The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  “What word’s that?”

  “I’m throwing a party on the fourth. Everyone’s invited.”

  “Oh.” He stopped swaying. “No need for that, ma’am. We don’t really make a big deal about the Fourth around here.”

  Missy let her eyes travel to the eagle. “That doesn’t matter. It’s not about the Fourth. It’s just when I want the party to be. Tell everyone seven o’clock. And be sure that letter gets in the mail.”

  “Will do, ma’am.”

  Before leaving she said, “Where might I find floor shine?”

  The man motioned vaguely. “Devin’s Hardware. Three doors down.”

  “Thank you.”

  He touched his cap. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Outside, Roy was still sitting in the car. She waved to him and pointed down the sidewalk. He nodded. Then she went to Devin’s and loaded a basket with brushes, sponges, industrial soap, and buckets of polyurethane. She smiled at the checkout man.

  “You’re Devin, aren’t you? We’re having a get-together at the house on Sunday. You’ll be there?”

  He fingered his beard. “Everyone else coming? Well, I guess so then.”

  The wind was picking up as she went back to the car and struggled to pack everything into the back seat. When she got in the driver’s seat, the first drops were splattering down. She huffed and looked over to find Roy hunkered on the floorboard.

  “What are you doing?”

  He motioned at the door. Outside, a pair of men in overalls were passing.

  “No need to be afraid of them,” she said. “Or anyone else, either. We’re going back to the house, and you can help me get everything cleaned up and sparkly. In a few days, we’ll have a big party.”

  The boy gazed at her as she started the car; a smile of uncertain wonderment wandered across his face. She remembered sitting that way in the passenger seat of a car not so long ago, wearing that same sort of smile as the wind rushed in and the driver explained how he would take care of her and give her a real home and never let harm come to her.

  Her nails bit into the vinyl wheel cover, but she looked over and met his smile.

  “Don’t worry. Everything will turn out just fine.”

  39

  I resurfaced in Piedmont Atlanta Hospital on June 1. The nurse said a car accident had knocked me into a coma. I had been dehydrated, malnourished, and severely sleep deprived. And my fiancée had been calling.

  “Who?”

  “She said her name’s Jennifer? She’s been sending those every day.”

  A bouquet of daffodils graced my bedside table.

  “When can I leave?” I asked.

  They said Sunday. It was Friday. In the intervening time, I wrote most of this article. Heather, my editor, who is based in Atlanta and listed as an emergency contact, never bothered to come see me. I didn’t care. This wasn’t for her anymore, or Southern Gothic. It was about the thing that had chased me in circles for years. The thing that was manifest in that little town, inside that house, in the body of my fiancée.

  I was released midafternoon on June 3. The rental car took the last of my money.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  The exit was just as dead as it had been back at the end of April. The sign for Three Summers was now invisible from the road, a drowning shape among the honeysuckle.

  Clouds brought an early evening, filling the road through the ridge with muddy darkness. Brad listened to the tires on the ancient pavement. After hours on the interstates from Atlanta, the tenor of their thrumming changed. Deepened. As if the land had thinned and the hum were carrying down to a hollow place below the roots of the surrounding trees and below the approaching river. Alerting anything below of his arrival.

  There’s nothing . . .

  But ever since waking in the hospital bed, that surety that had sustained him through his weeks in the house had been wavering. Those frantic minutes before the crash played again and again. That thing behind the car, drawing ever closer, appearing in the back seat, touching him.

  As Brad crossed the Locust River, Three Summers appeared through a mist off the water. Within the town, all was still, gas station and grocery store abandoned, housefronts shut up and silent. Street signs leaned at intersections, heavy with the name Adamah.

  His hands trembled as he twisted the wheel. His mind had been clear back on that dark street, and it was clear now. No drugs this time. No illusions. Just what you asked for. The truth.

  Steam choked the forest road to Angel’s Landing. The cicada songs were muted by the vapor. Deep Creek gurgled gently as the car bumped across the clay-stained bridge. The fields passing outside his window lay blanketed in half-light.

  They buried people alive. That was the truth. For two hundred years at the house he was driving toward, they had laid the unneeded in the earth. And the men who established the Queen of Hearts had always been among those victims. Darrin DeWitt. Jerimiah McCloud. Rex Emil. The man who had brought Missy, who had disappeared without a trace, Walter Collins.

  And Bradley Oswald Ellison.

  His lips twitched. The somber kid from Rhode Island. The obscure crime writer. Lived with his girlfriend. Moved to an old house a month before he vanished. Last seen at a car rental booth in Atlanta. It had always been heading here, hadn’t it? Lost beneath the gray earth of a river island in Tennessee.

  The tires lurched through a pothole. Behind him, in the back seat, among the remains of his backpack, the Newton’s cradle rattled.

  Focus. Find her. Finish the article.

  A few hundred yards from the house’s driveway, the road was lined with dozens of cars. The same weary models that had made up the old woman’s funeral procession. The drivers had obeyed four hand-painted signs commanding: PARK HERE.

  Everyone was at the house.

  The driveway was empty. Moss hung dripping from the drowsy oaks. As the car jounced along the gravel turns, he swayed in his seat. “Okay, Jen,” he muttered. He repeated the name as the house neared, as if it might call her forth with open arms and beautifully, desperately barren eyes. Brad, you came back!

  The last strands of moss slithered off the windshield. As the house came into view, his lips parted in awe.

  The building was magnificent. The paint was pure white, and the vines were gone from the pillars. Buttery light poured from the windows. The rocking chairs gleamed, arranged neatly in front. The humid air hazed everything, adding a touch of softness to the corners of the building and the point of the roof above the upper porch.

  As he pulled up to the front steps, Brad’s staring eyes returned to the clearing. He stomped on the brakes.

  Sorrel stood near the steps, twenty feet from the car.

  Instead of his uniform, the sheriff wore ragged jeans and heavy boots. A stained green T-shirt exposed his lean arms. His big hands were cocked on his hips and his steady gaze pierced the windshield without a trace of sentiment, as if surveying a building to be demolished.

  Brad strangled the steering wheel. If Sorrel was waiting for him, then Jennifer must have been subdued. The flowers and phone calls had been a ploy. She was locked in the house somewhere, perhaps bound. He edged closer, until the bumper could not be more than two feet from the man’s legs. He could easily run him over.

  Sorrel didn’t stir.

  Brad put the car in park and let condensation gather across the windshield.

  Abruptly, Sorrel rapped on the hood, then motioned.

  “You showed up, Brad!” His voice was parched but full of false enthusiasm. “Come on out. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Brad shook his head. The pistol was in the glove box.

  Sorrel came around to the driver’s side. The door was locked. Still, he should probably get the gun out.

  “Come on,” the man called, bac
king up a bit. “Just want to show you—”

  Brad glimpsed a flurry of action before the heel of Sorrel’s boot shattered the window and drove into his left temple.

  Glass showered the front seat and his clothes. Through ringing ears, he heard the lock click and the door squeak open. His left eyelid twitched. His vision was hazy. Cold sweat was already welling across his skin.

  Sorrel grabbed him by the collar and dragged him from the car.

  “I had a feeling you’d be back, Brad. Let’s take a walk.”

  The sheriff alternately dragged and shoved him away from the car, across the clearing, into the woods.

  “You haven’t published that magazine piece, have you? Answer me now, Brad.” He shook him.

  “N-n-no.”

  “Good deal.”

  He tried to move his feet to keep from falling, tried to keep his eyes open to see where he was being taken. Back toward the road, he thought. It was too dim to be sure. Soupy air was everywhere, and his brain wasn’t firing properly. The blow had been powerful.

  Still, he should probably try to get away. Yes, try to—

  “That’s real good.” Panic rippled beneath the sheriff’s easy tone. “That piece can’t be published, you see? You’re a part of it, Brad. I know I told you to write it, told you I didn’t care, but I realized I was wrong. Sunlight won’t disinfect anything here, only make it grow. Spread. And I can’t take your word you won’t publish it, ’cause I can’t risk her getting to you. It’s inside her now. I couldn’t get rid of her. But you, that’s a different matter.”

  What was he talking about?

  Brad didn’t try to ask. Instead he tried to breathe. Blood darted down the side of his face. The sound of cicadas reached a crescendo. They were in a clearing. The grip on his collar released and he slammed to his knees amid wet dirt.

  “See?” Sorrel was kneeling beside him, voice rapid and miserable as his fingers searched Brad’s pockets, found his phone. “You understand me? Every man who’s brought a Queen of Hearts to this house has also built a monument to Adamah, a tool to extend his influence. For DeWitt it was the cotton mill down by the river. For Dr. McCloud it was the hospital. Rex Emil put up the theater for Miriam Larkin. Walt Collins gave us the mine back. And for you it’s this article, Brad. This is your monument to Adamah. Only, there aren’t going to be any more monuments.”

  His phone bent between the sheriff’s powerful fingers.

  Brad couldn’t react. Was his skull fractured? The left side of his head felt dented somehow.

  “Here we are,” Sorrel continued, straightening up, voice hardening. “I’m sorry it’s got to be this way. She took my gun, or I’d just shoot you. And believe it or not, no one else around here has one. Queens don’t like them too much. And the Queens are strong, Brad, especially when they’re new. I’ve never felt such power . . . ”

  What was happening? He felt something crawl up his nose. He blew out. Blood. Blood trickling down. He tried to move his hands. A shock to the head shouldn’t immobilize a person this much, should it? His hands were against the dirt. He pressed down.

  His body began to rise.

  He was in a hunch, then on his knees.

  He forced his head up, eyes open.

  Sorrel was busily tying a noose at the end of a long, pale rope.

  Brad’s head lolled back, and he saw the rope snaking up to the bough of an ancient oak. The branches rose like supplicant hands. Around him, the large scarred roots plunged into the earth, piercing to the heart of the island. This was where . . . where . . . Jennifer . . .

  As Sorrel worked on the knot, he casually offered, “Folks round here call this the Hanging Glen. Catchy name, huh? Many a Yankee and Rebel and slave and Klansman dangled right where you’re ’bout to. John King, too, years before I was born. Yessir. Many a goodbye here. But they were all dropped down this hole. You won’t be. I won’t be part of that, and neither will you.” He jerked the knot tight. “This way it won’t spread.”

  Brad had to get away. Back to the car. The gun.

  He trembled to his feet.

  “That’s right.” Sorrel strode back over and grabbed his collar. “You’ll need to be on your feet for this part. Up on your toes, in fact. Can you stand on your toes for me, Brad?”

  “No-no . . . ”

  “I think you can.”

  The sheriff hauled him over beneath the noose and shoved him into position.

  “Almost done. Just gotta get this loop—no, hold still—get this around your neck. There.”

  The man walked out of view.

  Brad felt the noose around this neck. He found it with his hands. Rough rope, biting. He tried to pull it off and found his fingers drawn in toward his neck. Tightening. Then it was hard against his throat. Then it was strangling him. He gagged and started to slump but was jerked up by the pressure. Lifted. Looking down, he saw the black mouth of a narrow chasm below his swinging feet, a dark maw fitted between the fat lips of two tree roots.

  Hungry. Waiting.

  His vision started to phase out.

  “Hold on, Brad,” Sorrel called. “Up you go.”

  40

  Bringing Jennifer to this quiet place had not helped banish the darkness from her. It had helped it metastasize.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  “This is Ms. Abigail Belker,” said Mr. Irons.

  The little woman’s shoulders bounced as she shook Missy’s hand. Her face twitched and her fingers tightened, as if touched by a live wire.

  Missy didn’t blink. Every other guest had exhibited the same shock as they filed past. She knew what they felt. A tingle. A dry itch, like the one that had consumed her hands that first week in the house. An ache. Ms. Belker’s smile phased, then returned as Missy released her.

  “Ms. Belker and I are already acquainted,” Missy said. “She came over earlier and helped me with the cooking.”

  They stood in the doorway of the house. A procession of guests stretched across the porch, down the steps, and across the clearing. It was only a little after seven, but a high, thin veil of evening had been drawn across the sky. None of the day’s warmth had diminished, however, and the heat and smells from the field collided in the vestibule with the heat and aroma from the kitchen.

  Missy had worked hard all day, flitting through the house’s many rooms, polishing bannisters and mirrors, refolding a curtain to hide a tear, and oiling the carved fruits and vines that adorned the wooden doorframes in the hallway. All a welcome way to wind down the previous three days of mopping and scrubbing and vacuuming and painting.

  At noon, Ms. Belker had arrived to aid in food preparation. Everyone had been asked to bring a side dish. Certain staples, however, such as pork and chicken, needed to be provided. Missy knew how to fry food and make sandwiches, but little else. So, at the suggestion of Mr. Irons, she had solicited Ms. Belker’s help. Ms. Belker brought her friends, Mrs. Byrd and Mrs. Blyth, and the gentle ebb and flow of their conversation and the clatter of dishes worked through the walls and brought something deliciously homey into the house.

  After bathing at six, Missy had put on the white dress. The torn shoulder was healed now, and the fabric clean. She smiled because she couldn’t remember doing a thing to wash or mend it. Her smile departed as she stood before the mirror, smoothing down the dress and placing stock for the first time in the soreness that had plagued her breasts for the past few days. Her fingertips drifted across her stomach.

  “Well,” she said.

  The women cooed with admiration when she came down the stairs, her hand gliding along the scarred banister. At 6:50, Mr. Irons had arrived to help her welcome guests. Her feet were bare, and she felt the endless thrumming through the boards as people came through the great front door; she remembered the house in Atlanta and being shooed away anytime a visi
tor came.

  “This is Mr. Abe Daleder,” Irons said.

  Missy nodded. “How are you this evening?”

  It was the spindly red-haired man from the post office.

  “Evening, ma’am.”

  Daleder twisted his hands around themselves as she offered hers.

  Missy hesitated, then withdrew her hands. “Well, why not head to the dining room? We’ve got some refreshments laid out.”

  The man traipsed up the hall. “A problem,” Irons murmured.

  “I wonder why?”

  “Believe it or not, he was Ezra’s right hand. He won’t adjust. Just get bitter. Dangerous. There’s always a few.”

  “What a shame.” Missy looked after him. “Before you get started, I’d like a few minutes alone in the garden. To pick a spot.”

  “Of course.”

  She looked back at him quite suddenly. “And thank you, Mr. Irons. For all your help.”

  The frail man offered a fatherly smile that did not reach his eyes.

  “Our family has been a friend of this house since we crossed the mountains with DeWitt.” Then a quick rotation. “Ah! Mrs. McFee.”

  The final person in the procession was a ten-year-old girl with a blond pixie cut. Irons beamed as he bent to shake her hand. “And lastly, we have Ms. Jezebel Irons.”

  “Your daughter?” Missy crouched down, offering a hand. “How are you?”

  The girl gripped it back, hard, barely flinching. She said in a bland little tone, “Very well, ma’am. I love your house.”

  “She’s never gotten to see inside before,” Irons explained.

  “If you want,” Missy said, “you can come over during the days. I wouldn’t mind having you around at all. And Roy’s around here someplace, if you want to play. He’s not bratty like he used to be.”

  The girl smiled and nodded.

  “Now, why don’t you and your daddy go see the dance hall? It’s my favorite part of the house.”

  Irons led her off through the bright doorway. Missy hung back a moment to look out at the evening.