The trio screamed, backing away into a corner, putting as many chairs and tables between them and the gun.
“Rudy!” Bobby shouted. Whatever whiskey was in his system, burnt away in a flash. He was sober, blood pumping to his brain, his nerves. Deep inside, those yellow devil eyes woke grumbling in his stomach. Laughing with tyrannical glee. He looked at the couple at the jukebox. He looked at the woman, at the bulldog revolver in her hand. He knew that gun. And as his thundering mind placed it, he also placed the familiar scent he gleaned from the kid at the bar. The smell of dirt and grain, the smell of wheat.
“See, Mr. Weeks. Right there’s a perfect example. The bartender thought he could change his destination, but he could not. He was always destined to die here, in this place. His palace of sin.” The kid had wild eyes, hungry eyes. He stepped closer, pushing away one of the wooden tables with a grunt.
“Who the fuck are you?” Bobby growled. He never cared much for Rudy, but Rudy had never done him wrong. He was just a man, trying to make a place of his own. What right did these maniacs have to come in here and gun him down? If they had quarrel with Bobby, they could have done this somewhere else, anywhere. No right. They had no right.
“Who are we?” Justin seemed to mock. “We’re gonna set things right. What you and your friends tried to stop. You spoiled our family, Mr. Weeks. Father Beckett. Sheriff Connors. Mayor Low. And the temple…desecrated. You killed them, but we’re going to make it right.”
“You’re crazy. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Don’t be naive, Mr. Weeks. We know you were there. We know what you did to our Masters. And now it’s time for you to pay.”
“Masters?”
“We call Them, Nashirimah. Though They have had many names.”
“Nashirimah…” Bobby hissed. His skin burned. Pulled tight as something deep inside was itching and scratching its way out.
“You tried to kill them, you fool. But they are not dead. They can never die.” The woman with the bulldog revolver shouted, grinning between broken teeth. Her hair was unkempt and wild. Dark brown and pulled back somewhat in a loosening poorly made ponytail. She wore a white blouse and light colored blue jeans. Perfectly cameoed to the Hitchcock populace.
The man beside her howled, similarly dressed in jeans and a dingy shirt. “But it wasn’t really his fault, was it?” he mocked. “He was the Wolf, then. Now wasn’t he.”
“Doesn’t matter. He still gonna pay.” The woman aimed at Bobby.
Bobby saw red. Drooling. Eyes burning yellow.
“Put that away, Beatrice. I was sent to perform this duty, not you.” Justin gestured at the woman with his free hand, his attention momentarily taken off of Bobby. “This is my reward, not yours. Mine. Mine.”
Bobby looked into his palm. Watching, confusion running through him with the anger, as the skin stretched like kneaded bread. Bones cracking. Reshaping. Turning? Now? Without a full moon? How? How is this possible? The door was pressed on his back. Maybe he could get to his motorcycle, he thought desperately, eyes burning yellow and red. Can I draw them away from here, away from those girls cowering in the back of the bar? Rudy’s dead. But maybe I can save them, he hoped.
Holding his breath, Bobby pushed his weight backwards. The door gave way and he tumbled outside. Rolling, he got to his feet and sprinted. Pumping his legs like pistons. He could hear them shouting at each other from inside. He reached the Fatboy just as the tavern doors flew open.
“You coward!” Justin was running at him full tilt. Dagger raised high above his head. Gravel kicking up. The other couple came out right behind him, the woman was aiming the revolver.
Bobby clumsily snatched his keys from his jean pocket, dropping them to the ground. Justin was getting closer. The pant of his breath heavy in the late summer air.
Justin swung.
Bobby ducked.
Tumbling over, Justin hit the dirt hard.
The keys were in reach.
Bobby screamed. His back arched, shredding his Nirvana shirt and flesh alike. Turning to the boy on the ground, he could see with heart-breaking fear the look of horror and regret reflected in the boy’s young iris. The other couple ran back into the tavern, screaming.
“You…never…should have…come…here.” Bobby gritted, spasming as the pain thundered through his body. The boy was frozen on the ground, watching. The knife, somewhere, missing. He wanted to shout at him, to tell him to run, but the words never came.
Chapter 12
Repercussions
Luna
“He was alive?”
“Who is alive?”
“He, John Turner, he was breathing? Moving around? Not dead?”
“In a manner.”
“What does that mean? Did you bring John back or not?”
“We did. But what we brought back wasn’t the same as what went into the ground.”
Luna tore away from her grandmother’s dark brown eyes and bright purple church dress. Her gaze wandered out the Waffle House window, past the empty parking lot, between the buildings and dark empty places, searching for something or someone who probably wasn’t even there.
Memaw continued. “We brought John back all right, but just as we had summoned him. Vengeance. Vengeance written on our hearts that night, starved of justice for all the suffering. The violence. Maybe we thought we needed a protector. Someone to watch over us, to right the wrongs. Someone to make them hillbilly crackers think twice before shooting up another of our houses. Keeping us from voting. The beating our children. The vulgar words. Lanmò is what we asked for and Lanmò is what we got.”
—Lanmò, there’s that word again. An old Haitian word I’ve seen in one of Dad’s books, used only a few times. And hadn’t I used it once as well. For Bobby, and that house from his past. Bobby…God, I miss him. I could use his company right now.
Outside, the sun rose and fell, the aged red brick buildings seemed to glow before snuffing out completely in the shadows of the night. Luna hadn’t the words. Everything her grandmother said, despite how fantastic, she believed. They both sat, content in the silence. Probably both grateful for the respite after such a tale, Luna certainly was.
Judy, the waitress, had come and collected their plates, eyeing the still unpaid check on the table. Curious glances from the white tables motivated Luna to go ahead and pay. She asked if it was okay if they sit for a while longer. Spying the more than adequate tip, Judy didn’t mind at all. She even brought them coffee. A new waitress took over her section not long after that. Some young thing, said her name was Sally. Looked about college age, a twenty-something with less lines around her eyes. No puffy saddlebags. None of the meanness. Though obviously tired, there seemed to be more pep in her step. The restaurant had emptied, all but for a few tables. The cooks in the back were laughing, some game was on, baseball maybe. Sally sat at a small end space of the lunch counter, the spot typically reserved for staff on break. Text books spread out in front of her, Biology, Fundamentals of Nursing. Worn single subject notebooks nestled beneath. Chewing on a number two pencil. Cramming, no doubt, for all those long tiresome hours, stuffing bytes of information just to be expunged from her young mind come graduation.
Memaw slurped on her coffee, hands wrapped around her mug, trembling slightly. She looked haggard. Older, somehow, as if telling the story had aged her, stolen away what strength she had left. The weight of her doctor’s appointment seemed more real than before. Luna lingered, gazing at her grandmother, her thoughts drifting beyond her withered image. Without forethought, she could see Ronna Blanche, younger, wilder. Certainly not the church-dressed lady before her. The 1960s was definitely a strange era. But there was something else too, something itching behind the story she hadn’t shared. Something much darker.
Luna pulled her mind away. If Memaw knew she’d been poking around in her head, she didn’t show it. She slurped another sip from her drink. Hands twitching. Eyes warm. Lost in her own thoughts, perhaps.
Clearing her throat, Luna pressed on. “So, what happened next?” She hoisted her own mug to her lips, glancing over at Sally, scribbling away in one of her notebooks at the lunch counter.
Memaw set her mug down but kept her hands wrapped around the base. She continued. Her eyes remaining on the table, sometimes venturing out the window, as she spoke.
“John was an angry soul,” she started. “We brought him back to his body, but his body wasn’t the same as it once was. We, I, put him back together. Borrowed parts from the county morgue. John was confused. Then he was sad. Then he was angry. His anger was hot, hotter than any brush fire, hotter than the sun. We, I, hoped it’d burn out once he was done with what he needed to do.” Memaw picked up her mug, as if to take another drink, but set it back down instead.
“What did John need to do? Did he go after those men, the ones that…” Luna broke off, the crime itself too vile to put into words.
“He did. John went after those men. He started with Hannity, found him at some bar that’s long been demolished. Back in the ’80s, I think. The owner gone bankrupt and some strip mall bought the property. Tore it down, put in a parking lot. Now the strip mall has gone under. Funny how things work out, how some places seem cursed. Never bearing any substantial fruit.”
Luna leaned forward. “What did he do?”
“He took his head, but not before ripping out his heart.”
“Jesus—”
“Then he went after that tub of lard Huckabee. Took his head as well. Left the old man for last, O’Reilly. The boy they called Billy was different. What happened with him was just plain cruel, if such thing could be said with all the blood spilt. John went to Billy’s home, the boy was already torn up about what they’d done, might have even turned himself in, given the chance. I don’t think John would have been content, if he had. Billy never got the chance anyhow, so I guess it doesn’t much matter.”
“What was different?”
“John went to Billy’s house. Whispered in through the window at night. Taunting him. Playing on the boy’s guilt and cowardice. All night long, he spoke to him, whispering from the dark, and eventually, the boy gave in. Hanged himself. And John, left his body dangling for O’Reilly to find the next morning.” Memaw was looking out the window now, eyes fixed and wide. “I think that’s when I first realized, John wasn’t just a force of vengeance. He was cruel and took pleasure in being cruel. He didn’t outright kill O’Reilly when the time came, he played with him first, like a barn cat with a wounded rat. Nudging him, making him think there was some hope of surviving, until the end.”
Luna shifted in the booth, suddenly uncomfortable in her own skin. She’d known the world was not as simple as the life in her garden back in Hitchcock, she wasn’t that naive, the world was strange and could often be hard and lonely and distant and cold, she knew this, but now, listening to her grandmother’s story, the world seemed so much darker and vile and evil than she first believed.
“John chased him down, eventually, to those same woods they’d murdered him, all the way to the Great Willow, the place where they’d not only took his life, but also stolen his humanity, his innocence, his—”
She stopped.
Sally was back at their table.
“Can I get you ladies anything else?” she asked, refilling their mugs.
“No thanks.” Luna gestured with her hands and the young waitress disappeared with a tired smile. Satisfied she’d gone far enough away, she turned back to Memaw.
“And?” she pressed.
Memaw cleared her throat, somewhat breathless, playing with the folds of her purple church dress. “Lulu, I don’t want you to think me evil. We did what we thought was necessary. Please understand what it was like for us back then. You’ve been here awhile now, and probably think things are bad, but imagine a hundred times worse during an era when most folks didn’t bat an eye finding the black corpse floating down the river. Sure, a white boy can walk up into a black church and gun ’em down and get himself arrested, and just. Bad enough for things to make some white boy to kill a Negro, but can you imagine a time when it was encouraged? Before the ’60s, it was rather common to find some poor black soul hanging out in the woods for reasons as simple as looking at a white man’s wife the wrong way. Things were different, as bad as they are now, it was worse then. And we did what we thought was needed. To change the tide. I know you’re young and think the word nigger is in poor taste, but before our sin was transgressed, before we brought back John Turner and ’em white folk got a good look at what came of their violence, we were all niggers. But after…well, things changed didn’t it. Whites started calling us by our last names. After a while, folks no longer had to fear a lynching party if they ever wanted to vote. No county clerk literacy tests. And let me tell you, no one passed those tests before the ’60s, Lulu; no one.”
Luna did not shy her gaze. “What happened, Memaw?”
Ronna looked out the window and then brought her gaze back to Luna. “Seremono nan lanmò.” Her gaze held. Voice chilled with fear and dread, hinting regret.
“The book? Are you talking about one of daddy James’s books?” Luna thought back to her books, the ones her father had left her. The title Seremono nan Lanmò was one in the collection, one she had avoided reading many times…
“Was this a ritual too?”
“The worst kind, Lulu. O’Reilly was buried alive with the heads of his friends.”
Luna’s heart sank. “You…buried him alive? You killed him?”
Memaw shook her head, out of argument or desperation to have her granddaughter understand, Luna had no way of really knowing which. In a way, she assumed probably both.
“Not dead, Lulu. The whole Blanche family. We brought John back, who we thought would be our protector. But his blood lust did not end with the burial of O’Reilly and the heads of those men. John Turner became our family curse.”
Luna couldn’t look away, as much as she wanted to, as much as she was ashamed to be counted as a Blanche. Her gaze remained unmoved. “You killed him.” Her mind froze of the burial. “Those white boys?”
Memaw blinked. “They ain’t dead.”
“Excuse me.”
“The old man, O’Reilly. We didn’t kill him. Seremono nan lanmò is a rite of eternal undeath. His punishment, and those of his friends, Huckabee, Hannity, and Billy, put in that grave is forever. Together. Undead.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
“They’re still alive down there?”
“Yes.”
Luna covered her mouth for fear of screaming. Hands trembling as bad as her grandmother’s, she turned her gaze away. Cold, so cold. Outside, dark clouds rolled over the horizon in the night. It would rain soon. Thunder boomed somewhere farther away in the dark.
“Please try to understand.” Ronna reached over to touch Luna’s forearm. Luna recoiled.
“Understand?”
“Please.”
“We need to dig them up. If they’re still alive, we need to free them. Hasn’t their punishment gone long enough? We need to—”
Ronna slammed her fist on the table. The mugs and leftover silverware rattled loudly, like washers in a tin lunchbox. A few of the even fewer sat tables looked their way. Luna gestured apologetically at Sally, who had stood to see the matter, but returned to her books instead. Satisfied all was well, Luna looked back to her grandmother, who exhaling loudly, unclenched her fist, unfurling her sudden rage, and held hands softly.
“Why not, Memaw?” she asked, patient.
Memaw’s shoulders seemed to relax. Her breathing returned to normal.
“You will do no such thing. Lulu, promise me. Some things are best left buried. John Turner wasn’t the only murder those men committed. There were other coloreds, stretching back to just after the war, I’d guess. Except for Billy, I suppose he was the only innocent, if you could say such a thing after everything that happened. I never looked that far back. But I can say t
hat I looked into O’Reilly’s and Huckabee’s and Hannity’s heart and found only foul darkness looking back. Nothing of light or goodness. Do you understand, Lulu? If you let those men out, they’ll be twice as worse as John ever was, if not more.”
Luna sat quiet for a while. Her thoughts felt slowed, as if mucked with the absolute ridiculousness of the conversation. Muddied by the amount of information given in such a short span of time. Too much. And still, despite how utter horrifying the truth was, that her sweet old grandmother had once partaken in such a dark ritual, not just in murder, but live burial, a conscious death, yes, despite how terrifying that was, she could understand; she understood how perhaps given the era and the desperation for change, why her family had done the things they had…yet there was still two nagging questions that needed answers.
“Memaw?”
“Yes, Lulu.”
“What happened with John Turner? Why isn’t anyone from the family around anymore? Where is everyone? Are they in hiding?”
Her grandmother spoke to her without tears. Perhaps because there were no more tears left to cry, perhaps tears for her family had long dried up over the decades, perhaps she was too tired and worn from her tale to produce them. Whatever the case may be, Ronna Blanche did not shed one tear as she told Luna the answers to her questions.
Memaw held her gaze. “He killed them,” she said without blinking. “Every last Blanche, but for me and my child, your father, he killed them all. And then he went away, but not far, I’d imagine, not far.”
“Are you saying—?”
“John Turner killed our family.”
Chapter 13
Chow Hall
Bobby
—What is this?
He stood inside a hideously expansive catacomb building. Flat walls stretching for miles with picnic style tables draped in white plastic sheets filling the floor space. Between the aisles more tables angled opposite of each other. On those irregular places, trays and trays sat next to each other, filled to the brim with steaming plops of some kind of meat and rice and vegetable. There was also other dishes being served by brown-skinned chefs, Indians by the look of them, heaping spoonfuls of sausage gravy and biscuits. Another tonged loaves of chicken cordon bleu. The fellow beside him dished out waxy looking lobster and stingy steak. And the darker skinned chef beside him served thick globs of mac’n’cheese. The aroma was a sauna of sweltering salt and vinegar. Sweet yet somehow soured in the air. At each of the picnic tables, soldiers in various military uniforms weighed down the benches with overflowing plates of food being served here. Wherever here was. They sat and ate and laughed and talked in merry conversation. It was a feast the likes Bobby Weeks had not seen in an age. Not since his discharge. Not even in the most cherry of homeless shelters. No. This was something more.
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