by A. D. Koboah
“Dallas?”
I turned to find Avery sitting by the bed staring at me, his thoughts completely closed to me, his face still, his eyes dark.
“Avery? How long have I been asleep?”
“Nearly two days.”
He looked away, down at the ground, and a sullen silence hung in the room, one that grew heavier the more I recalled of that long walk to the swamp and what led me there. A chill passed over me.
“Dallas, what happened? Why...why—?”
“I don’t know, Avery.” There was a tremor in my voice. “It must have been the chapel spirit or something. I don’t know.”
I was silent for a long moment, trying to understand what I had thought and said during those hours. Of why the things I had seen—the decaying red velvet bedroom—had been so vivid. He merely sat staring at me, his eyes large and fragile, his expression sombre. After another long moment he sighed and ran an unsteady hand through his hair.
“I have to attempt an exorcism at the chapel in a few days' time. I was a priest once, so I do believe I can perform one successfully.”
“Are you sure?”
“We don’t have any other options.” He got to his feet and came to stand over me, his eyes flaming with angst. “I won’t let anyone steal your life from you, Dallas. No one. Once I exorcise the chapel entity you should be safe and who...whatever is trying to possess you will be laid to rest.”
He bent and kissed me on the cheek. He let his lips linger, seeming to find it difficult to pull away from me. He eventually straightened.
His gaze fell on the hand with the “Shhhhh” tattoo and I thought I saw his eyes flame with anguish. He left the room.
I stared up at the ceiling feeling a weariness that was not just of body, but of mind and soul. The dream of the Enwa village was still fresh in my mind, of people and places so vivid they were becoming as real to me as Mallory and Avery. And there was also what had happened at the swamp.
I was so confused, and between the dreams and those moments when I seemed to be in another place and time, it felt as if I was slowly disappearing. Even now as I looked around Avery’s room, the whisper driving me toward that revelation was almost a shout and I kept expecting the room to change right before my eyes.
Things could not continue as they were. My body was so weak and at times the ties keeping me bound to it—and life—felt threadbare and I feared I would be tugged out of the world of the living before I got the answers I needed.
Even the thought of Avery performing an exorcism made my heart lurch for I knew it would put him in danger. I couldn’t allow him to do it. This meant I had to find out how to vanquish the Other once and for all.
I stared around Avery’s room, struggling to see the room before me and not a room belonging to another time.
Tears slid down my cheeks and I closed my eyes, the child, Akan and the people in that walled village coming to my mind. I opened my eyes again. I had thought until now that Akan had been pulling me away from those waking dreams to perhaps protect me from them. Now I was beginning to wonder. The Other had been able to possess me the night I saw Akan clearly. Now I asked myself why he had first appeared to me as Avery’s horse. I also wondered what he really was and what connection he had to the chapel entity—if any. Were the dreams of the walled village and the little girl just a way for Akan to draw my attention away from the waking dreams and the realisation they were leading me to?
Whatever it was those waking dreams were forcing me toward, if there was a chance it could help me vanquish the chapel entity, I had to stop resisting and rush headlong into it.
The past.
That’s what was whispering to me. I had to know and understand the past if I was to have any hope of a future. The memories had always been there waiting for me. All I had to do was reach for them.
So I sought them and they came to me over the following few weeks, at times utterly overwhelming me. I would open my eyes in the morning in the safety of the guest bedroom only to find myself in the past seconds later.
Or I would be sitting in the field of flowers talking to Avery, the moonlight turning his eyes into pools of liquid silver, when I would find myself standing in the red velvet bedroom, the sky beyond the window gilded as the sun rose to meet the heavens.
Whenever I returned to the present no time had passed.
Getting weaker with each day that passed, disoriented as well as drained emotionally and mentally, I surrendered to the past.
***
Louisiana 1862
I was tugged out of the almost hypnotic trance by a sound. It was determined, almost like someone knocking persistently on a door. It was a while before my thoughts focussed. I searched around me for the source of the sound and realised it was a small animal of some kind, wailing in distress. For some reason the sound tore at my heart and my stomach tightened. Before I knew I had moved, I was walking toward it, oblivious to the indigo night sky and the secretive half-moon flanked by white clouds polluted an ashen grey at its edges. Or the long grass stretching wild, desperate fingers for the folds of my skirt. I could see it now. Yes, it was a bobcat, a young one. It appeared to have gotten its leg trapped in the exposed root of a lone tree that cut into the landscape. Its wails increased in intensity when it saw me.
I sank to the ground before it. It grew quiet and peered at me, its eyes luminous in the dark. Rather than trying to retreat from me, it showed no fear, but seemed to think I would not harm it.
I reached for it and cupped its head in my hands, feeling the skin moving like oil over its fragile skull as I rubbed its head. Then I reached for the tree root that had it trapped and broke it away from its leg. I picked it up and studied it. It did not appear wounded in any way.
I set it on its feet and rose. It scampered away, and I watched its passage through the grass until the night and distance hid it from my supernatural sight. Then I moved back to the stream and forced myself to stare at what was before me.
Surrounding the stream were bodies. I counted twenty. Some were missing their heads; others had deep gouges blotting their abdomen. The rest had been pummelled to such a degree they barely resembled anything that could have been called human. The scent of blood hung heavy and ghastly in the warm air.
I had snatched them from far and wide and brought them here. They all shared four physical characteristics. They were young and male with blond hair and blue eyes.
As I stared at the bodies, I felt tears prick my eyes and then anger thundered to the surface. But the fear—that fear forever gnawing at me, eating away at my soul—was still there.
I looked to the sky, my hands held out in a wordless plea as weariness overwhelmed me. A sob caught in my throat and I opened my mouth to set it free.
What escaped into the night was a scream. A sound of rage—rage along with strains of soul-destroying pain threatening to shred my psyche into a million fragments—shattered the stillness.
I screamed and screamed into the indifferent sky.
***
Louisiana 1886
For an instant, there was a flicker of revulsion at the white hand clutching my breast, the lips nibbling at my neck, and the all-too-familiar sticky feel of damp, Caucasian hair against my skin. He groaned deep in his throat as I reached for his manhood—exactly the way Master John used to do. I had to hold back the urge, as I had so often with Master John, to push him away.
I didn’t have to push him away because I was with Avery, not Master John, and when he stiffened, my stomach twisted in anxiety because I knew I had accidently let my thoughts slip through and he had seen them.
He was completely still for a few moments, his face still buried in my neck. Then his hand fell away from my breast and he began to back away from me. I held onto him, trying to ignore what he had seen, arching against him. Although he was still painfully aroused, he took hold of my wrists and gently pulled my arms away from him.
He rose off me. It felt as if everything stopped for a moment a
s I stared at him, my chest clutching in response to his extraordinary beauty, the taut muscles of his stomach making me want to reach for him. His face and mind were blank, but his eyes—he could never keep what he felt from his eyes—sang of pain and bewilderment.
“Avery...”
He was off the bed in the blink of an eye. He vanished, lingering in the room only long enough to grab his shirt and trousers.
Alone, I sat up and stared down at the rumpled bed sheets and then at the closed door. I thought about the look in his eyes as he stared down at me, and for an instant I felt something I had never been able to feel in Master John’s presence. Triumph. It was instantly drowned out by remorse and tears pricked my eyes. I got off the bed and dressed.
I found Avery by the lake, but didn’t approach him. I watched him through the trees as he sat on a stool we had left behind on one of our many visits to the lake, his back to me as he looked out over the water. He had his trousers and shirt on, but no shoes. The sight of his naked feet cut deep, taking me to that evening I first saw him at the chapel. He had been so beautiful with seemingly unlimited power, yet so vulnerable. The many years he had spent alone stripping him of so much. But he had still been able to save me from a life of endless toil and degradation.
Shame crept over me again about that moment of triumph in the bedroom. I loved Avery so much it almost felt as if I couldn’t breathe. It was like being bound again and that had made me lash out at him with that thought, which I had on a subconscious level, let him see. It shamed me, but what shamed me more was the unshakable love I felt for him which left me bound, quivering in misery at just the sight of his naked feet.
Angry at myself, and yet overwhelmed by the strong emotions his bare feet elicited in me, I turned away and returned to the mansion.
He didn’t move when I materialised behind him a short time later. I placed his coat over his shoulders, even though he had no real need for it. He kept his gaze forward, the weight of his hurt in the set of his jaw, making the shame descend again as I moved to stand in front of him. I knelt and tried to place his feet into the shoes I had brought with me.
“There’s no need for you to do that, Luna. You are not my slave.”
There was an edge of resentment in his tone and his words had been meant to wound. It was deserved. I glanced up to see him looking down at me, anger still in the set of his jaw.
“I know that, Avery.”
I went to again try and place his feet in the shoes, but he reached for my hand and stayed it. Then he picked up the shoes and tossed them away.
Giving in, I sat on the grass by his side, my gaze moving to his exposed feet and then the discarded shoes lying a few yards away.
“Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Luna.” He turned to me, anguish written across his features. “I know.”
He faced the water and it was a long moment before he spoke again.
“I just wish I had found you sooner. All those times I returned to the chapel. If I had known you were nearby, I could have spared you from so much. I could have taken you away from the plantation and you would have been raised by your mother, free from him and his son and what they did to you for so long.”
His words and the emotion behind them tugged painfully at my heart, again leaving me feeling weak as only he had the power to do. He didn’t keep much hidden from me, but he had kept this from me: His guilt. Even after he let me go to marry Jupiter, it had plagued him, those years I spent at the hands of Master Henry and then Master John. It hurt because I too wish he had found me then.
I clutched his arm and lay my head against it.
“How could you have done anything when you didn’t even know what I was or even if I was real?”
“But I could have—”
“Don’t do this to me, Avery,” I said, fighting back tears. “There was nothing either of us could have done to stop that from happening. Not even Mama was able to stop them.”
“I know.” He faced me again and I was forced to look up at him, at the tears in his eyes. “I know. It’s just... I watched so many slaves suffer over the years but was completely absorbed in my own pain. That is not an easy thing to admit. And it’s just that I love you so much, Luna.”
He paused then, as he had done so often in the beginning, waiting for me to echo his words. I wanted to, but I found myself choked by the words. It was as if his soul sang to me when he uttered them and I was utterly consumed by the depth of his feeling, the man himself and what he meant to me. As the years passed, his pauses had grown shorter and then disappeared altogether as he realised the words would never be returned like a hollow echo.
My actions had told him all that needed to be said—and so much more than empty words could ever convey.
Yet even now, he still waited to hear them. And when they failed to come something in his eyes seemed to flutter helplessly, like a moth struggling at a closed window. He looked away.
His lip quivered slightly as he looked out over the water.
“I love you, Luna. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“Avery, I fought time and death to be with you. Nothing and nobody will ever take me away from you.”
Yet even as I said those words, I was consumed by conflicting emotions. Whenever I saw him this way—in pain, or even any mild discomfort of any kind—it made whatever I felt completely disappear at the sight of his suffering. The indescribably soul-destroying years suffering utter degradation did not seem to matter when faced with his guilt, his pain. It was irrational to compare the violent corruption of a child beside the guilt of a powerful supernatural being. But the truth of the matter is I would have laid myself down, walked across hot coals to spare Avery even one moment of anguish and it angered me.
It was not normal to feel this way about anyone. I had loved Jupiter deeply, but with Jupiter I could breathe. Being loved by him was like basking in the rays of the sun. It warmed, nurtured, and revitalised me. With Avery, it was like being burned alive and I was utterly helpless in the face of this overwhelming emotion. And despite his kindness, his tenderness, I was fearful because if he had been a cruel man, a man like Master John, I would have been lost. Completely.
He reached for me and kissed me, a kiss that was hesitant and tender. He pulled away all too soon, but I caught his lips once more and would not let him go.
We made love by the lake under the moonlight, slow, deep then urgent and completely without restraint as if to douse the fire burning within that could never be extinguished. And as always, I became completely lost in this man. Even in the throes of passion, left whimpering, completely consumed by him, unable to utter any other word but his name, I was aware of his vulnerability, his uncertainty.
Afterward I stood by the water looking out at the lake, the moonlight blazing a sterling trail across its surface. It would be dawn in a few hours. He came to stand behind me and I turned to him. There was a slight smile on his lips, but I still saw some of the uncertainty in his eyes as he took my hand. I brought it to my cheek. He relaxed and leaned in to kiss me, our hands still clasped.
With all my immortal strength and the power of my ancestors, I was still bound. I was a slave to this man and my deep, unyielding love for him. It would always be that way.
***
Louisiana 1887
Betrayal.
Even as my anger at his betrayal thrilled through me, panic spurred my footsteps, eating away at my self-control like acid. I ran after him like a frightened child and flung the front door of the mansion open, rushing outside into a night that seemed to hold only bitter shadow. The pain in my heart and mind eased when I saw him standing a few feet away, looking out at the darkness before him.
“I said where are you going? Answer me!” I cried.
He faced me, his eyes lit with fiery anger even while hurt flowed behind them like a slow moving river that ran deep. He was still, his voice charged with the anger he was fighting to rein in.
“I
need to get as far away from you as I can before I say something—before I say anything else—we will both regret. I will be back in the morning when I have calmed down. But first I need you to give your word you will not kill anyone, this night, or any other. It is the only reason Lina let you live. So promise me.”
“She knows I won’t kill!”
How could they have done this to me? Lina, my precious Lina and Avery?
“You didn’t need to do that to me because I would have stopped. I would have stopped for you, Avery.”
I would have laid down my life—my soul—for this man. Why couldn’t he see it?
“But if you think you can just walk out of here after what you did—Avery?”
The air around him began to waver, causing my heart to contract spitefully.
“Avery!”
He was gone.
Pain broke over me like a landslide and I was forced to my knees, the pull in my stomach whenever he was far from me, making me cry out in anguish. I cried aloud, my pride gone, only the moon above witness to my grief, the silence and his absence.
I stayed there for a few minutes, trying to fight the deluge of fear and irrational panic like a flock of malignant crows engulfing me. It was the same fear I experienced as a child standing at the edge of the woods, calling for my lost mother to come back to me.
He was gone.
Where was he?
Would he return to me?
Oh Lord, bring him back to me.
But that word, the one I had shied away from uttering, the one I had always feared would manifest itself in my life with him in some form, came to me again.
Betrayal.
“I need you to come somewhere with me, Luna,” he had said, his hand outstretched, the sun peeking over the horizon emitting a distant peach glow and the promise of light and life for the world beyond.