by J. D. Horn
“They’ll want you now, if they see you have magic,” the pastor’s voice cut through the swarm’s buzz, capturing their attention as it did. The creatures seemed to lose all interest in her, coalescing instead around the pastor, drowning out what remained of his nonsense words, forming a spinning and ever-constricting cloud around him.
The cloud settled on him, concealing him, consuming him, then one by one the insects began to break away from the mass, each creature snatching away a bit of gauzelike substance as it disengaged from its mates. Bright pinpoints of light broke through the remaining swarm as its individual members took flight, like they were peeling away the pastor’s exterior and exposing the spirit that lay beneath.
A part of Jilo’s brain ordered her to move. To flee the front room, run down the hall, and make her way through the kitchen and out the back door, but she remained frozen in place until a light flared up from the center of where the pastor had been, a spark of white light that rose from the swarm and shot straight up through the ceiling. In that same instant, the light in the room returned. The swarm was gone.
The door began shaking as if someone were trying to force an entry. Jilo bolted down the hall, intent on making it out the back way, only to freeze in the entryway to the kitchen. She wasn’t alone. There were four others sitting at her table. A man wearing a top hat decorated with a bright red satin band was facing her. Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place what it was. “Little sister,” he called, “come join us.” He raised a glass in salute.
To this man’s right sat another with jaundiced white skin so thin the light seemed to pass right through it, giving him the look of a skeleton wrapped in fine vellum.
In spite of her earlier impression that there were four at the table, Jilo realized that the chair to the right of the fellow in the top hat sat empty. Then her eyes spied the flicker of a shadow, and that flicker solidified for an instant into the figure of a man so dark, so lusterless, that it was impossible to discern any features. In the next moment, the figure was again gone, replaced by a flat shadow that draped itself over the chair.
The fourth figure was facing away from Jilo. From the back, she had the succinct impression of maleness, but when the visitor turned, his wide shoulders seemed to narrow and soften. His skin darkened, and his bald pate covered over with dark hair. “Yes, little sister,” his baritone voice rose with each syllable, ending in a high alto, “come.” Jilo found herself looking into her own face. The room seemed to sway around her as memories—no, these were more than memories, it was as if she were reliving each experience, fresh, present, and real—of her every sadness, failure, and defeat weighed down on her. It seemed as if all hope had drained from her soul in an instant.
“Stop it, Brother,” said the man in the top hat—she still thought of this creature as a man, though only due to his appearance, which was more normal than that of his peers—causing her imitator to turn. The visitor shifted in appearance as it looked away from her, gaining in both height and girth, its skin lessening in pigment, its hair retracting inward, leaving nothing but a snowy bald pate. “This one is not for you,” the man in the hat continued. “At least not until she has accomplished what we need of her.”
“What you need . . . ?” The words squeaked out from her, but she had no sooner begun to speak them than the world around her began to change. Before her very eyes, the walls of the kitchen unfolded, peeling down and away, exposing the world around them. Soon the kitchen had disappeared, and the entire house seemed to dissolve and retract, sinking beneath the earth. Without moving an inch, Jilo found herself beneath the wide sky, looking out on her backyard. Only the table and chairs with their weird occupants remained—any other evidence of the house that had sheltered her family for decades had been erased, and although her feet told her that a solid floor remained beneath them, her eyes swore to her that she and her visitors floated at least a yard above the earth.
Jilo noticed a movement, just at the edge of the tree line. A figure stepped out from the grove of live oaks, her movements as graceful as the steps of a dance. Covered head to toe in lace, this odd woman—Jilo thought of the creature as female because of its dress and sashaying movements—began drawing near, holding her gloved hands overhead and slightly behind her. Her fingers wiggled, like she meant to tickle the sky. The sun followed her as she crossed the dry, gray field, so as she came closer, morning passed to high noon, and noon passed to dusk, the sun scraping the sky red as the figure in lace teased it along behind her. This can’t be real. This can’t be the real world. Dreaming. I must be dreaming. The sight of twilight approaching on the horizon caused Jilo’s thoughts to turn to Robinson. In the real world, was the sun also setting? Would her boy be crying? Was he worried about his mama? For the first time, Jilo wondered if the everyday world was permanently lost to her. Had she somehow died and found her way, if not to hell itself, at least to some kind of purgatory? Were these creatures the same ones Pastor Jones had believed to be angels?
The veiled creature stopped mere feet from her and howled with laughter. “No, child, we’re not angels. I’ve never even seen one of those things.” She did a final twirl, the lace of her veil and of her skirt flitting up as she did. “What do you think?” she said, though now she seemed to be addressing the man in the top hat. Without waiting for him to answer, she extended a hand toward him, not in greeting, but as an impatient signal for him to hand her the bottle he held. He rose and offered it to her. Only then did Jilo realize the creature most resembling a normal man was the only one of the four remaining; the other three had disappeared from their chairs with no notice, as if they had been unwilling, or perhaps unable, to remain in the presence of the veiled one.
“You ever see one?” The woman whisked back the veil, revealing an even more absolute void than Jilo’s soul could have ever imagined. Not even a spark of light lived there. She swiped the bottle away, tilting it back to where Jilo reasoned her lips would be, were she not an abyss bound up in lace.
“No, can’t say that I have,” the man said, “though maybe they exist in the hidden places in between.”
For a moment, absolute silence fell all around them. Then the female lowered the bottle, hissing like an angry cat as she let her veil fall back over the emptiness. “Do not speak to me of the hidden places.” She hurled the bottle at the man with such force that it shattered against him. “My piss fills your hidden places.” The man stepped back, trembling, and the veiled one spun back toward Jilo. “These bastards. It pleases them to know there are things that remain hidden, even to me. But those things are few”—she stopped and turned again on her companion—“and oh, so very far between.” The man stood frozen in place, seeming to be too terrified to move, until the creature once again turned her attention from him to Jilo.
She drew closer, the shape of a head bobbing up and down beneath the lace. She circled Jilo, as if she were examining her, then came to a stop in front of her and leaned in, making a sound like she was sniffing. “And no,” she raised her head, stepping back as she did, “you don’t smell dead, though you would be if I hadn’t been keeping an eye on you.” Another burst of raucous laughter rose and fell away.
“I don’t understand,” Jilo said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“Oh, dearie,” the woman said, her veil sucking in and puffing out, as if a heavy breath were causing the movement, “I can tell you what they’ve called me, but I could never tell you who I am. Your grandmother May called me ‘the Beekeeper,’ as did her mother, Tuesday, before her. I reckon you might as well do the same. You humans are, after all, so dependent on labels.”
“You knew Nana?”
This Beekeeper took a few sashaying steps away, then turned back. “We were dear friends, these women and I. Long ago, I saw that I would find you through them, though I never guessed you wouldn’t share their blood. Not till the outsiders took your mama. Swept her up into the skies. Impregnated her with you. You,” she said, anger retu
rning to her voice, “were one of those tiny mysteries, emanating from those damned spaces in between.” She turned again toward her companion, her rage emanating from her as a visible wave in this otherworldly ether. “Long ago, I sensed your coming.” She turned back toward Jilo. “I saw your destination. But I didn’t understand your essence. I do understand you now. I can see your path, even if the fools around you do not.
“But as for why we are here, it was you who summoned us. Why else would you have made the offerings?” The woman gestured at the table with a wide wave, and once again, all four chairs were occupied.
A cry escaped Jilo’s lips at the sight of the four corpses bound to the table. The chair over which the shadowy figure had draped itself now supported an elderly black man. She recognized his face. She hadn’t known him by name, but she had often seen him playing checkers with his friends outside on West Broad Street. His figure had been secured with a strap of leather, a belt, she realized, as her eyes narrowed in on him. He looked peaceful, as if he were sleeping.
The chair where the man with the parchment-like skin had sat was now occupied by the remains of a painfully thin white woman with graying black hair. Her hands were bound together behind the back of the chair, but she had slid a bit forward and her head was tilted to the side. Her sallow complexion suggested a long-term illness. Jilo had seen patients at the hospital with that same complexion, which usually spoke of some kind of renal failure. A look of quiet acceptance, relief after a long period of suffering, showed on her features.
Jilo remained perfectly still, but the table and seats rotated, like some kind of lazy Susan, revealing a middle-aged white man where her double had been. The man’s white shirt was drenched from the collar down. His hand, seemingly frozen by rigor mortis, still clutched the straight razor Jilo surmised he’d used to slice open his own throat. This one sat rigid in his seat, seemingly of his own accord, no sign of a binding to secure him.
The man in the top hat, too, had now disappeared, but in his chair sat a man with a wide bullet hole blown through his chest. His head was thrown back. Jilo felt herself compelled to draw near to him. His eyes bulged open, wide with fear and disbelief. This man’s death had come as a terrible surprise to him, Jilo felt certain, at the hands of someone he’d trusted. As Jilo raised her eyes, her kitchen began to fade back in around her. Her attention was drawn to the blood and splatter covering the wall behind where this man sat. This killing, for there was no mistaking it for anything other than murder, had somehow happened here, in her own home. Right in this very room.
“Yes, the offering,” the Beekeeper’s voice broke through Jilo’s shock. “A tribute to each king, and a restless spirit for me. You summoned me, dearie, though for you, I would have come without all this formality.”
Jilo heard a pounding sound, distant at first, but closer and louder with each knock. She turned to look for the source of the noise, only to find herself standing in her darkened kitchen, the house once again solid around her. When she glanced back, the Beekeeper was gone, though the four bodies remained gathered together around her table. The hammering on the door continued, a thundering boom, as if the devil himself were trying to gain entry. She glanced around the room once more, trying to decide if it would be best to go forward and see to the noise at the front of the house or to slip out the back. It suddenly dawned on her that though she had watched the night descend in her vision, the light that was now filtering through the windows indicated it was still midmorning. She cast her eyes up at the clock on the wall. It showed that only an hour or so had passed since Guy’s departure. Her heart leaped in hope. The boys were safe. Out there with Tinker, probably praying the sermon would finish soon so they could get on with the church’s Easter potluck that followed the service. She took a breath, ready to sigh it out.
“Jilo Wills,” a man’s voice called her name, stopping her breath as his fist pounded against the kitchen window. “I see you in there. Don’t you try to hide.” He disappeared from the window, and within seconds the back door burst open. “You can’t hide from me,” he said. It was a buckra man with curly corn-silk blond hair and sharp blue eyes. She had never met him, but somehow she knew his face. “You’ve never been able to hide from me.” As she backed away from him, the reason she recognized him dawned on her. It was from her nana’s strange collection of newspaper clippings, culled from front pages, business sections, and society pages, though his name failed to come to her distraught and tangled mind. She couldn’t begin to comprehend why this man was here, what he could possibly want from her, but the entire day had followed a dream’s logic. None of this made any sense, but she somehow knew it was all real, all happening. She turned and ran to the drawer where she kept her knives, drawing out a long carving blade. Weapon in hand, she turned back to face the man, and in that same moment, his name came to her. Maguire. Sterling Maguire.
He raised his nose to the air, sniffing around. “It worked.” He cast a glance at the four dead bodies at the table. “She’s here. I can feel her. I can smell her.”
He stopped his advance, even backed up a few feet. He held up his hands in mock surrender and laughed, seeming to delight in her trembling. “No need for any of that,” he said. “I’m just here to make a delivery. Come on outside.” He turned, without any apparent concern about showing his back to a woman holding a knife, and walked out the door. Still clutching the handle of the knife, Jilo took a few cautious steps toward the doorway. The man turned back after he made his way down the steps, signaling with a beckoning wave that she should continue. “Come on, my girl, keep coming. Don’t you want to see what I have waiting for you?”
No. The answer to his question was a decisive no. She did not want to see what this man had in mind to spring on her. She’d seen enough horrors today, four of them right there with her, growing more rank by the moment. She froze.
Maguire’s face flushed red when she didn’t obey him. “I said move it, girl, or I will come and take that knife from you and use it to carve up that nappy-headed boy of yours.” He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I got him. Right out front. With his daddy and that little frill boy of yours. So you’d better come. Fast.”
The knife dropped from her hand, and she took quick, stomping strides past her ruined table, out the door, down the steps. Maguire was already disappearing around the side of her house, moving toward its front. Picking up her heavy feet, she hurried to catch up to the man.
“Toss him down,” she heard Maguire’s voice call, “then get the hell out of here.” She came around the side in time to see two men clambering into the back of a green-and-white pickup truck. They bent over and hoisted up another man. They flung him over the side, and the man rolled to the ground, coming to a rest on his back. Jilo dashed to his side, looking down in horror and disbelief. His clothes were ripped and bloody. His face beaten beyond recognition. Still she knew him. She would know him, if by nothing else, by his fine artist’s hands.
“Guy,” she screamed, and fell to her knees by his side.
TEN
Guy’s nose was crushed. His eyes purple and swollen shut. His mouth gaped open, his chest heaving and rattling as he struggled for breath. “I have to get him to the hospital,” Jilo cried out, though her rational mind had already examined him in minute detail, had already done the calculations. Guy, this part of her mind stated plainly, was in his death throes. It was too late for hospitals. His lungs were filling with fluid. His abdomen had swollen, and he was most likely bleeding internally.
“He don’t need no hospital, girl,” Maguire said as the truck that had brought Guy tore off, spraying sandy soil over Guy’s supine form. “What he needs is what your friend the Beekeeper has to share with him. You take her magic into you, girl. She’ll give you what you need to fix that boy up.”
“Magic?” she felt the word roll off her tongue, a bitter pill she could neither spit out nor bring herself to swallow. “Are you mad? Why have you done this?” Another thought hit her, causing her he
art to feel like it would explode from her chest. “Where is my son? You haven’t hurt him.” Her last words came out as a statement, a warning. No matter who this man was in the world, no matter what he owned or how much influence he held, she would take him apart, bit by bit, with her bare hands if he’d hurt her baby.
Maguire strode toward her, grinning down at her. He stuck out a foot and rested it against Guy’s side, using it to roll his battered body back and forth. “Not yet,” he said, then pulled back his leg and delivered a hard kick to Guy’s ribs. Jilo heard something snap. She leaped on top of Guy, using her own body to shield him from further harm. “But,” he continued, “if this fellow don’t mean enough to you for you to welcome the Beekeeper, we’ll start in on that little pansy friend of yours next. And if that don’t work, I’ll go fetch that knife of yours and start carving me up some of your little one’s tender dark meat.” Cupping his hand around his mouth, he looked up and called. “Bring ’em around, Thomas, so she can get a good look at them.”
Willy came around from the far side of the house, clutching Robinson for dear life. A young fellow, a near carbon copy of Maguire, followed behind them, training a revolver on Willy’s back.
“Jilo,” Willy cried. “Those men ran Mr. Poole’s car off the road. Mr. Poole, I think he’s dead. His head was bleeding, and he wouldn’t move. Not even when I shook him.”
The terror in the child’s eyes crushed her. Robinson began wailing, reaching out for her. She wanted to cry out, too. Howl. Tinker dead. Guy as good as. What chance did she and her boys have?
“Shut that thing up,” Maguire shouted, and the younger man reached forward and gave Willy a rough shove between the shoulder blades, causing him to lunge forward and almost stumble. “And while you’re at it, shut your own trap, too, boy.”