With every breath she took she inhaled fire. Both of her feet were swollen, cut, and bleeding; pain exploded from her feet to her jaw with each step. Her hands, arms, and face were scratched and cut. The pain in her side was so intense, she might as well have been pierced by the Spear of Destiny. The trees blocked out the light of the moon; it was so dark she couldn’t see the tips of her fingers on her outstretched arms. She’d just returned home from the war and was in excellent physical condition; otherwise, she would have been caught two miles ago. She kept running. She ran faster.
#
After only four days of what was supposed to be a two-week visit, Maleka Davidson was leaving Alabama. Maleka hated this place. She was disgusted by the opulence of poverty. The stifling heat reduced her to the sin of sloth. Her head hurt from trying to decipher these coded Southern sayings. Just last night, she figured out that the word Bard meant borrowed, Southern translation for the state of Georgia was Jawjuh, and that she was from the Nawth as in, and I quote,
“Ya’ people from up Nawth sure do talk funny.”
It was almost as if she needed an English-to-Southern-United- States dictionary.
Maleka was tired of eating fried food and drinking either grape or red Kool- Aid made with three cups of sugar, despite the directions clearly stating that only one cup was needed. She was especially terrified of all the large and strange bugs that could star in their own horror movies. Maleka took a break from packing; even the slightest of physical activities made her sweat profusely. She lay on the bed and smiled about the conversation she had had with her uncle this morning at breakfast, revolving around the apparently sacred origins of grits.
“Maleka, y’all eat grits up Nawth?” Bryannah asked.
“Of course we do,” Maleka explained to her 12-year-old cousin. “There are quite a few farms within driving distance of Seattle that grow corn, but that …” Bryannah looked puzzled and Uncle Emmit angrily interjected before Maleka could continue.
“Ain’t nothing as good as grits can be made from corn!
Dontcha read yo’ bible?” “My bible?”
“Exodus 16:15. What poured down upon hims chirren when they was roamin’ roun’ in dem woods was grits. It says so right in da Bible, ‘It’s the food the LORD has given you to eat.’
“So the manna that God rained on the Israelites on Mount Sinai was really grits?” Maleka asked slowly.
“Ain’t is what I said?”
Why not? Maleka had spent the last year fighting in the streets of a foreign country because someone had misinterpreted the holy writings of an ancient text, so why should it be any different right here at home?
Using her toast as a spoon, Maleka took another bite of the buttery, salted grits and smiled. It was no wonder her uncle had mistaken them for ambrosia. Uncle Emmit went on to explain that after the miracle on Mount Sinai, there was no mention of grits for another 1,000 years.
Experts, he explained, found evidence that grits were only used during secret religious ceremonies – and were kept away from the public due to their rarity.
The next mention of grits, he continued, “Was found in all dem ashes over there in Pompell in a famous woman’s diary.”
“Do you mean the ruins of Pompeii? What famous woman?” Maleka inquired.
“Herculaneum Jemimaneus.” “Who?”
“Girl, you just as slow as molasses running downhill in January.
Aunt Jemima.” Laughter erupted from the breakfast table.
And if it wasn’t Uncle Emmit’s wild stories that re-invented history, it was her auntie Tammy’s constant complaint of how nothing made sense.
“Look at this damn blue bird sitting his ass upon that Goddamned tree branch! Look at him; that’s a damn shame. It just don’t make no damn sense!” No one offered that birds were supposed to be in trees; everyone just chuckled and shook their heads, and Maleka did the same.
Maleka was going to miss them but she just couldn’t stay in the South. She was mortified that her extended family members, and their neighbors and friends seemed to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of blacks in the South. In her family’s defense, the whites down here didn’t seem much better. With their UFOs, swamp monsters, unfounded fear of the government, pickup trucks, and Confederate battle flags, Maleka couldn’t help but hear that banjo song from the movie Deliverance every time she listened to them talk.
The woman who lived across the street from her grandmother’s house always dragged a broom behind her wherever she left the house, even if it was only to check the mail. When Maleka asked her great-grand-aunt why she did that, she was told, “Cuz she dohn wants deze fixuhs tuh git her foot track.” Maleka knew what fixuhs were before she had a chance to unpack. Fixuhs were evil spirits, and apparently, they were everywhere. The first night Maleka stayed in her grandmother’s house, she noticed a broom upside down by her bedroom door. When she took the broom into the kitchen to put it away, pandemonium broke out.
Her cousin Maybell explained that the broom was placed outside her door to protect her from the hags, and this protection was necessary because she had seen a hag with her own two eyes. Maleka thought if she drank as much as her cousin did, she would probably see things too. Not only were there hags but also there were signs, omens, dreams, mojo rings, witches, wearing a dime around your ankle, charms, talismans, myths and swamp monsters. Maleka’s sleep was unrestful, and during the day, she was jumpy and on edge.
“You all packed and ready to go?”
Maleka jumped nearly five feet off the bed at the sound of Leticia’s voice, and her cousin laughed until tears rained down her beautiful ebony face.
“Girl,” Leticia said as soon as she caught her breath. “You is just as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full o’ rocking chairs.”
“I must have dozed off; I didn’t hear you come in,” Maleka said through her smile. “Yeah, I’m almost done.”
Leticia sat on the bed next to Maleka and pushed herself back until she was resting against the wall. Maleka did the same.
“You really can’t stay no longer?”
“Ticia, it’s so hot down here, I can barely think. Hey, why don’t you come up to Seattle? Once I get home and settled, I can buy you a plane ticket. You can stay as long as you like. I think you’ll like it. It’s really pretty, there’s lots of water, and its cool.”
“Girl, I ain’t never been on no airplane before.”
Maleka could hear the fear in her cousin’s voice. The two were the same age, 28, but her cousin had never traveled outside of her county.
“So? There’s a first time for everything. You can catch the Greyhound … I know! What about Amtrak? That’ll be cool … to ride the train across the country; I can even get you your own private cabin!”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, just think about it. OK?” “I will.”
Both girls looked toward the door as their grandmother walked through it. Fat Mike was behind her, carrying a large Styrofoam cooler that looked heavy, even for him. Her grandmother had packed a feast that would have fed an army for a month.
The cooler was filled with fried-pork-chop sandwiches with mayo and hot sauce, buttermilk fried chicken, scuppernongs, Maypops, onion-and-tomato sandwiches, potato salad and macaroni salad, cracklings and half a dozen banana moon pies.
“Grandma, this is too much food. I’ll be home in just a few days.”
Maleka really wasn’t protesting, because her grandmother had packed all of her favorite food, even if it was more than she could eat in just a few days.
Fat Mike went to load her car, and her grandmother sat on the edge of the rickety bed and touched Maleka’s face before she started talking.
“Now don’t you go wandering too far off de road, don’t let darkness catch ya’ and stay out dem woods at all cost. If you hear a chain rattlin’ on de tree, you best be movin’ along, cuz it might be a plat-eye.”
Great, Maleka thought. Just what I need, another Southern monster. She had
no idea what a plat-eye was, and she wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to know. All she wanted was to be back in the Great Pacific Northwest where all she had to worry about was good old-fashion ghosts, Bigfoot, and the occasional serial killer.
Her grandmother handed Maleka a small burlap sack tied closed with a piece of twine. “Keep this witchya at all times, no matter what happens.”
Maleka took the little bag with trembling hands. She didn’t want to take this with her; she didn’t even want to touch it. This was what she wanted to get away from in the first place. Maleka dropped the amulet of protection into her handbag and gave her grandmother a big hug and kissed her goodbye.
#
On a winding road that seemed to stretch on forever, Maleka saw a filling station that hadn’t been updated in the last 100 years.
She even heard the cheerful “ding-ding” as she pulled up to the pump. The breeze in the wake of a passing semi felt good against her sticky skin. She was grateful for the cooler temperatures chasing the submerging rays of the sunset.
Maleka bought two bags of ice, a six-pack of Coke, oil, and a road map. She had GPS on her cell phone, but no signal in almost three hours. She also bought 45 dollars’ worth of gas and some candy. The old man smiled at her as she dumped the stuff in front of him to ring up. Maleka returned his smile while looking away from his blue running eyes, wrinkled skin and broken teeth. As Maleka was rummaging through her purse for cash, because Visa wasn’t really everywhere that she wanted to be, the charm her grandmother gave her tumbled out on to the vintage countertop.
Maleka had made it halfway back to her car before the old attendant came chasing out behind her.
“Hey, girl, wait a minute, you done left yo charm.”
Maleka turned to the sound of his voice and almost ran from the man who was holding the small bag her grandmother had given her. When he extended it for her to take, she flinched away from it.
“Oh. Thank you, sir, but I don’t think I need it.”
The man looked at Maleka with a flash of anger and it was clear that he was personally offended by her fear of it.
“Your peoples gave this to you for good reason. You need it for protection. I reckon you a long way from home, so I suggest that you take this with you.”
Maleka took a step away from the man and shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with stuff you don’t understand,” she said.
“Girl, you don’t have to believe but you can’t afford not to listen.” The man warned as he walked up to her and dropped the charm into one of her bags.
Maleka slowly turned around and walked away from him,
so shaken up she almost forgot to pump her gas. She drained her cooler, crammed in the six cans of Coke, and replaced the melted ice. She added oil to her car, opened the map, charted her course, and cursed the non-existent signal on her phone. As Maleka was placing the trash into the plastic bags, her attention was once again drawn to the charm resting at the bottom. She tossed all the trash on top of it, balled up the bags, and threw them away. As she sped away, she noticed the old man watching her leave from the window.
Maleka had been driving in the dark for almost two hours.
When she learned to drive, the freeway scared her the most, but her stepfather took her on her first night drive and she was calm and confident.
When they drove at night, there was really no need for his instructions, so he just let her drive. The night lessons were Maleka’s favorite time with her stepfather. He didn’t warn her about the dangers of boys, drugs and alcohol, he did not bitch at her for not doing her chores or getting just a C on her math test, or quiz her about military terminology. It was just she and Dad spending a few hours at night driving under a blanket of stars. Maleka always enjoyed driving at night; she appreciated the solitude and welcomed the memories.
She could have shot herself for tilting her head all the way back to drink the last of the Coke. She looked back at the road in time to see a deer bolt out in front of her car and freeze a few feet ahead of her. Despite everything she had been taught, Maleka slammed on the brakes and yanked her wheel heavily to the right. Her car slid off the pavement and lost traction in the gravel.
She tried to right herself but overcorrected, sending the vehicle over the yellow line. As she fought the car to avoid oncoming traffic on the two-lane stretch of road, the car returned to the correct lane before leaving the road, going into a ditch, and slamming into a tree.
“Goddamn it!”
Maleka put the car in park but left the engine running, afraid that if she turned it off, she wouldn’t be able to restart it. The front of the car was damaged, but not badly enough to deploy the airbags. She rubbed her head, unhooked her seat belt, and snatched her cell phone off the floor in front of the seat next to her.
No service.
“Fuck!” Maleka threw the phone back on the floor with such force that it bounced up and landed on the passenger seat. She pounded on the steering wheel and looked into the rearview mirror.
The deer was still standing in the middle of the road. It turned its head to look behind them before returning its gaze to the car. The deer raised its head to the sky, and Maleka watched the antlers of the large animal retract back into its head.
That’s not what you saw; you hit your head pretty hard, and your vision is blurry. That isn’t what you just saw.
Maleka watched the deer stand on its hind legs and take the form of a man.
He started to walk slowly toward the car.
Don’t let darkness catch ya and stay out dem woods at all cost.
Maleka moved the rear view mirror so that she could watch the man approaching as she reached beneath the seat for her gun. Without taking her eyes off of him in the rearview mirror, Maleka put her car in reverse and then back in drive and back again until she gently rocked her car out of the ditch. Only when she got the car back on the road did she take her eyes off the man.
She pulled away slowly, but as she picked up speed, the front bumper, which was being dragged beneath the car, punctured a tire. The car began to wobble before it took a nose dive to the right, the tire so damaged that she was driving on the rim. She drove another 200 feet before the car died completely.
She was on a slight decline, so she let the car coast down a bit, then steered the car off to the side of the road when she felt it losing momentum.
“FUCK!”
A quick glance in both the side and rearview mirrors did not reveal the man’s whereabouts, but she knew he was still coming.
Maleka took a deep breath and let her training take over. Her mother taught her how to shoot a Smith & Wesson model 29.44 Magnum, and her Uncle Sam had given her a badge marked “expert.”
The Wonder Nine Maleka held in her hands was Smith & Wesson’s M&P, with a 17-round capacity, and a velocity 100 feet per second above what was advertised. Maleka had no doubt of the weapon’s capability, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she needed something more.
Keep this witchya at all times no matter what happens.
“Fuck.”
She pulled the lever on her seat until the headrest was lying on the back seat, turned around, and pressed her back into the steering wheel, and waited for the man, deer, or whatever the hell it was that caused this accident.
Maleka reached over, opened the glove box, retrieving the four extra high-capacity magazines. She grabbed the phone off the passenger seat and shoved the clips and phone into the back pockets of her blue jeans. It wasn’t long after that she saw the top of the man’s head crest the hill.
“Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from the violent …” Maleka’s prayer was interrupted by movement on the edges of her peripheral vision. She was hesitant to take her eyes off of the approaching man, but whatever was on the other side of the road was closer to her than he was.
Blurs of black and gray shapes became sharp lines, defined images … more deer, methodically taking the shape of men.
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Don’t panic.
“Deliver me from those who work evil; from the bloodthirsty, save me.”
As if adding an exclamation point to her prayer, she pulled the trigger, killing a beast whose metamorphosis was nearly complete.
The rear window imploded. In the rain of broken glass and shadows Maleka fired six more rounds in rapid succession, crawled to the passenger side of her car, and ran into the deep, tangled abyss of the Alabama wilderness.
Don’t let darkness catch ya’, and stay out dem woods at all cost.
#
The tree-lined paved road was lit by stars, but Maleka was plunged into absolute darkness once she entered the forest. Afternearly tripping and breaking her ankle, Maleka kicked off her flip-flops and immediately gained speed. It was a double- edged sword, as her tender spa-pampered feet quickly yielded to the unforgiving rough terrain of sharp rocks, jagged twigs, and tangled, knotted tree roots that carpeted the floor of the wilderness.
As she ran, she unbuckled her belt and threaded her gun through it so that she wouldn’t lose it. She refastened the belt loose; the gun beat against her thigh as she ran, but she wanted to be able to maneuver her weapon freely when she needed to.
Instinctively, she stopped running. Maleka slowly, blindly, extended her hand out in front of her, and before her arm was fully outstretched, her fingertips brushed against the rough bark of a large tree. Maleka stepped closer, put her cheek against the tree, and then extended her arms outward as if to give the tree a hug.
With her arms fully extended, the tips of her stretched and exploring fingers still felt bark on both sides.
Maleka kept her right hand on the tree and used her left hand as a feeler to detect any other large objects in front of her, until the large timber that blocked her path was behind her.
Her fear heightened her sense of awareness, and her deprivation of sight sharpened her ability to hear, Maleka found it easier to just close her eyes rather than peer into the darkness. She controlled her breathing and concentrated on the muted sounds of the forest.
The terrain underfoot became soft. Instead of rocks, pinecones, and fallen branches, Maleka felt leaves, moss, and mud. She stood still, cocked her head, and listened. The absence of sound alarmed her, but she continued to walk, slowly at first, then faster until she was once again running at full tilt.
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