by JL Bryan
“I know,” Seth said. “I kind of got he was terrible.”
“He was more than that,” Seth’s dad said. “He was terrifying. When I was six years old, he insisted on taking me out to one of his farms, even though my father tried to stop him. We had a huge amount of land back then, I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of acres. But a lot of it was a good distance from town, a good distance from anybody.
“He took me out there in his big black Cadillac. He must have been more than eighty years old, but nobody would even think about saying he was too old to drive. Nobody forbid Grandfather anything he wanted. We were all scared of him. And I’m about to tell you why.
“He drove down one dirt road after another, far away from any town. And he drove out into a field, where there must have been thousands of rows of tobacco, and he told me, ‘Look, boy. That’s how you keep your margins high on a plantation.’”
Seth’s dad eased down onto granite bench and finished his drink.
“What was he showing you?” Seth asked.
“The workers. I saw them out there, slowly harvesting the tobacco leaves into baskets.” He shook his head. “It’s the most goddamned horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Were they slaves?” Seth asked.
His dad sighed. “No, Seth, we didn’t have slaves in 1966.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“They were…” He shook his head. “They were dead, Seth.”
Seth looked at him, expecting more.
“They were dead,” his dad repeated.
“Who was dead?”
“The workers in the fields. I mean they were corpses. Rotting. Missing skin. Some of them, you could see through to their skulls, bones, the daylight on the other side. Pieces of them were falling off while they picked that tobacco.”
“How much have you had to drink, Dad?”
“I’m not making this up.” He scowled at Seth. “He could animate dead bodies. Make them do simple, repetitive tasks. They were sluggish and they fell apart after a while, but they were free. And you can always find more dead people.”
“Okay,” Seth said. “It sounds like you’re seriously telling me Great-Grandpa was a…what? A zombie master? Like Evil Dead zombies?”
“My father thought he sold his soul to the Devil, to get rich,” Seth’s dad said. “Because that’s how he made his money first, farming all that land with free labor. Then he started investing in Charleston, and then New York…”
“The devil,” Seth said.
“Look.” His dad sighed again, looking down at the dirt. “This thing happened. It happened for decades, and they kept working right up until he died. Then they all fell over and stopped working. My father had to fill pits with lime to get rid of all the bodies.”
Seth just looked at his dad. He had no idea what to say, or even what to think.
“So that’s where the Barretts come from,” his dad said. “Black magic and pacts with Satan. So when I say your great-grandfather told us his ghost would watch over and rule this family from the other side…”
“Kind of sounds more believable now,” Seth said.
“I tried not to believe it,” his dad said. “But I just can’t forget how it looked, all those poor bastards out there working day and night until they fell to pieces. When the wind blew through them, they would make this sound…this awful groaning sound, like they were in agony, and just wanted to be dead again—”
“Okay! I get it.”
“And then there was your brother.” He nodded to the marker inscribed CARTER MAYFIELD BARRETT, 1986-2000. Seth’s brother had died when Seth was ten, and Carter was fourteen. “Your great-grandfather insisted that the firstborn son in every generation continue his name. But he’d been dead for more than fifteen years. And your other grandfather, Carter Mayfield, we needed his influence right about then to pull some strings in Washington, protect a major overseas investment of ours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Better you don’t know. Old Carter was adamant that our boy be named after him. So I ignored what your great-grandfather said. And Carter paid for it.”
“You don’t really think Great-Grandpa’s ghost killed Carter?”
“In his will, he threatened horrors against the living if he wasn’t obeyed. You can read it yourself.”
“That’s crazy,” Seth said. “But Carter…that could have been a regular accident. People die in car accidents every day.”
“We were being punished.”
“How can you believe that?”
“Seth, you’ve never seen a hundred and fifty corpses working a tobacco field. Death was nothing to him. He had powers over death.”
Seth thought about how Ashleigh had blasted him through the heart with a shotgun. He’d managed to heal his own body, but he couldn’t remember much about how. He could only remember a powerful determination to get back to Jenny.
“So do I,” Seth muttered.
“What?” His dad looked up at him sharply.
“Nothing.”
“So that’s why your grandfather wasn’t crazy when he turned the third floor into a maze to confuse your great-grandfather’s ghost. Your great-grandfather really was supernatural. And that is why we must maintain things as he wishes. Because he’s watching. And he’s ruthless.”
Seth looked at Jonathan Seth Barrett’s granite monolith. “Wow. Thanks a lot, Great-Grandpa.”
“Don’t mock him.”
“He doesn’t have a sense of humor?”
“No.”
Though it was a hot day, almost June, Seth felt very cold. He didn’t want to believe anything his dad had said. But he couldn’t deny there were supernatural things in the world. Seth was one of them. So was Jenny.
For a moment, he thought about telling his dad everything—about his own healing abilities, and Jenny’s deadly touch. But he didn’t know whether that would encourage his dad to approve of the relationship, or if his dad would solidly forbid him to ever see Jenny again.
So he kept his mouth shut.
“Can we go back now?” Seth asked.
“We can try.”
Chapter Thirty
Ashleigh made a dozen scrambled eggs and six pieces of French toast, which she dusted generously with powdered sugar, then drizzled with some raw honey. She made coffee and filled a silver pitcher with cream. She poured tall cups of orange juice.
She played Jason Aldean on the stereo, and she gradually turned up the volume with short blasts of the remote while she set the kitchen table. She opened the big kitchen windows to let in the sunlight and the warm spring air. Then she turned up her stereo a bit louder.
Soon, Tommy wandered down the stairs, in his boxer shorts.
“Want some breakfast?” Ashleigh asked.
“Hell yeah!” Tommy sat down at one of the place settings and slurped up a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Nice!”
“I know,” Ashleigh said. “There’s love in every bite.”
He smiled and forked a whole piece of French toast into his mouth, then slurped down a glass of orange juice.
“Help yourself,” Ashleigh said.
Esmeralda came down a few minutes later, but she’d gone to the trouble of getting dressed and applying a little makeup. She looked uneasy and a little scared when she first saw Ashleigh, but then she noticed the elaborate meal on the table and relaxed a little.
“Esmeralda!” Ashleigh squealed. She threw her arms around the girl and hugged her tight. She even kissed her on the cheek. Esmeralda melted like hot taffy in her arms.
“You look so happy,” Esmeralda said.
“I am!” Ashleigh released her and stepped back. “Everything is just going perfectly, isn’t it?”
“Hell yeah,” Tommy said. “Are you gonna eat that piece of French toast?”
“No, go ahead,” Ashleigh said.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” Esmeralda said. She sat at the table and poured cream into her coffee. “You took a
big risk going to Jenny’s house.”
“I really did,” Ashleigh said. “She could have killed me again. But you guys would have brought me back again, right?”
They both hurried to agree that they would.
“But anyway, I gathered some good intelligence, and I figured out how we’re going to destroy Jenny.”
“Why don’t we just shoot her?” Tommy asked. “Bury the body, done.”
“Duh, tons of reasons,” Ashleigh said. “First, Seth could bring her back.”
“Kill them both,” Tommy said. “Make it look like they ran off together.”
“That, Tommy, is actually not a bad idea,” Ashleigh said. “I actually respect you a lot more now that you came up with that.”
“Thanks!” Tommy said.
“Hold on,” Esmeralda said. “You two are kidding, right? We’re not actually going to kill these people.”
“The mass murderer girl, with the disease touch,” Tommy said. He raised his hands, which were pockmarked with little scars from his Jenny pox infection. “She has to die. She’s too dangerous to live. Especially if she might come after us.”
“Why would she come after us?” Esmeralda asked.
“Because she hates me,” Ashleigh said. “If she knows I’m back, she’ll come and kill me, and she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way. That’s exactly what happened last time.”
“That’s scary,” Esmeralda said.
“Very,” Ashleigh agreed.
“But this French toast, it’s amazing,” Esmeralda said.
“Thank you! So, Tommy, killing her is more complicated than it seems. Then her soul gets free, she gets incarnated again. Then she’s a newborn baby somewhere on the Earth, and I have no idea where.”
“So we do reincarnate,” Tommy said. “All of us. Right?”
“All of us,” Ashleigh said.
“I don’t believe in that,” Esmeralda said.
“Well, I wouldn’t either,” Ashleigh said. “Except I just recently died, and now I remember the past lives.”
“Do you remember me in any of them?” Tommy asked.
“Bunches!” Ashleigh said. “All three of us. We’ve been friends for thousands and thousands of years. We always help each other. But some of our kind are evil, like Jenny and Seth, and we end up fighting wars against them. That’s why it’s important we stop them now, while we’re all young, before they can get too powerful and kill a whole lot of people. Like millions of people.”
“What do you mean by ‘our kind’?” Esmeralda asked.
“We’re old,” Ashleigh said. “Older than any human soul. But we were cast out from where we originated, and we found our way to Earth, and we learned to incarnate as human beings.”
“Like fallen angels?” Esmeralda asked.
“I don’t know,” Ashleigh said. “It’s hard to even remember things clearly. That’s the bad thing about being human, we have to focus so hard to incarnate that we forget everything that came before. The good part of being human, of course, is we get to use our powers. Plus, all the other pleasures available in the flesh. But you two know all about that, don’t you?” Ashleigh winked at Esmeralda, who blushed and looked down at her plate.
“So.” Ashleigh slapped the table, as if calling a meeting to order. “It’s time we get on with the old game. What I want to do is have Jenny Mittens kept alive, but in deep captivity. For the rest of what will hopefully be a very long, very boring life. We need her out of the way before we can hope to do anything else of significance.”
“What do you want to do?” Tommy asked. “Keep her in the basement?”
“No,” Ashleigh said. “And I have to say, my respect-o-meter did just drop a notch. I will not ‘keep her in the basement’ so that she can kill me in my sleep. I want her locked away, underground, maximum security, fed through a slit in a door. That is my dream for Jenny’s future.”
“Sounds expensive,” Esmeralda said.
“I’m not going to pay for it,” Ashleigh said. “I’m going to arrange it.”
“How?” Tommy said.
“I need your special power for the first thing, Tommy. You’ll have to drive down to Charleston, though. You can just take your bike.”
“What am I doing there?” he asked.
“You can go down there tonight,” Ashleigh said. “Talk to somebody for me. Then grab a hotel room. I have a list of errands for you.”
“We’re going tonight?” he asked.
“No,” Ashleigh said. “You’re going tonight. Esmeralda and I are staying here.”
“She’s staying with you?” Tommy asked.
“It’s okay with me,” Esmeralda said. She gave Ashleigh a big smile. “I’m really starting to like it here.”
“I like having you!” Ashleigh said. She took Esmeralda’s hand and held onto it. “Anyway, I’ll keep on Jenny with the whole poor-Darcy-needs-a-friend act. And I need Esmeralda to help me with a few things.”
“You really have it all planned out,” Tommy said.
“Of course,” Ashleigh said. “That’s what I do. I’ve made you into powerful men before, Tommy. Kings. Emperors. Think of how much fun we’re going to have in this crazy modern world.”
Tommy grinned.
“I’m so glad we all found each other again!” Ashleigh said.
“Me, too,” Esmeralda sighed, beaming at Ashleigh and holding her hand.
Chapter Thirty-One
Seth was in the library again late Saturday night, trying very hard to focus on Beowulf for his English final. He was relieved when his cell phone rang, because he thought it would be Jenny. He needed a break.
It wasn’t Jenny, though. His Blackberry identified it as WOOLY. That was Chris Woolerton, one of Seth’s friends from Grayson Academy. They were friends on Facebook, but Seth hadn’t actually spoken to him in person in a couple of years. Wooly’s family lived in Charleston.
“Hey, Wooly,” Seth said.
“Seth! What’s up, man? What have you been doing?”
“Just hanging out.”
“Yeah? That’s great, man, that’s great! Hey, I saw on Facebook you’re coming to Charleston for school.”
“Yeah. Where are you going to college, Wooly?”
“Right here, man. We’re going to be freshmen together. Where you pledging?”
“Huh?”
“What fraternities?”
“Oh,” Seth said. “I don’t know if I’m doing all that.”
“Come on, you don’t want to miss out,” Wooly said. “We’re all Sig Alphs in my family. I can get you in, no problem. We got a phat, phat mansion, right off-campus so we can do what we want. The best parties. Puss, puss, pussy all over your face.”
“Okay, thanks. I’m still not sure—”
“When are you coming down for orientation?”
“On the website, it says I can go any weekend in June, July, early August—”
“Yeah, you can come any weekend,” Wooly said, “But you have to come two weeks from today. The Southeastern Funk Fest. All weekend, in the streets. Blink 182’s gonna be there, Incubus is gonna be there, Willie fucking Nelson is gonna play—everybody. I’m taking four tabs of ex and a thermos of vodka. We’re gonna get crunked like skunks, chipmunk.”
“Sounds pretty good,” Seth said. Wooly had always gotten under his skin a little, but most people seemed to love him.
“Fuckin’ A,” Wooly said. “And you can meet my Sig Alph boys. I’m basically already a brother ‘cause I’m so legacy. I’ve been going to their parties all year and damn. Just damn.”
“Okay. I’ve got finals this week, but I’ll call you—”
“Come on, man. Two weeks from today. And check it out—maybe I can set it up so you can crash at the Sig Alph house. Like I said, pussy, pussy, pussy.”
“My girlfriend’s probably coming with me,” Seth said. “Probably just get a hotel room.”
“Yeah, if you want to make it lame, make it lame, bring your girlfriend,” Wooly said. �
�Oh! Okay, sorry! Um, I mean, don’t do that, man. We need to hang out and catch up. Bunch of Grayson guys will be around, too. This is a very bros-before-hos situation.”
“I’ll see, man,” Seth said. “But we can definitely hang out when I’m in town.”
“What’s this I’ll see shit?” Wooly asked. “You’re coming. You are coming. I’m telling people you’re coming.”
“Okay, I’ll come that weekend.”
“Fuck yeah,” Wooly said. “And you gotta let that high school pussy go, man. Repeat after me: I am not fucking married.”
“Nah, we’re pretty serious—”
“I am not fucking married. I’m not hanging up until you say it, bro. I am not fucking married. I am not—”
“Okay!” Seth said. “I am not fucking married.”
“Fuckin’ A. I will see you in two weeks. If you don’t come, you’re a fucking dead man.”
Seth laughed. “All right, Wooly. I’ll be there.”
Wooly hung up the phone. “Okay? Was that okay?” he asked.
The man standing over him gave an evil grin. “That was fine.”
Wooly shuddered. The man’s voice sounded like a razor cutting through ice.
The man had come in through Wooly’s French doors, which led out to his balcony overlooking Charleston Harbor. Wooly had been sitting at his desk rolling a fattie of kush for a concert that night. Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly” was thumping his subwoofers, and the room was lit only by his black-light posters.
The man had stepped in from the darkness, dressed all in black, with that crazy grin. His freakish gray eyes locked onto Wooly instantly. Wooly had started to stand up and yell for help—maybe his brother would hear him downstairs—but the man grabbed his forearm and squeezed it tight, making Wooly spill the bag of bright green, eight-hundred-dollar-an-ounce kush all over the carpet.