What Blooms from Dust

by James Markert

  Across the road, the Bentley Hotel looked old and abandoned, the wraparound porch buried in drifts that formed and reformed in the wind. Wearing pajamas, Orion stood in the middle of the Bentley’s front lawn—front dust, rather—staring blankly up toward the sky. He looked like a statue, like Josiah and Wilmington at the kitchen table, except Orion was standing. What are you doing out there, old man?

  Suddenly Orion fell forward like he’d passed out, so unaware that he didn’t even brace himself with his hands when his body hit. Just face-planted with a thud right into the dust.

  Ellen went out to check on him.

  But she didn’t go quickly.

  No one else was outside when Ellen crossed the road toward the Bentley. Apparently she’d been the only one to see Orion fall.

  In a normal state of mind, she would have run outside screaming his name. But things weren’t normal anymore, were they? Which is why she casually walked over, no faster than she would have walked to get her mail back when it used to get delivered. Besides, she knew Orion was alive because his arms were moving.

  You look like you’re trying to swim, Orion. She kept that thought in, and as she crossed the road, she wondered if she’d finally advanced to that next stage from the Black Sunday disease. She was turning quiet, as if the dust had gobbled up her words. She just didn’t feel like talking. If she did, it seemed, the conjuring of them might cause more pain than the words themselves.

  And then came that reporter, running out the front door of the Bentley in her pretty dress and shiny hair and igniting the air with her toxic screams. “Someone call the doctor,” she cried. “Get an ambulance,” she pleaded toward Ellen, who just stood there like several other neighbors had begun to do. Even Sister Moffitt did nothing, didn’t even finger her rosary beads.

  “What is wrong with you people?” Rose Buchanan yelled.

  Orion managed to make it to his knees, but he still had his face near the dust, and all of a sudden he put a finger scoop of it in his mouth as if to taste it.

  Rose grabbed his hands, and he tried to fight her, but he was old and she was stronger than that slender frame looked. She managed to wrestle him onto his backside, her legs wrapped around his hips in a way that revealed way too much of those long legs.

  Hugging Orion from behind, Rose pinned his arms down with her own, and he hacked and coughed out what he’d just attempted to swallow. Rose beat him on the back like Ellen did with James every night.

  Jeremiah arrived, and the crowd of onlookers parted for him. Peter wasn’t too far behind, flinching every time Orion hacked. He covered his ears and kept his distance.

  Jeremiah knelt to the ground to help Rose, but by that time Orion had stopped fighting her. He looked defeated. His shoulders slumped. His entire face sagged as if he’d just then and there lost all hope that had remained.

  Dr. Craven finally arrived, yawning, his shirt buttoned off-kilter and untucked, clearly in no hurry to help.

  Ellen looked over her shoulder and saw that Wilmington had made it out of the house too, but he was more focused on Rose than on his pal Orion. Josiah had stayed on their porch, watching from a distance with his elbows on the wooden railing and his fingers casually interlocked, like he was watching the beauty of a setting sun and not the sudden collapse of one of the town’s founders. He hadn’t even wiped the blood from his cheek.

  When Ellen looked back to the chaos—which really wasn’t that exciting anymore—Jeremiah’s eyes locked on hers. Normally his gaze would have garnered an emotional response, but now it did nothing but make her want to take a nap. They stared at one another. Jeremiah said something that might have included her name, but all she could hear was some warped gobble, his words lost in some void that sounded like when she’d put seashells up to her ears when she was little. Back when her family had lived on the East Coast.

  “Ellen?” Jeremiah’s voice swooped back into focus like a wind gust. “Ellen, you need to help us here. I think he hurt his shoulder. And maybe broke his nose.”

  Ellen didn’t move. But she did manage to find motivation for some words, as remnants remained from the memory she’d had in the kitchen earlier. “You flipped a coin, didn’t you, Jeremiah?”

  “What are you talking about, Ellen?”

  “On us. You flipped a coin on us. Back then.”

  He started to say something in denial, but words failed him.

  Ellen turned and walked back home, figuring it wouldn’t be a bad thing if she’d just spoken her last words.

  She heard Nicholas Draper say, “Dr. Craven, you gonna do something for Mr. Bentley or not?”

  Dr. Craven answered, monotone. “Life can get heavy, Nicholas. That man there is broken by it.”

  SIXTEEN

  The day after Orion collapsed, another duster rolled in, accumulating on top of the one before it and the one before that. With the citizens of Nowhere refusing to dig out, porches had gone under, fences were no longer visible, and awnings sagged under the weight of so much dust.

  Something had to be done before the town was buried.

  Jeremiah just didn’t know what that something could be.

  He and Rose had gone through town knocking on doors and storefronts, but no one had answered. Ellen hadn’t even opened up, although he’d seen the sheet move at the living room window. After waiting a couple of minutes to no avail, Jeremiah had moved on.

  After yesterday’s episode, Orion had locked himself inside his room at the Bentley. They knew he was alive because they could hear him whimpering. Jeremiah had threatened to burn the place down if he didn’t come out, but they’d both known it was an empty threat. Jeremiah had even had Peter gong that church bell in the middle of the hotel lobby, but no one had come.

  Jeremiah and Rose, after a second afternoon of knocking on doors, stood in the middle of Main Street surveying the wasteland. “Like something out of a novel,” Rose said as a tumbleweed floated by. In the distance, Mr. Mulraney’s cows mooed and cried. No doubt starving. Filling up with dust instead of food. He’d found a little bit of hay left in Mulraney’s barn loft and forked it down for them, but it wouldn’t last long.

  The sky was dry, the air warm and humid—more like summer after a thunderboomer than spring. Jeremiah predicted harsh months ahead.

  “Might not be any months if these people don’t come out of their homes,” said Rose. “We don’t know what’s going on behind those closed doors, Jeremiah.”

  She was right. He’d feared the same. Everyone had completely given up, and they both feared the town would starve to death like those cows. The windows they’d managed to look through showed neighbor after neighbor just sitting there and staring. The only one to open the door when they’d knocked was Nicholas Draper, and he’d ushered them inside like he’d been hoping for company. His mother, Loreda, was refusing to eat or drink. She’d lost more weight than what Jeremiah thought possible in only a couple of days, and when Rose tried to pour water into her mouth she’d spat it back out.

  Rose folded her arms against the wind. After two days of being in Nowhere, she’d begun to wear the look of the southern plains, the look of the so-called dust bowl. Her hair, although combed and gathered in a loose bundle against her nape, no longer shimmered, and on closer inspection it contained little flecks of dust. She hadn’t taken the time to make up her face either. The dust had a way of sticking to the makeup anyhow. Her cheeks and nose were burned from the sun. For the moment, she’d backed off on the questions about his past, focusing instead on the town and what was happening to it, and for that Jeremiah was relieved, even if the derailing was only temporary. At least she had her priorities straight.

  Something crashed down the road, and they turned toward the sound. With no movement about town, all sounds carried, and this one had come from Dr. Craven’s house.

  Jeremiah and Rose took off running, trudging through the drifts like they would during a snowstorm. Rose held the skirt of her dress to keep it out of the dust. Jeremiah took a wron
g step and sank to his knee. Rose gripped his hand and helped him back to level ground.

  No doors opened.

  They couldn’t have been the only ones to hear it—what sounded like a table overturning. They were just the only ones who cared enough to investigate.

  Jeremiah suddenly felt like he was being watched. Last night he’d had another nightmare, the new kind where that figure made of dust was on the prowl, lurking around every corner and laughing. Jeremiah surveyed the town as they moved through it, but saw no such figure, no man made of dust. But he knew now that his mind was sending a clear message.

  Evil was doing the town, and the devil was behind those doings.

  “Jeremiah, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Devil made of dust. Ripped out of my nightmares and covering the town like a blanket. But these nightmares were different than the other kind had been. They varied and had more to do with the here and now, while the recurring nightmare he’d had since birth had been the same every time. Exactly the same. Same duration. Same event. Which meant . . .

  “Jeremiah?”

  Rose’s hand was on his forearm, the same arm as his self-inflicted scars. Together they moved toward Dr. Craven’s house. They stumbled up the buried front porch, using the railing for support. The front door was locked, as it had been earlier in the day. Dr. Craven’s dog lay next to the door, gnawing on the remains of a chicken he’d either killed or found dead. He didn’t even look up as Jeremiah knocked, then called the doctor’s name.

  After a minute of waiting, Jeremiah kicked at the doorknob until the wood around it splintered. Rose lowered her shoulder and busted the door open. It rammed against the wall, swayed on creaking hinges, creepily audible through all the cryptic silence the house had taken on. Dr. Craven lay in the middle of the living room floor with a spot of blood on his forehead. A rifle leaned against the wall beside the couch. Was he planning on using it? On himself? On anyone who walked through the door? Surely not.

  The doctor’s breaths came out as wheezes, spaced apart and slow as his eyes stared up at the ceiling, blinking just often enough to show he was alive.

  He was one of the original settlers of the town, having met both Wilmington and Orion on that train ride to the fictional town of Majestic. He’d delivered Jeremiah and Josiah, along with just about every baby born in Nowhere, even helping bury Jeremiah and Ellen’s secret miscarriage. He’d always been a comforting shoulder, a man of reason and patience and hope, and now he’d seemingly lost it like all the others.

  Jeremiah moved closer to the body. “Doctor, can you hear me?”

  Dr. Craven blinked. Dust flecked the stubble on his face, which was normally clean-shaven. “I fell.”

  Rose grabbed him under the shoulders. “Let’s get you back to the couch.”

  “Leave me,” he wheezed.

  “Won’t do that,” said Jeremiah, noticing how the doc’s cheeks looked sunken in. “How many days since you’ve eaten, doc?”

  Dr. Craven shook his head, not like he didn’t know, but rather like he didn’t care. “We are all dust, and to dust we shall return.”

  It wasn’t the bleakness of Dr. Craven’s situation or even the strange words he’d muttered from his death pose on the floor that sent Jeremiah outside with pangs of claustrophobia and shortness of breath.

  It was Peter. He felt an urgent need to go make sure the boy was okay. So after they’d helped—practically carried—Dr. Craven back to the couch, propped him up like a doll, and forced half a glass of water down his throat, Jeremiah hurried outside.

  Rose followed. “Jeremiah? What is it?”

  He didn’t tell her about the voice he’d heard as they’d walked the doctor over to the couch, the voice in his head that sounded like wind-blown dust in a paper bag. He knew it was in his head because Rose showed no reaction—no sign that she’d heard the dust man say Peter’s name in a whisper.

  They found Peter just as they’d left him, at his desk, pecking away on that typewriter. He was so focused, he didn’t even look up when they called his name from the hallway. His fingers moved fast, as usual, but without the usual rhythm or sentence-like structure in the pecking. Now Peter typed at a wild tempo that Jeremiah likened to fury or rage, a pressure that needed release, like the pressure that had prompted him to make those cuts on his forearm. Maybe Peter had heard that dusty voice too.

  No, those were my nightmares, not his.

  Jeremiah let the boy be. He hurried down the hall and grabbed his rifle from the room he’d been sleeping in—realizing now that it felt right staying in the Worst house as some morbid kind of penance for what had happened to William—and headed back outside. The sun had found its way through the moving clouds.

  Rose kept up with him. “Where are you going with that rifle? Jeremiah?”

  He was too focused to answer. He barely even heard what she’d said, his eyes surveying frantically, flicking from house to house, searching every rooftop and wooden façade for that devil made of dust. Seconds later he stood on Wilmington’s porch, banging on the door this time instead of knocking. He rested his forehead on the wood, jaw clenched and breathing like a steam engine.

  He gave them a few seconds before banging again, knocking that door until his fist hurt. Then, instead of kicking the door in, he shot the doorknob with his rifle. Rose ducked and covered her face. Wood splintered to a gaping hole. The door swung inward, and Jeremiah stepped inside.

  “Josiah? Ellen?” He stepped into the kitchen. “Daddy?”

  He heard nothing. Not even James crying or coughing.

  He headed for Ellen and Josiah’s room first, the one that used to be his room, the room where the nightmares still probably lingered. Ellen was in bed with the sheets rumpled around her bare legs. James was cradled under her arm, and neither one of them moved. Ellen’s eyes were open, unblinking, which got Jeremiah’s heart racing as he jumped toward the bed and ran his hand through her dusty hair.

  Her eyelid moved. She blinked. When he put his finger under her nose he felt air there. James shifted ever so slightly.

  Jeremiah’s heart settled. He held his face and then ran his hands down his cheeks in an exhale of relief.

  Ellen’s pupils found him. She stared but said nothing. She looked catatonic.

  Rose appeared in the doorway. “Your father is in his bed.”

  “I’m assuming he’s alive?”

  “Yes, but unresponsive when I attempted to shake him. His eyes opened, but nobody was there.”

  “Where’s Josiah?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Keep looking.”

  She ducked back into the hallway, and Jeremiah gripped Ellen’s hand, which was hot and rough like the ground would get during the summer.

  “Ellen, you’ve got to get up. You can’t just let it have you.”

  She blinked, whispered something he couldn’t understand. She wasn’t trying to whisper. It was more like that was all the strength she could muster. He leaned closer.

  “Go away,” she said.

  He squeezed her hand. “Ellen, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Dust to dust.”

  “Don’t say that.” He swallowed hard and wiped his hand over his face again. “You need to sit up, Ellen. Do you hear me?”

  Ellen grinned. “To dust we shall return, Jeremiah.”

  Footsteps sounded behind him. He assumed it was Rose, but when he looked over his shoulder, Josiah stood in the doorway with a rifle and a facial expression that held no life to it whatever. He wasn’t pointing the weapon, just holding it like a soldier would standing guard, butt against his right hip and the barrel angled up toward his left shoulder. Except Josiah was no soldier, and he wavered like he was drunk, eyes miles away and his hair recently slept on.

  Jeremiah said, “Josiah, put the gun down.”

  “Gotta protect my family from all this dust.”

  “You can’t shoot dust, Josiah.”

  Josiah gave a reptilian blink, as if he didn’
t understand. “I made you a dust pie in the kitchen, brother. Just like you like it. Put a little water in there to make it muddy.”

  “Where’s Rose?”

  Josiah shrugged. “She sure is a looker, Jeremiah. Gotta admit I’ve taken a few ganders at those long gams of hers.” He looked at Ellen. “Sorry, babe.” She acted as if she hadn’t even heard. He said to Jeremiah. “You gonna flip a coin on her too? Huh?”

  “Put the rifle down.”

  “Put the rifle down.” Josiah mocked him, then returned his voice to normal. “You know I seen you behind the barn that day, touching on my future wife. Embracing like she’d just agreed to be yours when she was supposed to be mine.”

  “You saw wrong, brother. You saw me telling her it couldn’t be, to marry you.”

  Josiah smiled. “Too bad, then, I guess. I was wrangling with calling the authorities on those bodies you’d buried, but when I seen what I seen behind that barn . . .”

  “What you thought you seen.”

  “Anyway, that was the tipping point, Jeremiah.”

  “And look where we are now.”

  “Look where we are.”

  Jeremiah felt like he needed to keep him talking. “Can’t always believe what the eyes tell you.”

  Josiah didn’t respond. He closed his eyes as if he’d gone to sleep on his feet. Like he’d just that instant gone from saying whatever he thought to saying nothing at all, a stage most everyone had passed a long time ago—even Josiah, come to think of it. Maybe the burst of conversation was just that, a burst, and the eyes closing was just his way to shut it down again.

  Josiah finally opened his eyes, then wobbled like he was going to fall over. He wasn’t drunk; he just didn’t have the energy—or the willpower—to stand straight. Rose showed up beside Josiah in the hallway, and just as she was about to balance him with her hand, he lurched face-forward.

  Jeremiah moved from the bed to catch him, but not fast enough.

  Josiah fell straight down, with his finger still on the trigger of that rifle. When he hit the floor, the rifle went off.