The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  A finger snaked behind her ear, smoothing back a dirty lock of hair.

  “Now, it’s been a long day. Let’s get you to bed. Got enough strength to walk upstairs?”

  She nodded but did not move.

  “Okay.” Ezra’s arms came around her, drawing her close; her arms folded limply around him. Standing, he carried her down the hall. An odd sort of intimacy sparked at the proximity of their bodies and their faces and mixing breath. She felt its charge in his shoulders, its current in his hands. It built as he climbed the stairs and carried her toward the bedroom, his hold becoming an embrace, both tighter and more tender, as if discovering she was a prize possession.

  She knew where this led. She knew she should struggle against it, get down from his arms, stop him at the door.

  But she was just so tired.

  35

  It was midnight when I arrived in Atlanta.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  Centennial Olympic Park Drive lay empty amid the bright darkness of the southern metropolis.

  Brad turned left at the public parking sign, driving down a ramp into the Gulch, a region of rough parking lots and scruffy trees and rusted train tracks beneath a tangle of downtown Atlanta’s elevated highways.

  He drove slowly through the shadows and pools of yawning orange light, passing billboarded pylons and chain-link fences, his gaze wandering across the empty acres of concrete. Had Richard Hettinga really agreed to meet in this place at this hour of the night? Why hadn’t he insisted on a more precise meeting spot?

  Passing beneath Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, he slowed as the end of the parking lot approached. Pulling into a random spot, he turned off the engine and leaned his head against the wheel for a moment. It still throbbed. Jennifer still burdened everything. But this was for her.

  And the burning man.

  He shoved open the door.

  There was an emptiness to the air as he stepped out. No hum of cars coming down the streets above, no footsteps on the broken pavement, no audible shiver from the railroad tracks that lay just ahead beyond a stand of trees. There was something somewhere, though. A very low purr.

  Leaving the car, he followed the sound across the parking lot toward the Bankruptcy Court tower, a pale block against the black sky.

  There. A lone car crouched below a dead light pole. Its taillights glowed deep red. Idling.

  Brad paused. He looked around the abandoned lot and into the shadowy corridors beneath the bridges, then advanced toward the vehicle.

  It was a strange design, and unbranded: modernly sleek on the front, yet with the unusual fins of a Swept Wing ’58 affixed

  to the back. The windows were tinted. He stepped up beside the driver’s-side door and waited for something bad to happen. Anyone could be down here at this time of night. Hettinga could be anyone.

  When nothing happened, he rapped on the glass.

  There was no response. If someone was inside the car, they were asleep, or dead.

  Brad moved away from the car, reanalyzing the lot. The city stirred in its sleep, restive breath rustling the unkempt trees on their barren little islands, setting them swaying like hooded figures. Suddenly he realized he didn’t want to meet anyone in this place at this time of night.

  Heather would chastise him. Coward. She’d be right: he’d devolved since his early days.

  He was beside his own car, reaching for the door when a clicking sound penetrated the nearby wall of shrubbery. Something out on the tracks. Gravel kicked up by clumsy shoes.

  He moved cautiously into the weeds. Crouching down, he pulled aside a few limp branches to peer through.

  A person moved out among the rails. It was too dark to distinguish features, but he made out a rumpled suit borne on sunken shoulders. Dusty black shoes paced back and forth. One hand gripped the wrist of the other behind the stranger’s back. A sudden cough raked the frail frame.

  Brad looked back across the concrete sea to the idling car. Then at the man again, glimpsing him just as he turned. The clothes differed markedly from the blue jeans and plaid he remembered in the photo the librarian had shown him. But the high forehead was the same, and the white goatee. Rising, he pushed through the shrubs onto the railroad.

  “Mr. Hettinga?”

  The man looked over. His feet stilled.

  “Mr. Hettinga? Good evening. Sorry I took so long to find you.”

  The man’s eyes shimmered like mercury as he faced toward him.

  “No trouble, Mr. Ellison.” His voice was a musky rasp. He gazed at Brad unblinking for a moment, then passed a hand over his face. “I’ve been waiting. Was . . . was there something particular you were wondering about?”

  Irresolute, Brad spread his hands. “Pretty much everything.”

  “Everything? That’s a lot. More than I have to offer.” The man’s foot twitched, and a pebble rang against the nearest rail. The sound traveled as a diminishing clink down the iron miles. “So, you’re a writer. Southern Gothic magazine. Fairly long career?”

  “That’s right. Brooke Carney up in Lexington referenced you.”

  He paused as the man coughed again.

  “Are you all right, sir? Is that your car back there? You left it running.”

  “I know, I know. I just . . . ” Hettinga waved his hand, then passed it across his face again. His cheeks were oddly hollow, as if he were biting them inside his mouth. “Things are becoming rather confused in my mind. I came down to this city because it held significance in the life of the house’s last resident. I heard her voice calling and followed. I never shared any of this because I— No matter.” He squared his shoulders. “I’ll tell you the story. And when you tell it to others, people will listen to you. Have you got something to take notes with?”

  Just like that? No probing questions about his intentions or motives? And right here? He could hardly recall a more ready witness. Drawing out his phone, Brad squatted down on one of the rails, feeling slightly surreal as he squinted at the man outlined against the haze of distant lights. He knew almost nothing about Hettinga, just the fragments the librarian had shared. He tapped the phone’s microphone.

  “You grew up in Three Summers, sir?”

  “I was born there and left before I was twenty,” Hettinga said. “But distance doesn’t protect. You can’t ever escape it after you’ve been there, I think. It follows your footsteps. It can hear us now, even from three hundred miles away. ”

  “It?”

  “The demon that has lodged in that land since the beginning.”

  “What was that beginning?” he asked.

  Hettinga stood rooted for a long moment, then slowly resumed his pacing. “I guess it all started on a dreary December day in 1830 when a wealthy inheritor named Darrin DeWitt went into the slum quarters of Charleston to seek advice from a fortune-teller after the untimely death of his father. Thrown suddenly from the golden meadows of his youth into the lockbox world of his father’s shipping business, I guess it is understandable that he suffered a fair bit of anguish. Something happened, though, in that witch’s den. He went in to consult with the spirit of his father, but the counsel he received was certainly nothing his father would have given.”

  “What did he see?” Brad asked.

  “A vision of a different life. One that filled him with peace, reconciled him with his father, and appealed to his spring-day consciousness. To the chagrin of his family, he sold off the DeWitt firm and all its assets and went west, into the wilderness. And he took the beautiful young witch with him—her name was Martha.”

  Hettinga coughed again, then resumed, his tone melodic as he settled into the story. “Summer of 1831. Darrin DeWitt peaked a ridge in rural Tennessee and looked down on a river and an island and a green expanse of forest. His party had traveled specifically in search of a place remove
d from the world. The rumors about Martha, whom he always referred to as his ‘angel,’ had contaminated his reputation in the tidewater. So, when he looked down from that ridge and saw the island, like a green gem in the deep green river, he probably turned to his companions and said, ‘There, friends, is my angel’s landing.’

  “Darrin could see even then what it would all become. He could see the forests becoming fields and the fields becoming white with cotton and lush with tobacco. He could see the boats coming and going along the river, being loaded with goods at the dock on the end of the island. He could see his fortune growing. And he could see the house sitting in a clearing among the trees, ruling the land for miles around. I don’t know if he saw in that moment the others who would come. I don’t know if he saw the town of Three Summers spring up a few miles down the water. Of course, it wasn’t called Three Summers then.

  “Whatever he saw, he made it his life mission to accomplish great things. And he did. He plowed those fields, and he grew that cotton and tobacco, and he acquired that money, and he built that house. All on the backs of slaves, of course. And, of course, the victims of rituals were always selected from their population. On the night of sacrifices, he would pick one at random, a mother, father, child, and order the whole community into the fields before the house. Each time they tried to resist, but Martha’s terrible, soothing influence compelled them. For those who tried to flee, it was said the land itself bent beneath their feet and returned them to the house.”

  A car sighed by on one of the overhead bridges. Hettinga’s voice seemed to wander free from his motionless frame.

  “In 1834, the first child was born. They had a total of seven, I think, all sons. For the next twenty or so years, the house and plantation thrived and grew. Three Summers sprang up a few miles down the river and exports were shifted to that location. In the early forties, a cotton mill was constructed and consecrated in honor of a being called Adamah. Its rise, however, heralded the end of Darrin DeWitt. One August evening, after seeing off a shipment of goods from the new pier at Three Summers, he slipped near the end of the dock and fell into a sloughy patch of mud. Rage overcame him, and he berated the slaves who dragged him free. They, filthy as he was, succumbed to similar rage and soon all present, even the foremen, banded together and carried him to the mill and trampled him with their feet until he died. Martha, unafraid, came to collect the remains, burying them in her garden.”

  Brad nodded, recalling the vague fragments from the library.

  “The killers were forgiven. Some said such leniency would breed further violence, but it was not so. Martha’s voice, her touch, even her glance, seeded one with an elated sort of calm. Still, some changes led to unease. After DeWitt’s death, an odd practice began at the plantation and in the town: Martha compelled the slaves to carry out their labors at night. She assured them that their vision would adjust and their attunement with the land they worked would be enhanced. Many were wary, but her influence was strong, and so they began to sleep by day and rise when the sun had set.”

  “A tradition that stuck,” Brad murmured, remembering his night drive through Three Summers.

  “Angel’s Landing became a playground for the DeWitt boys,” Hettinga continued. “Instead of wagons toting bailed goods, surreys carrying the silken elite of the surrounding county rattled across the bridge and up the road to the house. Every year, as the visitors arrived, they would look out of their coaches and see the seven young ones running to greet them, coming out of the forest and field, a little older, a little taller, a little more handsome.

  “And so, the DeWitt house became a center of social excitement in eastern Tennessee as the antebellum years waned. Instead of sneaking out at night to play in the woods, the children would leave the house behind at twelve or one o’clock in the morning, arm in arm with a lover, the windows still full of yellow light behind them, and the wine and whiskey bottles mostly empty. They would wander out across the rustling fields and lie by the river and watch the stars sparkle and the lightning bugs blink high over the land. They would listen to the riverboats chugging by in the darkness and listen to the sleepy music that drifted from their smoky saloons. Then, when they were sure no elders would wander down to the water with lanterns and discover them, when the wind died down to nothing, when the land lay still and lost in slumber beneath them, then they would find some quiet spot by the water, or among the trees, or in the high grass, and make love to a person they had perhaps never met until that night and might never see again.”

  Hettinga’s pacing outline seemed to float like vapor above the tracks. His gaunt cheeks stretched softly with each word.

  “That’s what the DeWitt children did before the war. At least, that’s what I think. But when Lincoln was elected, Martha vowed that there would be trouble. No Republican scallywag would conquer her kingdom. So, Angel’s Landing became a rallying point. All the boys went off to war, all save the youngest. And so, none save the youngest survived those bloody years.

  “He was swimming in Deep Creek, with a girl whose family had taken refuge with the DeWitts, when a band of Union soldiers returning from Shiloh came upon the plantation. It was hot and dry and the river was low, so they swam their horses across and onto the island. It was hot and dry, so most everyone was asleep. Martha was smart. She didn’t try to fight. The soles of foreign shoes on her soil woke her. She took her slaves, and fled down the hill to the creek, swam across, and disappeared into the desolate plantation fields on the mainland. They never came back out of those fields. Just seemed to sink into the ground. I’ve always wondered where they went. The soldiers set the house on fire, but it was saved by a sudden mist, like those that rose to water Eden.”

  Brad felt Hettinga’s gaze touch him and glimmered a smile.

  Drawing a long breath, the man continued. “The area was a hotbed of resistance and resentment during Reconstruction. The region picked up the pieces, but without the oversight of the house, it was a place of poverty and violence. It was rumors of a curious exhaustion malady that drew a northern doctor named Jerimiah McCloud to set up a philanthropic practice in the house around 1870. He was a man who had served in the war, felt his hands soaked in its carnage, and traveled later through the war-ravaged South, where pity took root in his heart.

  “He was accompanied by the Southern woman he had fallen in love with, a girl named Magdalene. The only explanation he gave of their meeting was a tale of finding her in a burned-out church in a rural county, caring for a small band of orphans. Magdalene never contradicted this account. Perhaps she could not. People questioned whether she was mute, for she never spoke.

  “Others, though, said she had a voice of a different kind. An inaudible one that reached into the heart. Her attentions became more valued by the sick than her husband’s. A hospital, consecrated to a being called Adamah, was completed in January of 1877, and the coinciding construction of a railroad just south of the town caused the number of visiting patients to increase. Thanks to the special nature of Magdalene’s influence, many of those who were cured never left Three Summers; and so, the town was revitalized from the destruction of the war.

  “But again, devotion led to death, this time for Dr. McCloud. He began experimenting with applying the region’s earth to wounds in hopes of healing.”

  Brad stiffened.

  “This, in turn, led to experimentation in reaching beyond the patients to the source of their mysterious healing. The thing beneath. But in plumbing the depths, he broke the surface. Reports of patients succumbing to insanity plagued the hospital’s first summer. And in September of that year, he was slain, beaten into the ground outside the building; his wife bore away his remains.”

  Hettinga’s breathing was becoming labored. Carefully, he lowered himself onto the section of track opposite. Brad remembered what the librarian had said about his health, but he knew better than to change the subject. “What happened then?”

/>   “Then came war, again,” he said. “A training camp—Camp Simmons—was set up south of Three Summers and oversaw the soldiers who dug trenches in the nearby fields in preparation for the plains of Europe. Magdalene, though elderly and said to be of diminishing influence, managed to assure the local boys that the earthworks would protect them.”

  Hettinga shook his head. “Instead, they drank their blood. The town cast blame upon her. One night in the winter of 1918, they came to the island. They took the old woman and tied her beneath the arch of the concrete bridge between the island and the mainland as a December flood was rising. Days later, when they returned, her body had vanished from the bonds, and the bridge had attained the clayish red hue it has maintained ever since.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Brad murmured.

  “What happened to her I cannot say. As with her predecessor, her fate held some ambiguity. After the war, the few sad young men remaining came back to that humid land of summer night dreams, looking for their pasts. They made do with what they found and settled down and became the next generation of Three Summer’s inhabitants. A bridge was built that spanned the river and brought traffic into the heart of the town. Industry stumbled along in that forgotten land while America became the shining capital of the world. But the house once again lay fallow.

  “Then the land across the Locust River was found to be rich in coal. The value of the vast plantation rose as a mining company sought to acquire the land. After much contention over the true ownership of the century-old estate, people from Three Summers, as well as outsiders, met on the evening of June 21, 1923, to decide who owned what. The night of the Party Field Massacre.”

  “Describe it.”

  “At around seven in the evening, through the huge tents that had been set up on the field before the house, a fight broke out. The thousands of acres would bring tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Who would get those thousands? The lightning bugs rose through screams and flying bodies and blood-mist that evening as the negotiations degenerated into slaughter. Everyone must have foreseen this course, for everyone came armed.