Bobby took another drawling drag from the cigar.
Puffing smoke, he gazed down into Jotham.
Something got put in their heads, he thought. Retribution? Isn’t that what that kid said? Retribution. Who’s retribution? He pictured his last memory of Maggie of when she was still alive…or presuming she was still alive. The moment when she molted into that other thing, the thing with large red eyes and mandibles and glistening black coarse flesh. Creatures from some other place, like in those movies Ricky made us all watch when we were kids ourselves. Visitors from another world come to dominate our own?
Jesus…
Bobby combed his greasy hair with his hand. He’d let it grow out, simply for lack of want or care. His beard was getting longer. Greyer. Teeth yellowing. Eyes bloodshot. Consumed with solving the mystery. Below, a storm had gathered. Given the sudden chill in the air, snow or perhaps ice was getting ready to blanket the town. He took another long puff, let the cigar drop to the ground, and stomped the smoke out with his boot. He could sense in some odd way those red eyes watching him now. He revved the Fatboy. The chrome pipes roared with each twist of the accelerator. Grey smoke rose in the cold wind. In the back of his mind, glasses were being clinked, bread was being broken among the merry dead. His friends were smiling, waiting for him to join the feast.
Retribution?
I’ll give them retribution.
Bobby let go of the clutch. The wide back tire screeched and burnt rubber before catching traction. The metal beast soared down the hill and into the flat valley towards Jotham.
Chapter 27
The Journal of Clay Yerby
Neville
Neville stared down at the age worn leather book. Penned with a stroke of elegance and care was the name, Yerby Butler, or so she assumed the name to be. Butler could have very well been a designation for all she knew. The book, journal, whatever it was, was old. This much, even without a history degree, she gathered. Her herbal tea chilled next to her. The once wafting steam trails long gone to the coldness of the town house. Outside, the windows were being pelted by tiny flecks of ice, clinking against the glass. The sun was setting. Boris would be home soon. But none of that mattered. What mattered were the questions she uncovered. The many seeming coincidences too perverse not to wonder if they could be true. Real. Rational. But this book is a work of fiction, has to be. Has to. She opened the book again and re-read the passage that gave her trouble. Hoping, praying to discover some hint as to its inauthenticity.
May 12, 1860
May the Lord have mercy on us, for the things we have done. For all our rage and contempt, we are poorly made for slavery and thus our transgressions have brought us low. Low enough to consort with devils and evil powers. Low enough to allow one of our own to become impregnated without the awareness of our Massa.
We’ll all burn for this, mark my words. We’ll burn.
The midwives have taken the woman and the hellspawn she bore to a hiding place. I do not know where, nor will the other slaves tell me. They do not trust me with their secrets. Perhaps they shouldn’t. Yerby the House Nigger would surely tell ole Massa the horrible truth. But what about Yerby the Cotton Picker? Would he?
Regardless, I dare not approach Massa or any of his brutes without proof.
Massa would beat me if he discover nothing.
My kin would kill me.
Or allow me to perish from my wounds.
God forbid, maybe I deserve as much.
Turning another page, Neville read.
May 22, 1860
Strange noises are coming from the slave courters. Not screams nor wailings one might expect from a newborn babe, but odd clicking sounds, like the locusts that come sweeping through the crop every other summer or so. Swimming among the corn and fluff, nearly blotting out the sun.
I can scarcely imagine what low some creature could make such sounds.
I haven’t slept in days.
I’m tired.
Continuing, Neville turned the page.
June 8, 1860
A fowl stench has come upon the plantation. Surly the overseers will take notice. The other slaves have become bold and careless with their work. The heat.
Surely it is the heat.
The hottest summer that I can recall.
Massa keeps to the porch drinking his lemonade, those foggy glasses I had once served for him. Until I was banished to this hell among the common Negros. Banished, and for what? I cannot control how his daughter looks upon me. Marry her off then, be done with it. May the Lord strike me down for saying such a thing, but I pray she is barren and offer no offspring for his lineage. They deserve as much. One day we’ll be free, as any American. And then Massa won’t be Massa anymore, except over his own horde. I’ll be whomever I wish with whomever I wish.
As for the fields, not many Overseers watching us cotton slaves these last few days.
Too hot, no doubt.
Even they are bold.
If Massa knew how many of his niggers have looked over upon the hedge grove without a single lashing, his head would spin, no doubt about there.
Bold.
And bizarre.
Not a single slave has made any attempt at escape.
Not a one.
It’s as if…they want to be here.
Another page.
July 9, 1860
The heat has not broke. Sweat seems to even seep off the hickory and sage brush. The ground is soaked by perspiration and grime. The sun looms above us, laughing at our terrible misfortune to have been born this day and age. Two lives were lost today. Not that any batted an eye. The only overseer was some hired fool from town. A drunk who kept to the shade of an elm tree on the far side of the cotton field. And the slaves…no one ran.
Why don’t they run?
Maybe I should…
With the inferno, the dreg of the earth’s bowels have unleashed more feverishly, slithering and fluttering into our pens and counters. Those clicking beasts with red eyes, always watching. I recall Massa mentioning these creatures before, back when he looked upon me with favorable eyes, he called them Cicadas, but these seem greater in size and unnatural compared to what he had described. At night they sing to each other. Calling without pause as if at some Black Mass, conjuring blasphemy of the most putrid ilk.
There’s a taste of lightening in the air.
Iron and copper coats the back of my throat.
The woman and her child have been hidden away, I’m sure I know of what hut they reside, but I dare not intrude. They watch the dwelling place as hawks watch the fields for hares.
Something is coming.
With a trembling hand, Neville continued.
August 13, 1860
A sickness has emerged over the plantation. Massa had that fool drunk overseer burn one of the slave huts to keep the rest of his stock healthy enough to work. But in this heat, who can work? Even the cotton bushes have caught flame. Withered like a prune with ogrishly twisted branches. Blackish purple as false shamrock.
When will this sweltering summer last?
Lord, I pray we never had taken that black stone.
I thought I heard the woman cry out last night.
And in place of the coos of a newborn, screeching madness.
Clicking.
Clicking.
Always with the noise.
What did we let loose?
“Black stone?” Neville whispered the words without realizing she’d spoke, flinching in her chair from the sudden intrusion of her own voice. Turing another page, the last notes made had no date. Only scribble and scratches. As if written by a hand soaked in fear. The only distinguishable words were, “They Came.” Whatever “They Came” meant, she could hardly guess. If not for the lump in her throat and the spasm of her breath, perhaps this all could have been coincidence. Carefully she closed the journal. Yerby, from the language of his words must have been a house servant, kicked out of the house and into the cotton fields. Perhaps eve
n here in Texas, the journal never mentioned as far as she could tell as to the location. Maybe Jotham for all she knew.
Yerby was a slave.
No doubt there.
There was some sort of ritual, some sort of black magic or shamanism or something. An uprising among the slaves, maybe. A form of ceremony performed over a pregnant woman, it sounded like.
Pregnant woman…
What happened to her child? Neville wondered.
But the sickness came.
And the heat before that.
Strange behavior.
And the black stone…
Neville touched her neck where her necklace hung. Lifting up the jewel at eye level, she peered into the rock. The stone was as it always been, black as coal and non-reflective, like a hole in space, absent of color. Silent and still as many jewelry would be. Yet, there was something else, something plain eyes could not see. Something deep inside it, glowing, pulsating.
“No.”
“Ridiculous.”
But is it? Why have the book locked away?
And the robes, what would Boris want with the robes?
Are they for school…or…
The necklace seemed to dance before her eyes. Deeper in the stone, beyond natural sight, her mind opened to a vision of dark clouds billowing. A sort of yellowish lightening flashed and a yawning foul thunder boomed. And farther past the eldritch sulfuric vapor, something stirred. Red, as red as crimson blood. Countless red glowing kaleidoscopic bulbs looking upon her from the dark. They blinked, those monstrous things blinked. And still Neville pressed. Farther and farther into the obelisk another world took shape, shuddering and moving its hideous dimensional form, unfolding upon itself, reaching to her somehow with an outstretched elongated withered twig-like handless arm covered in black bristles. Reaching. Reaching for her.
“NO!” Neville jumped from her chair. Snatching the necklace, she tore it from her neck. The black stone clinked on the tile floor of the kitchen, resting in front of the stove. Panting, suddenly out of breath, she glared at the jewel waiting for whatever the thing was to come shattering through the rock. But nothing came. The vision was gone. Only the memory flashed still behind her eyes. Images of crawling red-eyed things fluttering, gathering in the dark. Clicking. Clicking.
“God, what is happening?”
Neville sat and pushed the journal away from her. Boris would be home soon. Boris would be home and he would explain everything. Yes. Boris will explain everything.
Chapter 28
Shepherd’s Pie
Luna
Her grandmother used to make the best Shepherd’s Pie. She used two pounds of potatoes, russet, peeled and cubed. Two tablespoons of sour cream, though Luna found she would sometimes use softened cream cheese. From the chicken coop she’d fetch one large egg and whip together half a cup of cream, adding a dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper, and mashing everything with the peeled cubed potatoes. On a separate skillet, Memaw would grease a pan and fry two pounds of beef, seasoning with chopped carrots and onion, and salt and pepper as well, until the meat was browned, whisking together a beef broth and Worcestershire sauce, filling the kitchen with the most delightful savory vinaigrette aroma. As the pan would thicken, she’d spoon the mashed potatoes evenly over the meat, topping the casserole with chopped parsley before serving. Memaw had made this dish on four separate occasions during her stay in Mississippi, before the cancer made it impossible for her to move freely about the cabin in the woods.
Luna clutched her growling stomach. Why she decided to think of food when she was doing her best to get down the road, to get to Texas, as fast as her RAV4 would take her was beyond her understanding. Sometimes the mind worked like that. To protect itself in stressful conditions, the subconscious would pull the most random of memories. Some people thought of puppies. Others, various hobbies, like sewing or writing stories. For her, she often thought of food when stressed.
Interstate 20 rolled on in the dark. Luna had passed Shreveport, Louisiana about an hour ago, and before then, Monroe, and before, Jackson. It took some trial and error locating the interstate from her grandmother’s Delta cabin. But the drive lulled on easier now, if not for the sudden constant growl and knotting in her gut. She hadn’t eaten all day. And she certainly did not want to stop. Using the Sight time was meaningless. Acting in the moment, well, as the saying goes, time is fleeting.
Tyler was coming up. Her plan was to exit the interstate and take pothole-riddled Highway 155 through Palestine and then jump on Route 79 into Rockdale. From there, according to the map she picked up before ever setting foot in Mississippi, she’d be just north of pine-hidden Hobbsburg, and below Hobbsburg was Jotham.
In Jotham…was Bobby Weeks. Luna was sure, though she refused to use her sight again for fear of seeing something she’d truly regret. He was in danger that much she had gleamed. And if she didn’t come for him, he whatever powers await in Jotham would take hold of the only man besides her grandfather she’d ever loved.
Her stomach rumbled again.
“Quiet you.” Luna clutched her belly. Glancing at the fuel gauge, she noticed for the first time the warning light had come on.
The exit for Tyler approached and she took it. The road rolled down away from the interstate. A sign for Highway 155 loomed ahead. She turned left and pulled into the first gas station she could find, a blue and red Exxon with about four pumps to call its own. The pavement was near black with oil. Weeds sprouting between the cracks. To hell with it, Luna thought. She could see only one attendant inside and no way of using her credit card at the pump. A squared ‘pay before’ sign hung beside the dial.
“Might as well get some food while I’m here.”
The store bell jingled, nearly as cold and sharp as outside. Luna surveyed her options, which were scarce. She settled on a bag on Funyuns and a Snickers bar with a diet Coke to wash it all down. She brought everything to the counter.
The attendant, an obese red headed man with horrible pits, scars no doubt from an acne fueled adolescence, and more than a few missing teeth, moseyed to the register. His name tag said Otis Russel. Without a “hey” or “hello” or “howdy” the portly fellow started ringing up Luna’s purchases.
“I’ll need twenty on pump four too.” Luna smiled politely, ignoring the shiver she felt run up her spine.
“No food stamps.” Otis spit in a foam white cup.
“Good thing I’ve got my Visa.” Luna shifted on her feet.
“Yup” was all Otis would offer in way of apology.
Without even asking the total, Luna shut out her mind, refusing to see whatever awful thing this man had written in his mind, paid with her bank card, collected her items, and went out the door. As the Plexiglas shut she swore she heard the word nigger before the door closed completely.
Luna thought of her grandmother as she refilled the RAV4. Ignoring the glare of the redneck inside, she remembered something about time bubbles, something Memaw had mentioned, describing the Delta or places like it. Places caught up in the past, isolated from the evolution of the human psyche…or blatantly choosing to ignore the change in the wind. A fantasy to keep things as they were when nothing was as it was.
Otis was spitting in his white foam cup again, watching her. Unable to resist, Luna pushed into his mind. She felt confident with her gift, much more than she had before. Focusing, she peered into the fool’s past. An image rushed to the forefront, a sunnier place than this wintery rundown Exxon. Another time, far away from anger and envy and hatred. He must have been a boy, she could feel the carefree exuberance only the young possess. Otis was pedaling on some rust covered Schwinn. He was moving fast. A hot summer breeze warmed his face; her face. He was on his way to ask his daddy for some money to go see a movie. What was it? Back to the Future released in July. His pals all had tickets. Otis was the odd boy out. She could see his daddy, a handsome looking man with kind eyes, tall with narrow shoulders and a thick brow in faded jean coveralls. He
worked…at a gas station, an orange Gulf, on the other side of town. On the promise of sweeping out the garage bay, the father agreed, acting somewhat giddy and happy to see his son, and handed the boy some green, tossing his hair a bit as he did. But something happened. Something came and ruined this dream. What?
Pushing harder, Luna opened the wound.
They were robbed.
A black man with a bandana covering his lower face.
Pistol in hand, .38 maybe, small but not to them; not to him.
Shouting.
The man with the gun was shouting.
The tall father was emptying the register, calm, but the bills fell anyway.
The gun went off.
Ringing.
So loud.
Piercing her skull.
A bell jingled, as it had done for her in the Exxon, and the assailant was gone. Lost to the glow and warm summer breeze. But the boy remained. Frozen. Looking over his bloodied father behind the counter. Tears burning across his rosy cheeks. Luna watched as the boy grew up. Cat calling colored girls. Pranking colored boys. Quitting his High School football team cause the newly hired coach was, as he was fond of saying but too scared to say it to anyone’s face, a nigger. He dropped out soon after. And on certain nights, the long ago exuberant carefree boy dawns a white sheet and talks of Texas seceding and civil war and how every black was on welfare and building giant walls to keep the Mexicans out. But in the end, it’s all just smoke and mirrors. The man was still the boy, under all the hate, a boy who simply missed his dead daddy.
Snapping back, Luna corked her gas and fired up the engine. She glanced over once more at Otis, feeling tears push against her eyes. Though now more grizzly and aged with anger, she could see the youth underneath. She wanted to comfort him, but knew she would only be meant with violence. There are just some things in the world where even the best intentions cannot undo tragedy. More than ready to put this awful place behind her, she put the RAV4 in motion, and drove back toward the highway.
Conceiving (Subdue Book 3) Page 19