washed. The splits around her knuckles had vanished. The skin pulled and relaxed around the peaks of bone without tearing. The flakes of dying skin on her fingers were gone. All was whole, just like that.
The basket thumped to the ground as she raised her left hand. It was still dry, splits around the joints and blood on the knuckles.
Her gaze inched toward the wall. She had touched the dirt for no more than ten seconds and this had happened. The dirt. There was something in it.
Hesitantly, she dipped her left hand into the leaves, pressing it flat against the wall of cool earth, and waited.
Something squirmed under her left foot. A tiny tingle sprouted from the ground and pushed into her heel. It traveled up her body as a worm of static, then sizzled through her arm into her hand. It happened in the space of a blink.
Missy withdrew her arm. The tomato leaves parted a fraction of an inch above her skin, lifted by the minuscule hairs o
n her wrist. Her breath hissed as her hand came into the gray light.
Beneath a slight layer of dirt, the skin was whole.
From in front of her and beneath her and behind her, the sound of her sharp breath came back. The same hiss, but gentler, came from behind the vines. The sound floated in the air for a second, then evaporated.
Missy turned gradually, closing her hands into fists.
There was no one else in the trench. Up above the canopy of leaves, the rows of corn stood silent. Even higher, the chinks of visible sky were vacant. But down here . . . it was the ground breathing.
The pit beneath the tree with the noose back at the house jolted to the front of her thoughts, the place where she had imagined something following her beneath the ground. But that had been her imagination. And this must be an echo. Something about the shape of the ditch drew the sound out. Or the density of the walls reflected it back.
Calm down. Calm down. Calm—
Something caught at her foot.
She barked and thrashed her leg.
The tomato basket bounced down the path. It tumbled to a stop, pitched on its side, and three of the tomatoes rolled out. The things she had taken.
Missy huffed. This was too much. She was letting the shadows lead her imagination—
The sound of her breath returned again. It was deeper this time. It did not match the sound she had made. It was a long, murmuring sigh that enveloped her like slow water.
She lowered her fists and felt her fingers pressing slickly together, suddenly so wonderfully, horribly smooth.
The sound droned on for a few more seconds and then ceased gradually: dry lips drawn together. The sleeping thing was waking up.
Something is down here.
She drank an unsteady gulp of air. Yes. Something just an arm’s length away, inside the dirt, mimicking her sound. But it had healed her skin, so maybe it was—
Get out. Now.
She faced the end of the trench. Had she really come this far in, or had it stretched? There, far away, was the house atop the silent hill.
Walk. Just walk.
Her feet sprung from one step to the next, but she managed to control her pace. Then her breathing came more rapidly. Her heartbeat became loud behind her eardrums. A horrible idea entered her head again, that the soles of her feet were touching the feet of another person who was walking upside down beneath the path.
And then the ground breathed again. A rattling gasp, just behind her head.
Missy ran.
Her breath burst free and her exhalation became a scream.
Just ahead, a small gray hand unfolded through the vines on the left wall and reached for her. Dirt crumbled from splaying fingers. Nails, black and ragged, reached for her hair.
Missy staggered rightward. The trench was too narrow. She tried to duck, but the fingers caught in the hair bound on top of her head. Her head jerked back. Pain budded from the roots of her hair. She reeled around, body doubling over, grappling with the fingers.
The breaths still emanated from the earth, but they were now high, raspy wails.
Missy gripped the wrist that thrashed in tandem with her head. It was clammy, and the skin was tender. Squeezing, she turned her hands in opposite directions and felt the flesh straining across thin bones.
The rapid breaths changed to a baying cry. The tiny hand released her hair. Missy jerked her head loose, and backed away. She stared through her mop of hair at the hand protruding from the leafy wall. It trembled for a moment. Then it went limp. The breathing stopped, too. Everything stopped.
She slumped against the opposite wall. Looking down, she turned her hands over. The friction had rubbed the dirt from her palms. The skin was still whole.
It had really happened. There was something here. It had healed her. And attacked her.
Just get out.
She raised her head.
The hand still drooped from the earthen wall of the trench.
So small. Streaked with mud. The nails clumsily bitten off, leaving scabs around the cuticles. Almost like a child’s hand.
A child.
Panic galloped through her chest. Biting into her cheeks, Missy straightened up. She forced her feet to move. She forced herself to approach the little hand. The fingers were curled together, like the legs of a dead spider. Grabbing the vines on either side of the arm, she peeled the sinewy curtain apart.
Half-light seeped across the wall. The earth around the protruding hand was moving. Faint movement, but perceptible. And repetitive. The sound of breathing.
Missy’s fingers crept trembling across the wall. Warmth emanated from swelling cracks. Holding the vines back with her left arm, she clawed at the cracks. Chunks fell away. The dirt had been recently dug out and replaced. The hand began to wriggle as more clods fell. A large piece collapsed, and a bloodless face gazed out from the dirt tomb.
Its eyes were open and red. The features were undeveloped. Black hair hung in damp spikes across a waxy forehead. Ashen lips were pulled taut across craggy teeth. Behind the teeth, the tongue writhed, black with filth.
It was a child. It was the child. The little boy—Roy.
She almost fell. Bile squeezed up her throat
Roy is being dealt with. I’m sure he won’t bother you again. Just an hour ago Ezra had said that. Just a little over an hour ago, the boy had been bounding after her car, screaming abuse.
Me. They did this for me. He’s here because of me.
Missy tore into the dirt. The rest of the soil fell away from the makeshift crypt. The boy’s body hung suspended in the womb of earth. One arm was trapped behind his back while the other—the one that had grabbed her—flopped down at his side. He pitched forward and Missy caught his shoulders as he slumped to the trench floor.
He was unconscious. Crouching in the gloom, she turned Roy on his back and pumped his chest until his breathing returned.
The townspeople had done this; they were gathered up in the house right now because of it, doing God knew what.
And she?
She had wished him dead.
She’d be as responsible for the death of this horrible brat as he had been for the death of the cat. Because he was the cat now. He was a corpse in her arms.
The corpse stiffened.
He sat up.
She reached out, but her hands slackened when he looked back at her. The bloodshot red had left his eyes. Now they were pit black. His jaw dropped down from his face. Words spilled out like gravel. “It’s not finished. It’s not finished. It’s not finished! It’s not finished!”
Missy covered his mouth as the last word broke into a grating wail. Wrapping her other arm around his chest, she said in his ear, “Shh! Shh! They’ll hear. We have to be quiet. I’m going to take you away from here.”
Where? Where would she take him? Not the island, not the house, not when they’d done this. Where? The boy twisted in her hold, and his muffled scream heated her hand.
“I know, baby, I know.” She crammed the words around a dry wad in her throat. “I’m sorry. I won’t hurt you. Gotta come with me if you want to be safe. Gotta hush now.”
Tensing her back, Missy stood and held the boy close to her body. The sun had slipped past its noontime apex, cloaking the trench in deeper shadow.
She had to get the boy to the car. But what if he broke loose halfway there and started screaming again?
They’ll bury us both! But they’re still in the meeting. It’s only been a few minutes. If we just hurry—
She started back toward the hill. Rapid inhalations dried her lips. Her heels thumped hard on the path. He was heavy.
Faster!
The ground rose beneath her feet. Brightness flooded in from all directions as she climbed out of the ditch.
At any moment someone would appear from the house.
They would all appear. They would rush down on them.
Barefoot, she labored up the slope. Her sandals were lying in the bin. No time to go back. She angled away from the house and tried to hold in the grating sound of her lungs. He was so heavy.
Pale grasshoppers leapt away from her unsteady feet.
“Just a little farther,” she wheezed to the boy. “Almost.”
And then, there was the car.
She turned a quick circle. No one was watching.
Hauling the boy to the passenger side, she tugged the door open and heaved him inside.
Missy rounded the car, praying the sheriff had left the keys in the ignition.
He had. The air inside the vehicle was oven-thick with heat. The boy’s forehead lay against the searing passenger window. She started the engine and backed into the drive. Her gaze jumped to the rearview mirror.
Still no one. Only the house staring back. But not for long. Their flat faces would fill those dark windowpanes.
Her bare toes pressed gently on the gas pedal. The car descended the hill at a leisurely pace. The boy’s head slid off the window and bumped against the dash. His eyelids did not flicker.
At the bottom of the hill, she increased the speed. A white dust tail rose behind the car as they crossed the field to the road. At the road, she turned left and pressed down on the pedal.
Gently. No panic.
The boy was panting. Low, steady, relentless.
The weary green field scrolled by outside her window.
Missy squeezed the wheel. Sweat tickled down her face. “It’s okay, Roy. Your name’s Roy?” Her voice quavered.
The child didn’t answer. Saliva slipped between his lips.
The sign for Adamah Road appeared on the right. Her arms jerked by reflex to turn the wheel. But that was the way to the house and Three Summers. They would follow. She had to leave. She could drive until she came to another town and then call Walt.
Yes.
A plan.
Dropping all pretense, she sped up. The Adamah Road turnoff flashed by. Soon, forest pressed in on both sides of the road.