Approaching the backend of Rudy’s Tavern, Bobby discarded his ruined jeans and clothed himself with his newly gained apparel. The clothes were slightly too large, but felt warm and welcoming against his chilled and sore body.
Inching closer to the backside paneling of Rudy’s, thoughts bubbled hot, knotting his stomach. Thoughts of last night and the horrors that probably awaited around the corner.
The wolf was loose.
No rusted batting cage.
Turned.
But how?
No telling what was done.
Just like before.
Before Luna…oh god, Luna.
I wish you were here.
Creeping along the side, between Rudy’s cheap wood-sided garage where he kept his summer cookout smokers and grills, and the tavern itself, Bobby crouched and listened to the commotion that came from the front of the building. Red and blue lights flickered and rolled. Daring a few steps more, he hunched slightly at the corner. Several police cruisers covered the front lot. Telling by the tracks in the mud and disturbed gravel, more had been here earlier. Two men and a woman came out of the bar through a broken mangled door dressed in some kind of slick medical looking blue coveralls with HPD stamped on the back carrying expensive looking cases and cameras draped over their necks. They loaded up in one of the marked SUVs and drove away, followed by two other cruisers, leaving behind one. On this remaining cruiser, two brown uniformed policemen leaned against the hood, each smoking and taking sips from a steaming white Styrofoam cup.
Bobby thought about finding a way to move closer to get a good angle so he could hear what they were saying, to find out what happened here without being seen, but to his surprise he could hear the police officers just fine. While relieved he could stay where he was, because being spotting would, well, raise one too many questions, the fact he could hear them from such a remarkable distance did not comfort him in the least.
Pushing away those thoughts for now, Bobby listened in.
“Did you see inside?” asked one of the officers. Both wore the old smoky brown uniforms, custom of Hitchcock City.
The other officer took a drag from his cigarette, seeming to grimace at his partner’s question. “Sickest thing I’ve ever seen. Hands down.”
“They say it was an animal.”
“What kind of animal could do that?”
“I don’t know. Bear?”
“A bear? In these parts?”
“Yeah. You’re right. Maybe…coyote?”
“It’d have to be one vicious son-of-a-bitch if it was.”
“And big. Did you get a look at that one fellow before Dave hauled him off to the ice box? How old do you think he was? Couldn’t been any older than twenty.”
The other officer wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You remember a few years back, that call we had on the Fourth of July?”
The other nodded. “Parkins feller, right?”
“Yup. His was the first dead body I’d ever seen. And his was bloated and smelled like fish oil. He was bad enough. But here, that kid Dave bagged up with them others in there, I ain’t never seen anything like this before. And Rudy. What coyote packs a gun? I tell you, this is all messed up. None of it makes any sense.” The officer shook his head low, taking another puff of smoke. Even from his place at the corner of the tavern, Bobby could see the man’s hands tremble. Daring more of an angle, he peered over at the ruined entrance to Rudy’s Tavern. The door was obliterated. The wood splinted. Sections completely missing. And claw marks. Deep and angry.
The other officer stood.
Bobby pulled back.
The cop snuffed out his cigarette on the ground. “Well, hope the girl pulls through.”
Bobby felt his heart jump.
A survivor?
“That’s a big if. Did you see her neck? Whatever bit her nearly took her head clean off.”
Bobby choked back bile. Guts sinking and cold as ice. The world felt tilted like in those terrible funhouses at low-end amusement parks. Sight blurred. Whirling. He sat back on the ground, breathing heavy.
“Damn shame. She sure was a pretty thing.”
“No older than my sister.”
“College girl, right?”
“Yup.”
Survivor?
Neck wound.
I must have…
And she lives.
Oh God, if she lives—
What have I done?
As Bobby sat on the damp morning ground, and the officers out front went about talking about baseball and how terrible the Astros were doing this year, old memory guided his hand to an ancient wound, a nearly-faded scar of a bite mark left courtesy of the Wolf of Kurdistan. His fingers traced the curse given to him, so long ago. A curse he had now given to another.
Chapter 16
1860
Clay Yerby
Standing outside the gyrating evocative horde of claps and kicks and stomps and shouts and drum beats, Clay Yerby could scarcely believe the spectacle taking place. Abraham Wilson was not one known for his mercy and acceptance of foreign custom. Yet, here they were, dancing around the bonfire. Rolling on their bellies in the dirt. Licking sweat. And moaning with a hunger few ever truly experience. As miniscule as the numbers were, it was still a practice Massa Wilson forbid, fervently. Thankfully, the slave quarters, the straw and mud hobbles massed together with dust and dirt floors, were on the farther reaches of the plantation, far removed from Massa’s house. And, doubling their luck, the huddled dancers couldn’t have picked a more opportune night. Tonight was the Jotham Town Fall Festival and most, if not all, of the Wilson clan were off celebrating with townsfolk. Even Amos Wilson had come in from law school to celebrate with his family. If there was anyone left to watch the plantation, most likely they would be too inebriated to notice the fire or the ritual taking place among the slaves.
Yerby typically kept to the mansion. Yerby the House Nigger, as his brethren liked to tease him. But not anymore. As he watched the flames dance among the strange rhythmic sways of…what do you call them? Priests or maybe shamans would suffice, as there are no designations in something so ancient a practice. As he watched, memories surfaced of his recent expulsion from his former duties as house servant. In another era, they may have called him Yerby the Butler, but as it were, such niceties had yet to be invented for non-free men. He was a good servant. Carried a sense of pride in his work. Kept the boiling anticipation for emancipation (another word that had yet to be invented) deep down from prying eyes. Change was inevitable for America and hung heavy in the air, weighing perhaps more so like a cancerous lump of spoiled gravy in the hearts of well-to-do whites. Change was certainly in the hearts of the Negroes, the farm hands, the cotton pickers, the tradesmen and blacksmiths and cobblers, blooming like a bushel of yellow thorn barberry.
What would these innate Anglos do without their free labor? Yerby sneered with the pleasurable thought. Near the bonfire, the dancers, shaman, continued their deviant rite. Drums made of rawhide and bone, thumping steadily along with the chants and guttural chorus words as pelvis came to pelvis, sounding aboriginal and equally archaic, bred from despair and desperation and vengeance.
Tonight’s proceedings, as much as Yerby had been told, came to be when a lonesome and ashen painted Bidai from one of the neighboring Indian tribes was wounded by Paul, an overseer and one of the meanest and cruelest sons-of-bitches in the Wilson clan. Apparently the overseer had spotted the native talking with one of the cotton pickers and shot him on the spot, dragged the slave and beat him what for. The Bidai was left to die from his wounds. But the slaves would have none of that. They took care of the Bidai, as best they could. Brought him water. Packed his wound. Hid him from the wrath of Paul and the rest of the overseers. Besides his sackcloth, the savage had but one possession, a necklace made of dark leather and at the heart a polished black stone that pulsated on its own accord. The native eventually passed from his wounds, his final act was handing over the jewel to one of th
e mothers nursing him and whispering with his final breath one solitary word, “Wormi.” The mother gave the stone to one of the elders, but even this simple act was precarious, as the men and women under Massa Wilson’s ledger were sold or put to death without warning or even cause. However, as the stone was in their possession, not a single slave was lost.
There was something odd about that stone Yerby did not like. Something sinister about the way it refused to glimmer in the sun; no matter how polished it was it never reflected light. Only when the sky was dark did it shine, and then only as it saw fit. It was as if it was interacting with whomever possessed. Communicating as only sentient beings can. Among the slaves who held the black rock, it seemed to speak, to understand their suffering and pain. An offer had been made. Many believed the stone to be one of Anansi’s many forms, a relic from a place many of them had never seen with their own eyes, a god, depending on oratory tradition passed from one to the next. But how much of African legends had been watered down through countless generations of captive breeding? Whatever the case may be, whatever the stone was, it was not likely his fellow slaves would listen to his misgivings. Not Yerby the House Nigger. Certainly not. His voice would never be heard above the echo of the crackling whip or the sneer and gibberish laughter of the rapists or scolding iron of the brander or the degradation and brutality of the shackles and public beatings and executions. No. The only voice they would listen came from the black onyx stone.
And so, from afar, Yerby watched the obscene ritual unfold.
Among the white-chalked and berry-painted dancers, folding and grinding on to each other, a woman was carried from one of the huts on a stretcher made of thick vine twisted together like rope. She was sitting, partly, covered and adorned with creek bed jewels and bones of various beasts common among the Texas Hill Country. She was painted as well, in chalk and blue paste. On her forehead, there was a mark that looked like a curved bowl and a circle above that. Inside the circle, Yerby could not quite make out, but it seemed to be some sort of lettering. None of which he had been taught inside the house of Massa Wilson. This woman was clearly with child, her stomach distended and swollen to full term. The look on her face was a mixture of fear and contentment. She was young and elegant and unblemished. Somehow they must have hidden her from the overseers. As law, pregnant females are to be removed to another location on Abraham Wilson’s estate. Slaves are not permitted to breed without the knowledge of the overseers, just as swine and sheep and goats cannot breed without the knowledge of the shepherd.
Curious, Yerby moved closer to the circle of delinquent practitioners. Resting against a long patch of sagebrush, he watched. Wide eyed with amazement and wonder. The woman was hoisted high above the crowd of chanters and then brought low. One of the elders came out, dressed more elaborately than the rest. His body was frail and malnourished, as most the older men tend to get. Draped across his shoulders, shielding his face, a slain boar had been carved out to make a type of mask or robe. Across his neck he wore a dazzling jewel, the same black stone the Bidai had given them. The rock seemed brighter than it had before, some sort of blue azurite crystal glowed within and turned utterly black in a way that can only be described as some sort of pulsing wink or breath.
Entranced, Yerby had forgotten to breath. Still breathless, feeling woozy but caring not, he watched the elder move between the pregnant woman’s legs as if himself a midwife. The woman screamed and others held her arms as the childbirth began.
What are they doing?
Why like this?
Why…?
Yerby fought back bile as he watched the elder force his hands into the woman’s womb. She howled and pitched but they kept her down. Crimson mucus oozed from her vaginal cavity. Along with many more horrible things he could scarcely think to mention. Plopping into the kicked-up dust like batter from an unbaked flour. The dancers slowed, many had stopped their sweating and moaning degradation to watch. The woman grunted, as if preparing for some kind of massive horrifying final push.
As a house servant, Yerby had witnessed childbirth before. What the woman was going through is what the midwives called crowning. But this birth, this terrifying spectacle before him, was unlike any he’d ever witnessed before. And what was crowning was unlike any child he’d ever seen. There was no hair. Only flesh, inhuman and impossible.
From the womb belched a swarm of black fluttering things. Chattering. Chattering. Clicking in unison as they swirled about the dancers and bonfire. The elder fell backwards, shielding his face from the barrage.
As the black swarm passed, something else came through, something slick and wrinkled within the gore ruined womb. The woman screamed and pushed, and out came a gelatinous worm soaked in puss and juice. The elder embraced the larva as if it were a newborn baby. Actual midwives came soon after, placing the hideous Thing in a wicker basket cushioned with cloth and tanned animal skin. The fluttering tiny insects swam above the born creature and then dispersed among the treetops as if keeping vigil.
The woman was breathing rapidly, lungs puffing air deeply then slowed. Gurgled and then was dead. Her sex a ruined temple of torn flesh and scarlet gore.
Turning to the crowd of hushed whispers, the elder held above him the black stone, still pulsating as if excited or pleased with the ceremony. The gathered number seemed consoled with the display from the rock, resuming their wicked dance and shouts and stomps and kicks and licks. Men penetrating men and women alike. The women thrusting and grinding and swallowing, each keeping rhythm with the drum beat.
Over in the sagebrush, Yerby covered his mouth, unable to hold his breath any longer. Slowly he released his hand. Fresh oxygen flooded his lungs. His head buzzed with white stars. Falling backwards, his head hit the dirt. Succumbing to darkness, he gazed upward into the treetops, and wondered where all the glowing red tiny eyes had come from and why they seemed to be looking down upon him.
Chapter 17
Hospice
Luna
Three weeks had passed. The warm humid Mississippi breeze had turned a tad lighter, the first sign of the changing months ahead. The leaves in the pine and oak and ferns also darkened, the last brilliant blossom of greenery. The only thing green that would remain once the fall started was the kudzu, because kudzu never dies. There was no denying it. The joy and life of summer was passing into the solitary slumber of fall. Luna, despite her darkest inclinations to flee back to Texas, stayed with her grandmother. How could she abandon her now?
Memaw’s story shook her. There was no two ways about that. The world would never look the same, never hold that sweet aroma it once did, the last vestiges of childlike wonder, now there would always been a hint of rot, some kind of stink like aged cabbage wherever she went. Yet, regardless of everything Memaw had done, the trickery, the withheld truth, her past, she loved her still. Ronna Blanche was the last of her kin. When she was gone, which judging from her current bedside condition, the color bleeding from her skin, and faint painful breaths, would not be long, Luna would be alone in the world. Orphaned by not only her parents, but also her mother’s father, and her father’s mother. In moments like this, when the weight of living was unbearable, Bobby Weeks was not far from mind. Just a few weeks ago, she had felt him. Somehow, the protective barrier over the cabin in the woods had lifted, the bubble had popped, giving her a peek past the horizon. What she felt chilled her. Anger. Pure dangerous rage, and those yellow devil eyes, out of sync with the lunar cycle. She saw him turn without the moon being full before being snapped back behind the cerebral wall of the Delta woods.
Was it even possible? she wondered. How could he turn without a full moon?
Looking at the bronze and gold coo-coo clock on the wall, Luna fetched the boiled water from the kettle on the stove and made a quick cup of herbs and roots and kelp extract. Having refused traditional medicine, this was all she could do for her grandmother. Memaw was half sleeping, partially moaning, restless in her deathbed. Taking a deep focused breath of air, s
he took the cup of steaming remedy up the staircase.
Memaw’s door was ajar. Luna could hear her whispering as if talking with someone.
Another hallucination? she thought.
Quickening her pace, Luna went into the bedroom and found her grandmother alone. Her eyes were closed. Lungs rattling with each troubling breath.
Must be.
Damping a hand towel, Luna dabbed Memaw’s forehead. Flesh on fire. Her eyes darted rapidly behind her eye lids and then opened, slowly. She seemed confused at first and then her vision cleared. Ronna smiled at her granddaughter, almost apologetically.
“Lulu,” Ronna whispered, her voice sounding more and more like soft gravel.
“I brought you some tea, Memaw.” Luna helped her grandmother into a sitting position, placing several pillows behind her back. She coughed and wheezed, clearing phlegm from her throat before finally sitting still. She took the mug, eyeing the contents suspiciously.
“This going to make me gag?” Memaw gestured at the mug.
“Probably.” Luna shrugged.
They both looked at each other stoically before succumbing to fits of laughter. Tears rolled down Luna’s cheek. Her heart felt ten times lighter, the burden lifted if only for a short while, the weight of her grandmother’s story momentarily forgotten. Ronna quickly fell into coughing fits again, but behind the wheezes and hackling, she was smiling with those warm, kind deep brown eyes Luna had come to love all over again since her return to Ole Miss.
Sitting down in the wicker chair beside Memaw’s bed, Luna gazed into her palms, thoughts desperate for something other than here she focused her mind on Bobby once more. She frowned, unable to understand how he’d turned without the sway of the moon and not knowing the consequences that surely must have followed.
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