The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  “Miriam Larkin, the only unarmed person among them, survived that night by taking refuge amid the flower beds behind the house. She lay there through the night while the ground imbibed blood. In the morning, she was found among the bodies. She was the only daughter of a Nashville dressmaker who had worked at the Adamah Cotton Mill in his younger years. Her sad story attracted the attention of Rex Emil, the king of a gypsy circus touring the region. He brought his band to Three Summers and within a week they were married, though he was significantly her senior. Animosity had developed between him and the leaders of the many towns he had toured, though for what reason I never discovered. He seemed to view Three Summers as a haven.

  “With his funds, Miriam won the property ownership battle. Instead of selling the land, though, she advertised the whole place as a great fun park for the South to come to in their new automobiles. The bridge saw increased traffic from the state highway, and Three Summers became a party town. Fireworks filled the summer air, and bars flourished along the streets, and the woodlands filled with shouts of pleasure, and the fields with frolicking figures under the canopy of stars. A theater was constructed in 1927, dedicated to the same being, the one they called Adamah. At its inauguration, Rex Emil met his end under the feet of his own elephants, leaving Miriam pregnant with their only child. She did not, however, consider herself destitute. Rather, she thought of herself as a fairy queen, spreading her influence greatly to build up the house and the town. As a consequence, it was remarked how quickly she aged. She died in 1939.”

  “Just like that?” Brad asked.

  Hettinga nodded. “Some said she spread herself too far, drawing too deeply from a dangerous well. She aged like a flower in bright sun. When she died, her body was laid out on the dining room table in the house, and her only son, Ezra, watched as the people filed by. It is said the body was left there and turned with time to dust.

  “The town fell into a slump, and it was a sad, sickly country that John and Ellen King of Philadelphia came to in 1946. Neither of them cared for the local lore and cults and pecking order. They paid the money-starved town handsomely for the old plantation and asked to be left to live quietly. They drove to church near Parker’s Crossroads on Sunday, and they drove to the grocery store on Monday, and they gardened the rest of the week. But their bliss did not last long. No one is sure what happened, but it seems the house not only rejected them, but launched a full-scale assault against them. John wandered into town one autumn night asking for a doctor for his pregnant wife. The doctor returned with him to the island, but they found the house a roiling den of dust. John ran in to try to save Ellen. She had already succumbed while giving birth in the second bedroom on the second floor. John King emerged from the house a broken man. The doctor—he said out of mercy—took the poor man into the forest and helped him tie a noose and hang himself from an oak with a pit beneath it.”

  The man fell silent so long that Brad softly prompted, “Go on.”

  Hettinga bowed his head. “In the early fifties, Miriam’s son, Ezra, finally sold off much of the land to the Middle Tennessee Mining Company. The Locust River Mine was developed across the bank and a few miles downstream of Three Summers. It became a mining town. The old plantation house sank into ruin, and Ezra resolved that the old place had outlived itself. It was time to board it up and put it in the past, where it belonged.”

  His head rose. His eyes had darkened to cave entrances. “But the house did not allow it, for the rituals surrounding it did not sink far from the surface. Again, fatigue crept like moss across the town. The sacrifices needed to experience the serenity brought by Martha and Magdalene and Miriam became more frequent. Accidents were frequent; lives were stolen from the mine. Ezra found the heat of scrutiny rising. And so, when a state prosecutor named Walter Collins came to investigate in early 1962, Ezra felt desperate for bargaining power. It arrived in the form of a woman named Missy, Mr. Collins’s supposed wife. He discovered the truth of the man he was dealing with: a self-assured man easily enticed. One night, he took him to a town gathering, exposed him to the same presence that had brought peace to Darrin DeWitt more than a hundred years before: a dream, a different past, a different life. Together, they engineered a mutually beneficial plot that would disappear both of their problems. The case would be resolved in the town’s favor, and the woman resolved in Collins’s favor. The woman named Missy was buried. But Ezra did not keep his half of the bargain. He dug her up again. Adamah had a purpose for her.”

  The man’s labored breathing stopped. He sat frozen, like a paused recording.

  Brad stared at him as the effervescent hum of the sleeping city faded back into his ears. The battery icon on his phone was red. “Who were the sacrifice victims? After the slaves.”

  “Always the weak,” Hettinga whispered. His thin cheeks were flushed. “The meek. The powerless. First the slave. Then the sharecropper. The ailing patient in the hospital. The wounded soldier. The lonely gypsy. The man who became lost looking for a shortcut. The woman with the flat tire. The teenager seeking thrills. The child running away from home. Compelled into the ground by the Queen of Hearts.”

  “Queen of Hearts,” he said. “Is that where it comes in?”

  “Queen of Hearts,” Hettinga repeated. “The fulcrum.”

  “Martha, Magdalene, Miriam, Missy . . . ” He stopped. One last name trembled on his lips.

  “All broken vessels from which power spills.”

  “What is their power? What can they do?”

  “They do what the first Queen did for DeWitt—bring peace. The past is the place where we dream of different lives. Where our faults can be forgiven. Where we can rest.”

  Brad . . .

  He flinched at the voice in his head, a voice choked on smoke.

  Stifling a cough, he said, “So how did they become Queens?”

  Hettinga rose halfway and bent over, pressing his head between his knees. It was a discomfiting posture to see a man of his age assume, almost childlike. Then he straightened. “Would you like me to show you?”

  “Certainly.”

  The man came across the tracks, motioning toward the parking lot. “Get in your car. Follow me.”

  36

  The deep red taillights of Hettinga’s car led the way along miles of dark roads until a very different part of Atlanta was passing outside my windows. Amber streetlights shone down on buckling sidewalks and overturned trash cans. When he turned onto a residential street, the headlights flashed across barred windows. The car stopped before one of the old houses.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  It came while she was in the bathroom brushing her hair.

  Sweetness. The faintest waft, like the wind from a butterfly wing. Immediately, her palm hardened against the brush handle. She completed the stroke, then raised the brush to her face and gingerly pressed her nose in among the bristles. Just the loamy smell of damp hair. Lowering the brush, she sucked deeply through her nose and caught the scent again.

  Quickly, she turned toward the bathtub. All the water had drained away. No dirt ring on the porcelain. And the window was shut against mosquitoes. She sniffed again. Still there.

  Her darting eyes went to the floor, then to her feet, then her legs, and the hem of the old white dress riding just above her knees. It was the old thing she had found that first day, lying in the shadow of the door. Weeks ago, she had bundled it down into the basement. Today, he had come upstairs with it draped over his arm. “I want you to wear it. For tonight.”

  It had smelled like dust when she put it on. But now . . . she pressed her nose against her shoulder.

  Yes. Buried below the layer of age, she could catch the itch of something else. Sugar. Daffodils.

  The hairbrush clattered to the floor. Hands sprang to her neck as heavy coughing exploded from her throat. Her mouth became the hot pressure po
int as everything inside tried to escape. Blood stretched her face like an overfilled balloon, and she collapsed onto the tile.

  Forcing her hands away from her throat, she clawed at the garment. The seam along the left shoulder tore. Then the bathroom door banged open and Ezra was beside her on the floor, yelling and grabbing her wrists.

  “Missy! Missy! Stop it!”

  As her lungs inflated, she shook her head and rasped, “I can’t wear—it smells like . . . ”

  He led her into the bedroom and sat with her on the bed and waited for her blood pressure to equalize. One cool finger traced the rip on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll mend.”

  “I don’t want to wear this.”

  “Just for tonight. You might even learn to like it. Now finish up. We can’t be too late.”

  Just for tonight. Something Warren Dawson would whisper at HUG. Something the Boss would say at the Club. Something Walt would say on the phone when he wasn’t coming home.

  She got up from the bed and went to the dresser. She stretched a hair tie between her fingers before threading it into her hair.

  “Did you see Roy today?”

  He followed her to the dresser, fastening his black tie in the mirror.

  “No.”

  Two weeks now. He wasn’t coming back. And neither was he. She was alone. Like those days in the backyard after Grandmama died. Alone with the daffodils.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to see anyone.”

  “They want to see you.”

  Pounding, like a slow hammer, started inside her skull as they went down the steps and out to his car. Two weeks the boy had been gone and two weeks she had hunched in the corners of the house, waiting for something to happen. Ezra had told her to carry on with renovations, but what was the point? It wasn’t her house. He was living there now: eating with her, sleeping with her, rocking on the porch in the evenings with her. She had been in limbo, watching him watch her. Until this morning, when he had announced a “community meeting.” Until just now, when she smelled those flowers.

  Long ago, they had come into the backyard in Atlanta and led her off to her new life. And now she was here, in this seat, in this dress. She was tired of being led. The hammer in her head thumped harder.

  The car rumbled off down the driveway. She tried to breathe shallowly and through her mouth, but hints of the smell got through anyway and churned up her stomach.

  It was near nine o’clock and the twilit country was very still—almost Sunday morning still. They bumped across the clay-stained bridge and entered the tunnel of trees. Fingers of light reached ahead from the car, feeling their way through the drowsing forest.

  The quiet grew even more intense as they motored down an empty Adamah Road toward Three Summers. The houses that slipped past were curtained up for the first time she had seen; Grammy’s Grocery and the Texaco station were closed. Only the DeWitt Cigarette lady’s teeth were visible in the dusk.

  As they drove into Three Summers, the lights at other establishments went out. Apartment windows went dark and streetlights waned to embers. Little creeks of lanterns flowed down the alleys as people came from the courts and stairwells behind buildings.

  Lanterns. They were all carrying lanterns with ruby-colored globes. The orbs of scarlet light revealed tired faces. Sparks of eagerness, however, lit the eyes that turned toward the car. The crowd spilled out onto the pavement.

  At the intersection, the headlights reached far enough down the road to reveal orange barricades on the bridge. The road had been closed.

  They turned right onto Larkin Street. The old dress fabric rasped against Missy’s skin as she twisted to watch the people follow them into the murky canyon of the cross street. “This is the usual procedure for a community meeting?”

  “Very much so.” Ezra smiled

  The pounding inside her skull quickened. The smell again . . .

  Bright flowers in the dark.

  At the far end, they turned onto DeWitt and parked beside an overgrown field. Out in the grass, the shadowy block of a building loomed among the tenebrous trees and sky. Ezra came around and opened the door.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m . . . this doesn’t feel right.”

  “You won’t be hurt,” he assured her.

  What Warren Dawson had said at HUG. What the Boss said at the Club. What Walt—

  “No, this dress. This whole thing. You’re trying to turn me into something.”

  He bent down, and she turned away from his too-smooth face. “Come on, Ms. Holiday. I’ll hold your hand.”

  Inside her mouth, that broken tooth gnawed on her tongue. You be good from here on, Grandmama had said. Now use that gum to hold your tooth in and don’t try to get involved in stuff you don’t understand.

  Turning back around, she faced the stale May evening.

  The faces crossing the street, bloodred in the glow of their lifted lamps, were all turned to her. Each person had dressed to the nines, or as close as they could come to it. Polished shoes drummed the asphalt. She searched the crowd for familiar faces, but who did she really know? Not even those who sent the letters of welcome.

  There was Mr. Irons, from the house on the hill, placidly smiling. There was the woman with thin dark hair who had skulked below the floor of the gray house. There was the gawky red-haired man who had led the men from Theater Grill to capture Roy and bury him. And there were hundreds more whom she had glimpsed in passing on the road, or in the lonely house on the hill, or at the diner. All silent. Respectful.

  Ezra’s fingers smothered her own. He drew her into the sea of grass, making toward the crumbling structure. The tangled blades swished around her unprotected legs. Startled grasshoppers

  launched themselves away from her intruding feet. From the trees bordering the lot and from the marshy riverbank, the insects stilled to witness their passage.

  The brick wall blushed red as the collective tide of lantern light touched it. A little chink of a door appeared at its base. As they approached it, Missy gathered a good breath. Almost immediately, she choked it out again in the hot passageway that followed. The flower scent radiating from the dress was strengthening.

  “Ezra.” Her voice came back close in the corridor. “Ezra.”

  He didn’t reply this time. His grip remained oppressive. Her shoulder jarred against the wall, and then he was leading her around a corner. Vastness opened against her face. Before she could hesitate, he led her into the void. Dry, packed earth scuffed beneath her sandals. Echoes came back from a distance. After perhaps fifty feet, they stopped.

  Missy turned her head, eyes straining against the gloom. The occasional creak of timbers drifted from above. The sigh of falling dust. Craning around, she watched the little door they had come through brighten. With a sandy shuffling, the people filed in. As more came, flickering radiance melted across the sprawling room. Rafters and planks became visible above. The memory of a candlelight service at Grandmama’s church jolted into her mind. Bile rose as the conjoined shadows of Ezra and herself flowed in black rivers from their feet.

  He nudged her, and they started forward again. With a sound like showers of stones striking the earth, the people followed. The shadows and light reached ahead. They washed across a twisted mound at the center of the room. A pile of . . .

  Sticks?

  Bones?

  Shovels.

  And beside the mound of shovels, four white stakes protruding from the ground. Marking out a plot.

  “No.” She stopped. Quivering invaded her limbs as she remembered the binding, blinding void inside the coffin. The sound of dirt raining down. “No. You’re going to do something bad.”

  The mound and stakes were thirty feet off. Ezra had stopped beside her. He did not compel her on. His grasp remained steady, even as she shook. The people flooded up
behind them and passed around them and fanned out on either side of the ritual spot.

  When everyone had stopped, they set their lanterns down and dimmed the flames. Hundreds of tired feet stood in dim, molten pools. An invisible line just beyond the mound seemed to stop both them and the light from venturing farther into the room. Darkness hung, an impenetrable deepness.

  Quite spontaneously, everyone began moving, walking twisting patterns through the lanterns like a disturbed hive of ants, weaving in and out, never colliding. The crunch of a shovel biting into earth brought Missy’s eyes to the center of the vortex. Six people were bending around the staked-off ground, scooping up the earth.

  “No.” She turned on Ezra, dragged at his grip. “Let go. I’m leaving.”

  He did let go. But just as quickly his arm was across her shoulders, thrusting her forward, forcing her to face the shovels and stakes. “It’s time to be quiet, Missy.”

  “If you dare try to put me down that—”

  “I’m not, Missy. I told you—you’re safe.”

  None of the tautness eased from her muscles, but she continued to watch.

  A pattern had emerged from the swirling movement of the crowd. They were streaming toward the heap of shovels, picking them up, and proceeding to the rapidly forming hole. There they dug out a scoop of earth, flung it away, and then dropped the shovels in a second heap where a second procession picked them up to do the same.

  The oldest members of the community filed through while the trough was shallow, and now the younger ones were at work, bending low, even jumping into the pit. And then the very youngest ones were passing: children. Missy searched their faces, but Roy was not among them. Adults who had remained by the hole lowered them in and handed down little shovels. They dumped the soil that was handed up and then pulled the grimy children from the hole. They threw the shovels in the heap and withdrew.