by Ninie Hammon
But when she opened her eyes again, she was still there in lumpy darkness. Only now she had figured out where. She was in a closet. Whose closet? Well, a thing like that was hard to say just judging from the generalized stink of a person’s sneakers.
A shaft of brilliant light suddenly split the darkness. Somebody had flung open the closet door, and Becca squinted, couldn’t see anything in the glare. But she could hear fine.
“Right there,” said an indignant woman’s voice. “That filthy vagrant…homeless person…whatever it’s politically correct to call her kind…it is right there, curled up in a ball in my closet!”
She heard men’s voices, the scuffle of feet, and then large hands took hold of her arm and dragged her out into the light.
The closet hadn’t been in the woman’s bedroom. That was a good thing. Becca’d likely be in more trouble if she’d broken into the woman’s house. This was some kind of storage shed, which meant she’d probably only had to push up an unlocked window—or break out the glass!—to slip in from outside. She didn’t bother to try to remember what it was she’d done. She’d long since given up doing that. She merely accepted that she’d gone to sleep somewhere and had awakened somewhere else. Badda boom, badda bing. She had no idea where she might have been or what she might have done in between going to sleep and waking up.
“…you doing here?”
A man standing behind the one who’d dragged her out of the closet was speaking to her. She turned toward him and her heart sank. A cop.
“I don’t care what she’s doing here,” the indignant woman said. “I just want her gone—right now.”
“Ma’am, you’ll have to come along with me,” the police officer told Becca, and led her by the arm out of the building. Once outside, Becca saw that it was a detached garage and that a window on one side stood open.
“Are you arresting me?” she asked.
“You’ll know I’m arresting you when I tell you I’m arresting you,” he said.
“How can it be called breaking and entering when I didn’t break anything?” she said as he propelled her toward a cruiser parked at the curb.
“There’s the entering part.”
“That window was open,” she lied. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe it had been open. “I was only trying to get in out of the rain.”
They’d reached the car by then, and the officer stopped and faced her. “I’m taking you in. A jail cell is warm and dry, and they’’ll feed you something that bears a resemblance to real food.” He looked her up and down. “You’re not going to make it if you stay out here.”
She wouldn’t make it if he put her in there.
“Please don’t lock me up,” she said. “Can't you just give me a ticket or something, some kind of citation? I’ll show up in court, I swear I will.” Another lie.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get out before the DT’s get too bad. What else you hooked on besides booze?”
Becca never drank, not a drop, had never even experimented with drugs. Her life was hard enough sober. What it might be like to experience her reality in some kind of dopey state where she had no defenses at all—no, she’d pass on that one, thank you very much.
Might as well run the truth up the flagpole and see if anybody’d salute. “I’m not hooked on anything. I just can’t be locked up.”
He looked more closely at her, perhaps saw that her pupils weren’t dilated and she was steady on her feet and didn’t smell like cheap wine or mouthwash.
“You’ve stopped taking your meds, then. Nobody does what you did without some serious mental issues.”
What had she done?
“Either way, you broke the law. I could get you on the breaking and entering charge, vandalism, destruction of public property, terroristic threatening, but I’m only listing the least egregious, vagrancy, on the arrest report so you’ll go to district court instead of circuit court. They’ll cut you loose on Monday.”
“What’s today?”
“Thursday.”
She couldn’t be locked in a jail cell for four days! She had to keep moving, running, or he’d find her.
“You don’t understand, I—”
“What’s your name?”
Becca hesitated.
“Your real name.”
“Becca Hawkins.” She hadn’t meant to tell him that, but he’d caught her off guard before she had time to make something up.
“Now, I am arresting you. I said I’d tell you.” Then he began to recite the mantra. “Rebecca Hawkins, you—”
“It’s Becca, just Becca.”
It’s not short for anything or long for anything or a substitute for anything. It just is.
Who always said that? Jack Carpenter. When they were kids. He said that to teachers and other grown-ups when they got her name wrong. For some reason, it always upset him when people messed up her name.
“…to remain silent. If you give up that right—”
“Don’t I have the right to remain sane? You put me in a box, and he’ll come for me.”
“…an attorney present before questioning. If you cannot afford an—”
“I look to you like I can afford a lawyer?”
“Attorney, one will be appointed for you by the court. Do you understand?”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand. If I don’t move around, I can’t stay away from him!”
“You’re going to be in jail, lady. Who’s going to break into a jail to get at you?”
What was after her didn’t have to break in. He was already there, waiting for her.
CHAPTER 3
2011
Theresa sat on the floor in the dark, clutchin' her phone in her wet, shaking hands, frantically punchin' the button on the top to start it again. Nothin'. The button on the bottom of the face, then, the Siri button. She slid her wet fingers down the cracked face and punched that little round dented place on the bottom. No voice asked, “What can I help you with?”
Now, her heart was hammerin’ in her chest like some lunatic on a padded door. But she was afraid to try to stand. The knee she’d banged was a hot poker of agony. Old, fat women couldn’t fall down without messin’ up somethin'. Besides, even if she hadn’t hurt her knee, she didn’t think her legs could hold her right now. And crawlin' on that bum knee wouldn't likely end well, neither. Couldn't walk or crawl--fine, she'd scoot then, across the hardwood floor to the door. She looked around in blackness like bein' blind. Where was the door? Before it went out, the cell phone light had flashed in her eyes, and they wasn’t adjusted enough to the darkness to see whatever little bit of light might be shinin' through the doorway from the front door she’d left open.
Her heartbeat ratcheted up another notch and panic swelled in her chest. The door had to be…this way. This was the way she come in, wasn’t it? She scooted fast as she could, tried not to let herself know what was on the floor that made it so slick she’d fallen, in the puddles her hand fell into as she scooted. She wiped her hands on her blouse to get the sticky off, feelin’ around in the blackness, but couldn’t find no doorframe. She’d only come in the room a few steps, then fell, then crawled toward her cell phone. She couldn’t have come this far. The door must be the other way. Reversing direction, she started to scoot again, her heart roarin’ in her ears so loud she didn’t know if Biscuit had stopped barkin' or she just couldn’t hear the sound no more.
Her hand hit something else on the wet floor besides a puddle. What her fingers touched felt like…hair? No. Please, no. Her fingers followed the tresses—soft like Miss Minnie’s white hair when it wasn’t caught up in a bun—but wet and sticky. She reached out farther in the blackness 'til her fingers touched somethin' solid. She felt along its surface until she touched…a forehead—the skin was cold, like a doll’s. A scream crawled on hairy black legs up the back of her throat, but she couldn’t give it voice ’cause her lungs was full of the air she’d gasped in at the touch of cold human flesh and now she couldn’t breathe out.
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She reflexively yanked her hand away but her fingers was tangled in the sticky hair. Strugglin' to get her fingers free—panic bursting in bright, colored lights in front of her eyes—air finally exploded out of her lungs, carrying with it a screeching wail like a rip racing down a canvas sail. She staggered upward. Away. Had to get away! She tried to stand and run but slipped and fell again on the slick floor, landin' on her back this time. Her head banged into the floor and shiny spots of white light appeared in front of her eyes.
She tried to blink the spots away, her heart explodin' out of her chest, and when she opened her eyes again, the spots was gone. But they’d been replaced by a red glow high above her. In the corner on the other side of the room, up next to the ceiling, was a strange red light.
She didn’t pause to wonder what it might be but rolled over on her side and got to her knees, determined to stand up no matter how bad her knee hurt. The glow got brighter but didn’t really light up nothin'. Facing away from it now, she nevertheless saw it spread out across the ceiling, flow across the ceiling like water from a wave glidin’ across wet sand. It reached the wall in front of her, then began to…drip down it. It was light, but it oozed down the wallpaper like blood drippin’ from the ceiling.
And then she knew she didn’t want to look back at that far corner to see where the light was comin’ from. Must not. She cringed away from it in the dark, shrank down into the smallest part of herself ’cause she knew what must be there in the corner.
******
1985
Bishop tried one more time to crank the engine of the pickup truck. Nothin’. He could tinker with the engine, of course, and likely get it runnin’ again if the battery wasn’t dead. He’d been nursin’ that old thing along, keeping it runnin’ for years after it had ought to have been sold for scrap metal. But he only had his small toolbox in the back, might not have everything he needed. More important, Bishop didn’t have time to fix it. Them kids was out there in the woods, and there was a dark ugliness Bishop couldn’t identify out there with ’em. This was no time for him to have his head stuck up under the hood of his truck.
He got out. He’d have to walk to the logging road rendezvous point, and it was a long way. It’d probably be the middle of the afternoon ’fore he got there. He glanced up at the mountain to the north and could see Burnt Stump clearly. Whenever he took the kids ginseng huntin’ with him, they had to promise two things: to stay together, and if they got lost or somethin’ bad happened, they was to go to Burnt Stump. That’s where he’d always go to find ’em. Burnt Stump was a huge basswood tree that had been struck by lightning when Bishop’s father was a boy. It stood atop the southern end of Bear Claw Mountain like a black lighthouse, visible for miles in every direction.
Bishop stood staring at it for a few moments. It made more sense to go there now and wait than to walk all the way back to the logging road, maybe even miss ’em there. They’d show up at Burnt Stump eventually when he didn’t meet them on the logging road. He didn’t like that plan a’tall—just leavin’ 'em in the woods with whatever was out there, but what else was he gone do?
Bishop set out west through the woods, not runnin’—couldn’t run in these tangled trees and vines or you’d trip and break your neck—but loping in long strides that ate up the distance. He hadn’t never encountered a demon in the woods before. He’d seen ’em in town, though, ridin’ some poor soul like a beetle attached to their back, suckin' the life juice out. More often, what he seen wasn’t demons possessing people but demons influencing people. Wasn’t the same as a demon taking over a person’s will and heart. That was a process, didn’t happen overnight—unless they was a child. A demon could overpower the will of a child. But demons whisperin’ in folks’ ears, telling ’em lies—what you seen then was lights kinda flickerin' around a person or sometimes a shadow or eye-shine like the glassy sheen of an animal’s eyes in the dark.
His grandpa had told him about them lights, the shine and the darkness when he was just a boy and had first figured out that what he was seein’ in the world around him wasn’t necessarily the same thing other folks was seein’. Grampa Rufus had warned him years ago there wasn’t but a few places in the world like Caverna County, Kentucky. This here place was special, but not in a good way.
The whole family has gathered at his grandparents’ house after church. They’ve finished lunch, and the women are congregated in the kitchen, cleaning up and chattering woman-talk while the men gather on the back porch to smoke stogies, spit tobacco and tell lies.
Bishop is seated on the porch swing, pushing it back and forth with his toe when Grampa Rufus comes out the screen door that protests with a loud squawk, and sits down beside him.
“You’s having trouble with what you seen this mornin’, ain’t you boy?” Grampa Rufus had no patience with folks who’d “shimmy-shammy” around the point. He always got right to it.
Bishop nods but says nothing, keeps his head lowered, looking at the planks of the porch floor because he’s afraid if he opens his mouth, he’ll cry. He’s eight years old and would rather die than burst into tears like some sissy girl.
“You seen the spirit lights on them field hands that came in late and sat in the back row in church.”
It wasn’t a question, but Bishop nods again nonetheless. He saw them all right, had turned in the pew when he heard the rustle of feet coming in from the vestibule. Four men stood all respectful-like with they hats in they hands while they located seats on the pew in the back. Lights flickered around all of them, blinked on and off, and he could hear ugly sounds that didn’t have words, whispers. The fourth man had a darkness that…it was like a snake, and it slithered all over him, around his neck and down the front of his shirt. Bishop had looked away then, horrified. It wasn’t that Bishop didn’t know what the lights and dark thing was. He and Grampa Rufus had talked about it many times.
But in church!
Sometimes Bishop fears his grandfather can actually read minds. This is one of those times.
“And you can’t get it in your head how come they’d show up in the house of God.”
Bishop looks at him then for the first time, the anguish inside him bursting out in a torrent of words.
“Ain’t there nowhere you’s safe from them creatures? I know you said they’s everywhere, but how can demons come in God’s house and sit down nicey-nice like they was all holy, and why—?”
“Satan’s the prince of this world, son, you got to get that in your head. God give it over to him—for a time—and—”
“Why would God do a thing like that?” Bishop demands.
“The next time you see God, you need to ask him that question,” his grandfather snaps. “But ’tween now and then all you got is that much.” He studies Bishop. “I s’pose you old enough to hear this. I’s ’bout your age when Mama told me. Son, you got to shake hands with the fact that demons is everywhere, but Caverna County is a special kinda bad place.”
Bishop feels an odd airy feeling in the pit of his stomach and an unreasonable desire to leap up off the swing and run as fast as he can so he can’t hear the words that are about to come out of Grampa Rufus’s mouth. At that same time, he feels a steadiness in his soul, like some part of him has known this all along.
His grandfather starts out tellin’ him what he already knows—that there’s a barrier between the spiritual world and the world of men.
“It’s what you cross over when you die so it ain’t solid, not like no brick wall. For a demon to get into this world, he got to go through that barrier, too.” His grandfather pauses and collects himself before he continues. “Well, in some places in the world, ’pears that barrier’s thinner than it is in other places, and for reasons I don’t understand, they’s ways for demons to pass back and forth there. That’s how they possessed the folks Jesus talks about in the Bible. That make sense to you?”
Bishop nods.
“What else you need to understand is that sometimes you happens to
be right up next to some place in the spiritual world where the fabric ’tween us and them ain’t strong.” He shudders in revulsion. “They’s right there on the other side, maggots, crawling all over each other.”
“Like a city full of them?”
“The Bible don’t say nothin’ ’bout demons livin’ in cities!” The old man is annoyed. He don’t stand for nobody playin’ fast and loose with the Scripture. “And other than what the Bible does say, all the rest of what anybody knows about demons is what they figured out they own self based on the evidence they could see—so they might have got it right and they might not. But I ’spect Caesarea Philippi in the Bible was likely one of them places. And folks say they’s parts of Haiti where the membrane separating our world from the darkness is so thin it ain’t hardly there a’tall.”
Bishop has no idea where Haiti might be.
“Son, from what I’ve seen—and my mama, and her daddy before her who was brought here as a slave—Caverna County is one of them places, too. Maybe bad as Haiti, dangerous in a way that only those of us who know can see.”
As he hurried through the woods, Bishop sensed now the danger his grandfather had described all those years ago, felt the presence of evil around him, a shadowy darkness that other folks couldn’t see. He could see it, though. So could Isaac. And so could Becca.
CHAPTER 4
1985
Becca heard a horrible sucking sound when the blond boy pulled the fisherman’s arms off—or imagined she did—and her stomach lurched. She spewed the remains of this morning’s cornbread and orange juice onto the ground in front of Dougie, wrenching and gagging. The boys surely would have heard her if the fisherman hadn’t been making so much noise, screaming a high-pitched wail that went on and on.
“You idiot! You want to get us arrested?” cried the redheaded boy with the Mohawk as the other boys yipped and yelled in glee! He reached out and grabbed the boy holding the now-unattached fisherman’s arms and tossed him down the riverbank, where he landed on his butt in the sand. The boy dropped the gory arms and leapt up, angling for a fight, started to lunge at the redheaded boy but must have thought better of it and merely stood glaring at him.