The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  Only the Newton’s cradle gave him pause. The Christmas present from his dad, fuzzy now with dust.

  Leave it. For once in your life.

  He grabbed it and crammed it rattling into his backpack.

  Clattering down the stairs with the bags, he unlocked the heavy front door and dragged them out to his car. He threw them in the trunk and walked quickly back to the house. They’d have to leave her truck. She couldn’t drive in her current condition.

  “Jen!” He walked back in the house, down the hall to the dining room. “We’re ready, honey.”

  The table was empty.

  Traces of dried mud led into the dance hall. “Jen?” He followed. The floor was bare, ready for a cleaning that would never occur. He felt something then, even amid his charging blood, that made him slow. He was leaving, but he didn’t really know the house, even after all these weeks.

  He looked at his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.

  “Jennifer!” He left the hall and paused in the front foyer. The front door was still open. The dirty feet had gone through it. A soft creaking came in from the porch.

  He went out. She sat in the nearest rocking chair, swaying lazily in the diminishing light.

  “It’s time to go,” he said again.

  Her eyes were shut. “You go.”

  Everything in him plummeted. No, no, no. Instead, he said carefully, “You have to come, too, honey. Sorrel wants us out. It’s his house.”

  “No, you go ahead. You go finish your article. But I’m not leaving this newfound . . . dream.” She stretched her arms with a contented sigh. “And you shouldn’t leave, either, Brad.”

  “Honey, we don’t have a choice. He’ll throw us out. He said he’d come by at midnight to make sure we’re gone. Now we’re getting in the car to—”

  “I’m staying.”

  “We’ll find another place to stay, and you’ll still have time to recover.”

  Her head rolled toward him. “I am recovered, silly. That’s why I’m not going anywhere.”

  “No, Jen, you aren’t.”

  “If I went with you, we both know what you’d have to do. Where you’d have to put me. Because what if I went crawling around in my sleep in a place where other people were? What if I doused in dirt in the city park? Where would I go? I’m broken, Brad. But here, I’m just fine.” The dirt around her mouth crumbled as her lips moved. And it was a real smile. Sad and resolved. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Brad turned and looked away. He shoved his shivering fingers in his pockets. “You know I can’t leave you.”

  “Good.”

  The chair squeaked, and he looked back.

  She held up her arms to embrace him. “Come here, honey.”

  He moved back to her and slipped his arms around her. She was warm and grimy and he held her tight. Slowly, he began to lift her.

  “You’re broken, too, Brad,” she whispered.

  A humid presence welled against his cheek. He jerked up, releasing her and stepping away.

  In her hand was an oozing lump of mud. She had brought the bucket from the back porch and set it beside her chair.

  Picking it up, she rose to follow him. “Something’s got you, Brad. You’ve never told me what, but I’ve watched you struggle. And I haven’t been able to help you before, or give you anything to take away the pain.” She scooped fingers into the sludge and lifted them, dripping. “Now I can.”

  He stepped backward. “Stop it, Jennifer.” His voice cracked. “I don’t want any part of this, and neither do you. This place is caught in some very bad traditions. We need to get away before we get trapped by them.”

  He teetered at the edge of the stairs.

  Jennifer stopped smiling. Even beneath the dirt, he saw her expression change to sad determination. Maternal. Like Jezebel Irons. Her fingers approached his face, caked tips reaching for his eyes. “Let me help you see.”

  Just in time, his eyelids flinched closed. For a fleeting moment of darkness, he believed she wouldn’t do it. She would hesitate. She would look at her hands, at herself. She would realize she had changed.

  Then she smeared mud across his forehead and down over his eyes, down his nose, and across his lips. The wet stink filled his lungs. Tingling broke across his skin.

  Brad toppled off the steps. Recovering his footing at the bottom, clawing his face clean, he strode to the car. He ripped the driver’s-side door open and threw himself into the seat, locking himself in. He gripped the wheel, twisting, until the bones in his fingers burned.

  Yelling wordlessly in the stale air, he slammed his forehead against the steering wheel and basked in the reverberating pain. It made him imagine he was in a dream. Back in that comfortable alcohol blur last October when he proposed to Jen.

  It was a Tuesday. It was cold and raining. Jennifer was swamped in schoolwork and didn’t want to go out. He dragged her. They ended up at Black Rabbit in Printers Alley, sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, eating brisket and rolls and drinking one Devil’s Temptation cocktail after another until the bill was past two hundred dollars.

  “Must be quite an occasion,” Jennifer had said.

  “That’s true,” Brad replied. “Heather turned down the article I’ve spent the last five months on. Never had that happen before.”

  Jennifer didn’t try to comfort him. She just looked at him and twined her ponytail until he said, “Those eyes are why I love you. ’Cause they show me you’re just as lonely and pathetic as I am.”

  She drained her glass and set it on the coffee table. “What a team.”

  Brad tried to set his own glass down, but only placed it halfway on the table. It fell off and shattered. He waved it good riddance and plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small faux leather box. Cracking it open, he held it out. “We need to stay together.”

  The ring. He lifted his bruised forehead and looked at the glove box. Maybe if he offered her the ring again she would—

  Something thumped against the car.

  Brad turned.

  A hand pressed against the window. Slow grime seeped from the palm and fingers down the glass.

  Jennifer stood just outside in the algae-colored evening. She looked in at him wistfully. He stared back. The beautiful desolation had left her face. Her gaze, once so lonely, was now content with companionship. She was no longer alone behind those eyes.

  Brad started the car and drove away.

  BRING ME UP SAMUEL

  32

  I should have been more aware of her; aware of how we were slipping. But it happened during those ephemeral midweek days when I was unearthing the intergenerational connections between house and town. Before I realized we’d become a part of it.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  Heat silence blanketed the land.

  The sun had risen scorching that morning, and the air hung across the fields and between the trees like bogged-up creek water. The cicadas keened away until shortly after noon, when a southwest wind pushed a herd of clouds up from the Alabama line. Rain torrented down for the better half of the afternoon, turning the clay basin of Simmons Creek into a pulsing orange vein and flattening the high grass in the cemetery. By four o’clock, the storms had cleared out. Sun glared through the crumbling vapor, slanting across the graveyard, warming headstones, and drawing steam from the grass around a red mound of earth.

  A fresh burial.

  Five feet down, the coffin was damp. Rainwater filtered through the broken earth and seeped across the pinewood lid. Inside the box, in the dark, lay the body.

  The body had twisted itself onto one side and drawn its legs up as far as the narrow confines of the walls would allow; the right shoulder was pressed against the lid. Sweat had formed and dried multiple times across the tepid fl
esh, but the process had ended hours ago, leaving the skin waxy. All the limbs were locked in stasis. The only movement in the coffin was up by the head, where the faintest trickle of air passed between the shriveled lips.

  Missy didn’t know if her eyes were open or shut. Eyes were worthless in the ground. That’s why moles barely had them. And worms didn’t have them at all. And she was with them now. She listened for them moving outside her box, for their soft passage through the ground.

  It didn’t come.

  The earth was empty. Except for her.

  The weight of all that unrelenting soil. The idea of being folded into the land. The unyielding wood against her flesh. And dirt outside the walls. And the lid, inches above her head.

  That she couldn’t sit up.

  That she couldn’t stretch her arms from behind her back.

  Couldn’t breathe fully.

  Pressed flat here in the dark, drowning in a morass of air, feeling it ooze unbidden into her lungs like warm water.

  It made her want to scream. But she couldn’t scream. Couldn’t thrash. She was buried in a churchyard. Just meters of earth to the surface, where there was sun and grass and movement. But it might as well be miles.

  Down in the world of roots and rot and black, a realm of boundless quiet.

  She lay still. She waited to die.

  Waited with the silence.

  Close now.

  Heavy . . . so heavy and close it felt like a person stretched across her.

  A person . . . a being.

  A loose lock of hair moved across her cheek.

  The trickle of breath halted.

  Missy turned her face up toward the lid. She heard the soft liquid sound of her eyes rolling in their sockets. The gentle plap of her eyelids batting.

  Nothing else. The twitch of dying nerves. Frail-fingers of silence, stroking her. Gentle ripples of her flattening consciousness. The oxygen had left. She was ready to go also.

  Thunk!

  Something powerful struck the top of the coffin. Residual instinct made her twitch.

  Thunk!

  The force vibrated her body.

  Before she could decide what it was, or if she cared, the sound changed. Sliding, scouring, scraping, it raced up the length of the box from her feet to her head. It paused a moment, then crawled back down to her feet. Then it came back up. Then it went back down. Then it stopped.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. The blows moved along the top of the box like fists.

  Missy’s head jerked as a clumsy rattling fumbled down the sides of the coffin. Something metallic. Claws.

  They slid into the gap between the box and the lid. Wood groaned, squealed, then splintered. Heavy panting. Planks squirmed and whined. Moist earthy air flooded in. The lid blew upward and the light blinded her.

  Tears squeezed between her eyelids. A dark figure was silhouetted against a steaming purple sky. Strong fingers slid under her neck. Her head banged the edge of the coffin as another hand grabbed her numb right arm. Her head rocked, grazing the cold wet wall of earth.

  “Breathe, Missy.” Hands slid under her armpits, lifting her out of the darkness. A voice, low and gentle, spoke in her ear. “No, don’t struggle. You’re safe now, Missy. Just breathe.”

  She did, and the fresh air was so potent that her brain went dark as her hitching chest tried to draw it in. A sensation of sand tunneled through her veins.

  When the light came back, she was lying in wet grass. Someone had untied her numb arms. They burned as the blood rushed back in. A man squatted beside her with a silver thermos, saying again and again, “You’re all right, Missy. You’re all right now.”

  Finally, her eyes focused.

  Muddy dress shirt; thick black hair; tight, sweaty skin. White teeth with a perfect line between each that grinned when he saw she was awake.

  “You’re fine, just dehydrated.” He helped her sit up and held the thermos to her mouth. She drank ravenously and tried to grab it back when he pulled away.

  “Not so quickly. You might—”

  She pitched sideways and vomited. When she looked up, saliva dripped from her quivering lips. The man held out his hands.

  “It’s me, Missy. It’s Ezra.”

  Missy tried to shout a word—bastard—but mucus clogged her throat. Soon fresh tears completed her wretchedness.

  Beneath his gaze, she hunched on the ground, screwing her fingers into the grass. She continued the process, tightening each muscle until her blood was retuned and coursing through her limbs.

  Then she stood up. She swayed.

  “All right,” Ezra said, unfolding his arms. “Let’s get you home.”

  Home.

  That house. That dark, dusty box where she was kept for the whims of others. That lie.

  Never.

  The Three Summers police cruiser stood in the drive. It faced the road. Missy bolted.

  Behind, Ezra released a flat sigh. He floundered after her, calling, “Might not be a good idea to get behind a wheel in your condition.”

  Skirting headstones in the high grass, she came out on the drive and pounded toward the car. Mud and gravel burrowing between her toes. On the brink of passing out, she toppled against the passenger door.

  “That’s right, slow down and we’ll—”

  Missy jerked at the handle. The door came open. She dove into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. After jamming the lock down, she clambered across the center console and locked the door on the driver’s side.

  The keys were in the ignition.

  The sheriff’s hand slammed against the passenger door’s window. She started the car. His palm thumped the glass. She shifted into gear.

  “Don’t try and run,” he barked. “For your own sake.”

  She squashed the gas pedal.

  The squad car lunged forward. Ezra was dragged along a couple of feet before he let go, reeling. The drive ended in a few bouncing seconds and Simmons Pike lay before her. She hauled the wheel right and floored it.

  She didn’t know what lay in that direction, but she knew it led away—away from the house, the town, and its horrible people. The boy, Roy, was probably hiding somewhere; he’d get by. He’d have to. She was leaving. Going away from it all as fast and far as the car would carry her.

  Rubber burned as the lumbering car sped westward. Her shoulders pressed into the seat, straining the pedal all the way to the floor. Steering the car was like steering a ship. As the road bent, the vehicle veered across the yellow line. It took all her strength to get back on course.

  Speed was all that mattered. The road was dead. No one came this way. They knew to avoid it. To flee from it.

  The road dipped and passed through the tunnel where she’d met the pastor. He’d betrayed her, too. Buried her! Hadn’t even opened the coffin to check the body. Her body. If he had, he would have seen her tied up, delirious, and alive.

  Missy shuddered. She was very much alive.

  She drove fast through woods for at least two rain-slicked miles. No other cars. Vapor rose off the pavement. She pressed the car harder, the needle edging toward seventy-five. Dying daylight the color of peach ice cream melted through the blurry windshield. The pulse of the wobbling tires worked up her spine into her hands. Minutes passed without much progress along the stretch of road. As if the road had become a treadmill. As if the land itself were rolling beneath her on a loop.

  The pool of bile in her stomach welled up again. Perhaps the things Roy had imagined in the house were following her, harrying her progress, reaching up to grab the wheels.

  Then, blessedly, the road bent left.

  A sign appeared up ahead. It was getting dark, so she fumbled for the headlights. Their glow faded across the sign, revealing weathered white lettering.

  three summers—two miles

 
Instantly, her muddy foot hit the brake pedal. The car slid to a halt beside the sign. It stood outside the passenger window, knee-deep in ditch weeds, letters blistered by the sun.

  “Simmons Pike is a circle,” she whispered. Her lips twitched into a smile because, of course, Simmons Pike wasn’t a circle. Three Summers lay behind her. The road was running westward, toward Memphis. Someone must have put the sign up by mistake, or moved it, or altered the letters. Yes, probably altered. A prank. It often happened in rural places.

  She eased her foot back on the gas and started forward again. More slowly. But turning around wasn’t an option.

  Once more, only the sound of the tires accompanied her as the forest canopy thickened overhead. The trees cut off the last of the daylight. Inside the car, the dark hugged her.

  A minute passed. Up ahead, a break in the trees appeared where the twilight fell back onto the road. Eager to escape the confines of wood, she accelerated beyond a tentative twenty miles per hour. But just as abruptly, she braked. The nose of the car stopped short of the tree line.

  Just ahead, the road continued across a bridge and the ground sloped precipitously down to the gliding green surface of a river. On the far bank, the dark brick structures of a town rose up through

  the dusk. And just outside her window, a second sign crouched in the fringes of the wood: locust river.

  Missy’s heart kicked her so hard she doubled over the wheel. The road had bent. The land had folded in on itself. The thing in the ground was trying to pull her back.

  This time, she didn’t hesitate. Throwing the car into reverse, she turned around on the narrow road and sped back into the forest. Back toward—she didn’t know anymore. She would not return there.

  The cement felt spongy beneath the tires as she steered down the wiggling forest road. With a jolt, she realized the road was different from when she had driven it just a minute before. Then it had been straight; now it was a maze. She longed for a pair of headlights to appear; anyone to lead her from this nightmare.

  For no reason, she began thumping her fist against the car horn. She flipped dash switches until the car’s siren came on, too, and the red and blue lights painted the flying trees.