by Alex Bledsoe
“Who wants to know?” a woman’s voice said. The crowd parted to allow Flint Rucker, wearing sunglasses to protect her hypersensitive eyes, to move to the front. They closed in behind her.
“I do,” Mandalay said.
“Oh, the little princess, shining bright,” Flint spoke-sang. “You grace us with your disdain tonight? And who is that with you?”
“I’ll speak to Junior,” Mandalay said.
Flint lowered her sunglasses and looked Janet over. Janet felt suddenly sticky, as if something in the girl’s vision had coated her with slime.
“Such a pretty girl,” Flint said. “I wonder if she likes the dark?”
“She’s with me,” Mandalay said. “Back off, Flint.” She made a forceful gesture, and Flint stepped back with a hiss like an angry cat.
“I’m here,” Junior said, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. “What the hell is this?”
“You have visitors,” Flint said.
“What do you want, Mandalay?” he demanded.
Mandalay could have silenced him with a gesture, but instead she smiled and said, “We need to play a song for you folks.”
Junior laughed, and a ripple of amusement went through the crowd. “Is that a fact?” he said.
“It’s a fact.”
“Well, maybe we don’t want to hear it.”
“Do you want me to throw them out?” Flint asked. The request seemed ludicrous from such a diaphanous personality, but no one took it lightly.
“Wait here,” Mandalay said to Janet. She strode down the steps and stopped before Junior and Flint. The crowd surged closer, threatening to encircle her. She looked even smaller and slighter with all the men and women towering over her, crowding in to intimidate and frighten her.
“Flint, back off,” she said loudly, and the pale girl vanished into the crowd. Mandalay made a series of hand gestures, and everyone backed away, leaving her and Junior alone.
Janet couldn’t hear what Mandalay said to him, but eventually Junior made a few hand gestures back, and Mandalay nodded.
When she returned, Janet asked very quietly, “Are we leaving?”
“No. I just needed to remind Junior yet again about seniority.”
“That Flint girl gives me the creeps.”
“That means you’re a good judge of people. You ready?”
“No. How do I make up a song on the spot and have it sound like anything?”
“Trust in the night winds.”
Janet was left dumbstruck on the steps and had to rush to catch up as Mandalay made her way toward the open space that passed for a stage. The crowd followed them, some still laughing.
* * *
Duncan didn’t remember leaving the road, but when he stopped, exhausted and wheezing for breath, he found himself in the woods. He looked around, but there was no trace of the giant pig. He also saw no sign of the trail he’d made, or the path he should take to get out. The darkness was thorough: no lights showed anywhere, except the stars and the moon above.
His heart thundered like a Neil Peart solo as he gasped in the cool, damp air. Sweat trickled into his eyes. He tried to hear past the roar in his ears, for any sound that the monster might make as it approached. But except for a faint owl, he heard nothing.
He turned on his phone long enough to see that he still got no signal. What the hell? he thought. Outsiders got notoriously bad reception, blamed on the scarcity of cell towers and the intervening mountains, but a Tufa always got a signal. His battery was down to 10 percent, so he quickly turned it back off.
He cried out, “Hey! Hey! Anyone here? Please, I’ve been in a car wreck, I need help! Anybody?”
In the distance, he heard either a dog or coyote howl, but he wasn’t sure if it was in response to his cry.
He had to find a way out. Renny and his unborn baby were trapped in that truck, helpless and injured. It was spring, but it got cold at night, and she wasn’t dressed for it. For that matter, neither was he.
“Help!” he tried again. “Help!”
This time the coyote howl was right behind him. He screamed and fell on wet leaves as he spun around.
In the darkness he saw, not a coyote, but a young woman. She sat with her back against a tree, her knees drawn up to her chin. She was barefoot, and wore what seemed to be skimpy garments made of fur, like a Hollywood version of a cave woman. Her hair was twisted into dreadlocks, and her eyes shone with what little light reached them.
“Hello, Duncan Gowen,” she said. Her voice was low, like a growl, but definitely not sexy.
“Please,” Duncan said, “my girlfr—I mean, my wife’s stuck in our truck. We ran off the road.”
“Oh, Duncan Gowen, what of your first girlfriend?”
“Wh-what?”
“The lovely lass Kera.”
“I didn’t kill her!” he cried.
“No, ye didn’t,” she said, and stood. She was petite, lithe, and yet somehow she terrified him. She moved with a slinky grace, her body swaying in a way that would have been arousing in any other circumstance. “But ye did kill thy friend over her.”
“No, I didn’t! That giant hog did it!”
“Oh, Duncan Gowen, we see all that happens in the forest. Ye could’ve saved him, and didn’t. His soul is restless because of thee.”
Duncan took a deep breath and forced down his panic. “Look, I don’t care about that, okay? It’s not important right now. My wife is in trouble. Can you help me?”
She threw back her head and laughed, a yipping sound more like the calling of a wild dog than a sound of human amusement. “Do ye know whom I serve?”
And suddenly he did, but he couldn’t believe it. As much as the Tufa populated the stories of the people who lived in the surrounding area, so these beings—the King of the Forest, an immense stag (or stag-headed man), and his coyote attendants (or beautiful girls who shifted with ease into canine form)—frightened the Tufa children at bedtime. In those tales, the unfortunate souls who saw them were forever changed, and the ones who interacted with them were often never heard from again.
Yet here was one of them, apparently real, or else someone yanking his chain at the worst possible moment. But why would some girl be dressed like this, in the middle of nowhere, just as some sort of role-playing joke?
Impulsively he grabbed her arm. “Look, I don’t have time for this, take me to your family’s—”
The girl snarled, and he felt teeth sink into his hand. He released her with a cry, and when he looked back, a coyote stood there, hackles raised and teeth bared in a snarl.
Duncan felt blood run down his hand and drip on the ground. “Please,” he begged, “help me. My wife’s pregnant.”
The coyote threw back its head and howled. Another answered from deep in the woods. Then the animal turned and trotted off into the darkness.
Duncan fell to his knees. “Please, I didn’t kill anybody,” he called out, almost sobbing. Then he screamed, “I didn’t kill anybody!”
* * *
Janet pulled a stool from the row along the wall and settled onto it. She put on her banjo picks, one for each fingertip on her right hand. The banjo didn’t have a strap, and it was hard to find the proper balance, since she’d played it only once before.
Mandalay lowered the microphone to her height and said, “Hello.” Her voice echoed around the cave.
“Y’all know what the difference is between a banjo picker and a nose picker?” someone asked. “You can’t wipe a banjo on your pants!”
“Show us your jailbait tits!” someone else yelled.
“Hey, now,” Mandalay said coolly. “Don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean. Because remember, no matter where you go … there you are.”
There was a general muttering of “What the fuck?” Mandalay’s lips turned up in a tiny, superior smile.
“Mandalay!” Janet whispered. “What the hell are we playing?”
Mandalay turned away from the microphone and said softly, “Close
your eyes.”
She looked around at the crowd. “I’m not sure that’s safe.”
“It’s safe. Trust me. Close your eyes … and listen.”
Janet gave the crowd one last look, then closed her eyes. Almost at once, a sense of calm came over her. The darkness of her eyelids was illuminated with soft, faint bursts of color. She still heard the mocking laughter, but there was something else, a sound or presence between the crowd and her, a kind of psychic buffer. She no longer felt afraid.
And then she heard the voice.
Start with C sharp minor, it said.
It was neither male nor female, loud nor soft, urgent nor lackadaisical. If she had to characterize it, the only word would’ve been “omnipresent.” It seemed to come from everywhere, contain every thought and feeling, and act as both a reassuring pat and a commanding shove.
She settled her fingers on the neck, found the chord, and began to play, midtempo and with an easy rhythm.
Open your eyes.
When she did, Mandalay watched her with approval. She felt her hands move almost on their own, creating a melody that had that aching inevitability of the best songs. The chord progression came to her an instant before she needed it, and once she’d gone all the way through the verse and chorus, she knew it by heart.
Mandalay stepped up to the microphone and began to sing. Her voice was pure, and high, and weighted with a sorrow no child her apparent age should be able to convey. It stunned everyone into rapt silence.
In every man there dwells a dark and unforgiven place
Where no amount of light could show redemption, or replace
The desperate weight of sorrow with the peace before it grew
And no chance of absolution clears a path that proves him true.…
Janet looked out at the now-silent crowd, studying their faces. She was so thoroughly in the pocket that her fingers moved unconsciously, keeping up effortlessly with Mandalay’s singing as she went into the first chorus.
My love she found her ending under these same callous stars
That follow us unblinking knowing everything we are
A liar with two lovers or a traitor steeped in pain
They’ll stand sentinel against the black ’til nothing else remains.…
Now that she had the melody, Janet began to improvise, adding little fills and extra flourishes. She kept glancing at the tuning pegs, knowing what they were, wondering if, wherever they now existed, the people who provided them could hear this song.
With a jealous heart of malice beating reckless in my chest
I led my prey uncaring to the trap my anger set
Though my reason held me steady when it came my time to act
I stood still against the raging wild and cannot take it back.…
Janet tore into the bridge, bringing the song’s anger and outrage to the forefront. If she’d looked up, she would’ve seen the crowd riveted, many with their mouths open. But one man’s face was not smiling, not gaping; it was red with fury.
Then Mandalay began the final verse.
Oh my darling I have loved you out of guilt and out of shame
For the sake of what I did not do, I promised you my name
But there’s no forgiveness coming for the man who owes this debt
Just the watching winds who saw it all and won’t let him forget.
Janet finished with a flourish. The crowd was still, but the anger she’d sensed earlier remained, except that it was no longer directed at the two girls.
A few people clapped, mainly because they didn’t know what else to do. It quickly faded.
“Thank you,” Mandalay said calmly, then stepped over to Janet and whispered, “Let’s get the hell out of here now.”
“Wait!” someone yelled from the crowd as Janet stood. The red-faced man she had noted, his longish hair falling in his middle-aged face, pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “Is that true?”
Janet recognized him as Adam and Renny’s father, Porter Procure. He was drunk and bleary-eyed, but his outrage was hot enough to sober even the dead.
Mandalay said, “It’s a true song.”
“Don’t make jokes about this, you fucking cock-teasing bitch!” he bellowed. He nearly fell as he lurched toward her, but two friends held him up, and back. “Did Duncan Gowen kill my son?”
“I’m not joking, Porter. The song is true.”
People murmured as they realized what that meant.
“Tell me where he is,” the drunken man said. “Tell me!”
Janet clutched the banjo tightly, worried that she’d have to use it as a weapon. “That ain’t up to me,” Mandalay said.
All eyes turned to Junior Damo, who looked like an ant with a thousand magnifying glasses pointed right at him. Even Flint stepped away.
“Let’s go,” Mandalay whispered, grabbed Janet’s arm, and pushed her toward the exit.
When they were outside, Mandalay took a deep breath of the cool night air and said, “Man, do I need a shower.”
Janet kept looking back and forth from the cave entrance to Mandalay. “What just happened in there?”
“We acted as the agents of the night winds,” Mandalay said.
Janet stared at her. “Then … that voice I heard, it was…”
Mandalay nodded.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she said.
Mandalay took her free hand. “I don’t blame you, but let’s get as far away from here as we can before you hurl.”
30
Duncan was exhausted. He’d pushed through the woods, watching all around for both the giant hog and the strange coyote-woman, but had seen neither. He’d also seen no sign of civilization. He was sweaty from the exertion, chilled from the night air, and mocked by the winds that tousled the treetops above him.
He knew all the stories of slow time, tales of people who spent hours or days lost in the woods, only to emerge and discover years had passed. But the Tufa had always been immune to that; some, in fact, could slip in and out of it at will. Was he being punished that way, like that old rockabilly singer who appeared out of nowhere, not a bit older than the day he’d supposedly died sixty years ago?
Each time he stopped and checked his phone, it was no different. He got no signal, and the percentage of power went down: 10, 8, 5, now 3 percent. He quickly turned it off, wondering how many more tries he’d get before it died for good.
And as the phrase “died for good” went through his mind, he thought about Renny, and their unborn child in the truck. And he pushed on.
* * *
Janet drove faster than she should have, and she knew it. But it felt like the cave, with its ghastly smells and sights and atmosphere, refused to recede into the distance. She repeatedly glanced into the rearview mirror to assure herself that it wasn’t still right behind them, the skeletons glowing red in their taillight.
Mandalay rode in the passenger seat, one foot again propped up on the dashboard. They hadn’t even turned on the radio. At last the girl said, “Turn just ahead.”
Janet slowed down and turned off the highway onto another rugged road. They bounced along until Mandalay said, “Stop here.”
She did. Ahead the road continued into the darkness beyond the headlights. To one side was a bare field, recently turned prior to planting. On the passenger side, a wire fence blocked off the forest.
Mandalay got out. She reached into the backseat and grabbed the banjo as Janet turned off the car. “Follow me,” Mandalay said, and didn’t give Janet time to respond.
“Are we going to burn the banjo?” Janet asked as they climbed over the fence.
“Don’t talk,” Mandalay snapped without looking back. Janet obeyed, because something in the girl’s voice struck her like a slap.
They hiked through the dark woods. Mandalay never stepped wrong, and it was all Janet could do to keep up. She wanted to ask all the basic journalist questions: where, what, why, who, and how? But she knew better.
&nbs
p; Then Mandalay stopped, and Janet almost knocked her down. The younger girl held up her hand for silence.
Janet looked around. They were in the middle of the forest at night, with no references in any direction.
Then they heard a sharp yipping cry. A coyote.
“This way,” Mandalay said, and started off again. Janet rushed to keep her in sight, and only tangentially realized they were heading toward the coyote.
Unbidden, the memory of a folksinger killed by coyotes in Canada came to her. It had happened several years earlier, but now she wished she’d paid a lot more attention to the details. Hell, she’d never even seen a live coyote, only dead ones on the side of the road.
It yipped again, closer and from behind them. The one ahead answered. There were two.
“Mandalay—”
“Hush!” Mandalay said urgently.
They emerged into a small circular clearing. The trees around it were all deciduous, and the area reeked of their freshly surging sap. Janet leaned against one to catch her breath, and her hand came away sticky.
The coyote ahead yipped, and it sounded like it was just beyond the clearing. Behind them, the other also sounded close. Janet stood beside Mandalay, ready to flee. In the darkness, the moonlight cast harsh shadows and turned the grassy ground silver.
Something stepped in the forest. It was no coyote: it was far too large. Janet imagined a bear, recently awakened from its hibernation and hungry for anything, even teenage girls.
Then she thought of Piggly-Wiggly, the giant hog. She began to tremble, wishing she knew where they were so she’d know which way to run.
But neither a bear nor a hog strode out of the darkness. Instead it was a tall man, naked except for a small animal-skin girdle and a kind of cap decorated with a rack of immense stag horns. The horns made him nearly eight feet tall, and his chest was broad, muscular, and hairy. Janet had, in fact, never seen anyone so overwhelmingly masculine.
From the other side of the clearing, a young woman emerged. She also wore a skimpy fur outfit, was barefoot, and her hair was twisted into dreadlocks. She walked over to the man and, without exchanging a word or a glance, crouched at his feet. These two newcomers watched Janet and Mandalay with knowing, faintly amused expressions.