The Ancestors

by Brandon Massey

  Rashid peered at the hand that was extended toward him and looked at it hard through squinted eyes. He touched the light on the concrete before accepting the handshake—just in case it was the dark side trying to trick him into going with them. Then he glimpsed into the old man’s eyes, briefly, just in case it was the wrong set of eyes that might attempt to hypnotize him. Tonight he couldn’t tell who or what to trust. But his body relaxed when he felt the current that ran through the old man’s palm into his own. It was strengthening, warm, and in an eerie way the touch drew the pain from his body. The man before him really was Mr. Abe, not an illusion or an entity.

  As he moved away from the wall, he still felt it prudent to keep his free hand on the mother-of-pearl-like opalescent light that bathed the building, part of him never losing contact with some portion of the building’s structure. He had to stay grounded. The shop, tonight, was lit up like a cathedral. Odd thing was, it always had a little light before, but not like it did tonight. That had to have been what threw him off. Then again, the shades were darker too. If evil was denser, maybe places with light were burning brighter? That was the problem—he just didn’t know.

  Things weren’t always what they seemed.

  Chapter Three

  They’d won. All of the cussing and fussing in the world had not gotten the truck to her apartment any faster. In fact, it seemed as though her theatrical outbursts had actually delayed things to the point where the van showed up at 2:30 PM that day. No amount of threats had got a rise out of them. The whole episode galled her no end.

  “People are so inept,” Aziza grumbled under her breath, as she walked her tormentors to the front door and thought back upon the myriad of supervisors she’d spoken to that day. Being bounced around an impenetrable voicemail system, then speaking with individuals who were not authorized to make a decision, and finally being told that the truck destined for her apartment had broken down, had been exhausting enough to drain most of the fight out of her.

  Aziza slammed the door behind the nonchalant moving men, and fumed as she tried to unpack the disaster of boxes strewn about her grandmother’s living-room floor. A good night’s sleep was now out of the question, since her evening was obviously going to be devoted to struggling with cardboard, finding the most basic items of her clothing, and trying to cram as much as she could into an already too-small space. Plus, there was no way in the world that she could entertain sleep with things not in their rightful place. Clutter made her nervous, and what lay before her gave her the hives.

  Since childhood, shadowy corners and dark closets that didn’t click shut with a definitive sound made her recoil and want to bolt toward fresh air. Here, every door was ajar, every table was skirted, all of the chairs, and even the sofa, had an apron—leaving room within one’s imagination for what might be under or behind any of it.

  The stairs creaked and groaned from age, just as the elderly storm windows rattled from the wind. Childhood memories of shadowy things reaching out to claw at her little legs when she was supposedly asleep put a damp sheen of perspiration on her now adult body. Her mother hadn’t believed her; her father hadn’t believed her, and something had killed them both.

  Fear made her tentative as she ran through every room, switching on all of the overhead lights and table lamps. Why hadn’t they moved her during the day like she’d requested? By nightfall, she’d wanted to have things in their proper place. Was it so much to accomplish? Was it too much to expect to have all of the hidden places revealed? She wanted an early start to get all of the closets cleaned out and investigated.

  Before she could rest, she still had to get all of the drafts plugged so that the curtains didn’t ominously blow, or the papers on the dining room table didn’t stir. It was imperative that she feel comfortable enough to simply glance around each dimly lit room in a relaxed fashion, having eradicated any concealed corners where something might lurk. It had always been that way for her . . . ever since she was a child.

  Spartan felt much safer than cluttered.

  Rashid eyed his benefactor with unconcealed suspicion while the elderly shopkeeper hummed around in the kitchen at the back of the store. Rashid scratched at the stubble on his face and appraised the dried blood on the back of his hand. He didn’t like being indoors.

  How was it that for a moment he hadn’t been able to tell who this man was—a man he’d lived with for almost a year? Something wasn’t right. The old man claimed that his name was Abe Morgan. Rashid turned the name over and over again in his mind. Studying the man, he thought that his name should have been more exotic, because his gaunt face held high cheekbones within its angular form that reminded him of the Masai people. Only Abe Morgan wasn’t tall enough.

  Now it was time for some tough questions. When he’d first signed on to take a cot in the back and some food in exchange for protecting the shop, he hadn’t entered into the bargain to sell his soul. The old man had said he wanted a favor, would ask him for that one day in the future, so they needed to get it straight about what that favor could possibly be. He might have been tricked; the old man might be more than he seemed. Rashid continued to eye the person that now made him unsure.

  “How long have you been here?” Rashid asked tensely, still peering around the shop as he continued to touch the wall. The place was jam-packed with expensive-looking clutter, and had too many little alcoves for his liking, even though it provided temporary sanctuary from the shadows that slithered just outside. “Not many African Americans have this type of inventory.”

  “Oh, so now you’ve finally opened up your eyes. Is that our new designation, African American? Is that why you came running in here all crazy-acting tonight? You finally decided what I got is worth something and you gonna rob me now, or what?”

  Rashid looked at the old man, who didn’t seem the least bit afraid. “No. I ain’t come back to rob you—told you when we met; I ain’t no thief or thug. And, yeah, we’re African American these days.”

  The man named Abe chuckled. “When you get to be my age, you’ve been called everything from colored, to Negro, to boy, to niggah. African American works for me, I suppose.”

  Rashid dismissed the comment, but not the man who’d made it. “Are you originally from here, or overseas? Looks like you have a lot of imports.”

  “We’re all originally from overseas, ain’t we?” Abe answered with a chuckle, bringing a cup of green tea to the table and sitting down with a grunt. “Where you from, boy? I ain’t really never asked. Maybe I should have, seeing as how I’ve been relying on you to keep drug thugs and robbers from my door. You seemed okay by my gut hunch, at first, but you came in here looking wild in the eye tonight. Needs ta know some facts ’bout who’s in my store. Where you from? Wasn’t my business, but since you wanna play twenty-questions. . .”

  “All over,” Rashid replied. He could feel himself growing agitated as the teacup was pushed before him. People didn’t do things for others without a reason, as a general rule. What was this guy’s deal? Why all of a sudden did he need to dig up the past?

  “You said you wanted a favor from me, later. I need to know what that might be.” Rashid warmed his hands with the thin china between his palms, smelled the brew within it, and looked up before taking a sip. “How do I know you wouldn’t try to poison me, or drug me?”

  Abe Morgan shook his head and stood. “Have you ever seen how a person who’s been poisoned dies?” He waited for a moment until Rashid shook his head no. “Well, for one thing, it’s too messy. If I was gonna kill you, I’d rather you die and soil your britches outside of my shop. That way, all I’d have to do was to hose down the front steps,” he added with a deeper grin. “Now, what’s got you out on the lam like this, living like a dog in the streets?”

  The young man sitting at his table made Abe oddly want to know more. If he had to guess, he would have pegged the youth to be in his mid-forties, but his eyes seemed much older than that. He’d been watching him for a year, but until tonight
only his gut registered a hunch—yet tonight he saw it.

  Abe furrowed his brows as he studied the face before him. Something about this person was diametrically opposed to what he was witnessing. The young man before him looked as crazy as a bedbug, but something down deep in Abe’s soul screamed out, telling him that he was staring at a warrior. A sentinel. For the first time in his life, curiosity got the better of Abe, and compelled him to take an unplanned risk with the question, in addition to the risk he’d taken by extending the generosity he’d offered to his very unusual guest a year ago.

  “We aren’t familiar enough yet for me to be going into my life story,” Rashid finally replied. “If this turns into a confessional, then I’ll pass on the hospitality. Besides, you never answered my question about the favor.”

  Abe allowed a sly smile to creep out from hiding on his face. “I thought you said that this was a church?” He watched the young man struggle to develop a reply as he appraised him. His guest’s hands and face were weathered from the elements, yet there was an inexplicable clarity to his deep mahogany complexion. Living on the streets should have worn off the sheen of any humanity beneath his worn clothes, and should have turned his muscular frame to mere skin and bones if he were a druggie. That’s the thing—Rashid was clean as a whistle. His teeth should have been brown stumps, or missing, and his eyes nothing more than jaundiced saucers—if he’d judged his condition of homelessness correctly. Plus, it was too difficult to gauge his age. But, that was just it; his guest had no signs of being remanded to living on the streets, other than surface grime. These questions had gnawed at his gut for the past year, and still the same answer stabbed into the second sight of his mind; this young man was the one. But he could not rush their conversation or their trust. Rashid was skittish and could bolt. He needed Rashid to stay of his own free will. Where did this enigma come from, and why?

  For a moment, neither man spoke as they silently appraised each other.

  Ironically, here this person was, insolent as could be, sitting before Abe with a full head of hair—not infested by lice—with teeth as pearly as those of people privy to regular dental care, and the whites of his eyes were nearly translucent. The contrasts intrigued Abe. It was what had made him curious enough to invite this vagrant in last winter . . . especially when he’d felt the strength of his grip when they’d shaken hands. The entire exchange had been amazing to witness. Six feet four inches’ worth of human being had unfurled from a clinging position against his doorframe, straightened, and marched through his store entrance with almost a military stride . . . all the while talking about and touching ancestral beacons of light. Even then, he’d thought him to be touched in the head for a moment until he looked at him hard. Since that first night, Rashid hadn’t had another episode. What set him off? Abe wondered. Who was this confused man-child?

  “Well?” Abe pressed, trying to appear nonchalant. “What’s the good of being in a church, if you can’t be honest? You claimed that I was blocking your passage to sanctuary. You was the one who forgot who I was for a minute. I’ve let you in here, so what’s your issue? Who you runnin’ from, boy?”

  “Not who, what. And, for the record, for a minute you couldn’t tell who I was, either.”

  “Okay,” Abe said in a weary but amused tone to hide his alarm. “Whatcha runnin’ from, and why you think this is a church?”

  Rashid took an unsteady sip of tea, then returned the cup to the table. “It’s got lights like a church, Merlin. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Abe hesitated and grew serious. “What did you call me?”

  Both men kept a steady line of vision locked on each other’s faces and Rashid brought the cup slowly to his lips again without losing eye contact with Abe.

  “I called you Merlin.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re tall, thin, and talk in riddles . . . old . . . and have an Ethiopian red tone to your complexion, not muddier brown. Muddier, tree-bark brown, stockier build, that’s more like Ghanaian. If your skin was smoother and onyx black, I’d say, Nigerian, maybe. Middle East is in there too. Like I said, I’m from all over, and have seen a lot of people. Your build is almost like a very short Masai, but with Ethiopian features in your face. Many tribes run through you. Plus you’ve got a little something extra with you, old man—can’t put my finger on it, but you’re sly.”

  “That still don’t explain why you called me Merlin.”

  Both men looked at each other hard. Rashid’s once-tense expression broke into a sudden, wide grin.

  “’Cause you aren’t who you say you are. But, it’s all good. Elsewise, you wouldn’t be able to stay here, either. The light’s too bright.” Rashid cast a glance around the room and motioned toward a large, ornately detailed, silver-framed mirror in the back of the shop. “Most of it’s coming from the altar you set up in here.”

  “The altar?”

  “That mirror.”

  “What does the light look like?”

  Rashid fell quiet. This was the first person in the States, who wasn’t a Veterans Administration psychiatrist, who had really asked him what the lights looked like. He considered the question carefully, and again studied the inquisitive man’s eyes. They appeared to be trustworthy, and seemed to hold a glimmer of real interest within them.

  “Northern lights, but thicker, closer to the edges of things you can touch. Not up in the sky, or on the horizon. Swirling. Stand in it, or put your hand through it, and it fuses with you and covers you in it. Feels like a mild electric current. All pastel colors, some more vibrant. Azure, fuchsia . . . light pinks, lavender, golden. All moving together like they were alive. What can I say? I see what I see.”

  Abe let out his breath in a rush. “Oh, so now you been to Alaska. Boy, what kinda drugs—”

  “Don’t do drugs, and don’t eat meat. It’s bad for the body temple. Been to Alaska, and worked on the pipeline. Been in the service, seen a lot of Asia. Paid my own way to Africa, the Gold Coast . . . saw Mecca and Palestine, too. Seen Stonehenge in Europe, and been all through Central and South America when I was in the Peace Corps. Started my travel from the Midwest, stayed there for a while . . . seen a lot of Native American country. Been so many places, I can’t remember ’em all. Now that it’s up to me, I only go to the places where I know there’ll be those lights.”

  Growing agitated, Abe pushed himself up from the table and went back to the stove to work on the meal he’d abandoned when chaos came banging on his front door. The kid said he could see lights, but talked like a lunatic. He felt compelled to continue to test this man who could be an imposter. False hope at this juncture could be dangerous. He’d been so disappointed in the past, and refused to give in easily with time no longer on his side. He’d test a little more and keep his identity a secret, hidden behind his slow, bad diction and seemingly uneducated banter.

  It was imperative that he know for sure who this person was that sat at his table, a man that possibly lied and who sat before him flagrantly discussing the plausibility of miracles, and appearing so ignorant of their real purpose. The other possibility was that his reluctant guest was a lunatic. But he had indeed seen the lights. And his vocabulary was too strong to be that of an uneducated person. Formal training had been afforded him, somewhere. But the lights . . . that part of the young man’s story was irrefutable.

  “And in all of these travels, you saw this mysterious light, and the light drew you there?” Abe ventured, not wanting to lose the thread of the conversation, but becoming weary of the cat-and-mouse interrogation process.

  “No, I said, I went to places that had the light. That’s the first thing I looked for when I got to wherever I was either sent, or could go on my own volition. Kept me alive . . . too bad it didn’t keep the others safe, though.”

  “Who safe?”

  “You’ve experienced losses, correct?” Rashid stared at Abe.

  “Who hasn’t?” Abe said in the tense exchange. “So then, since we’ve all
experienced losses, who did you lose? I’m not asking their names, just making conversation about something that I’ve also experienced. Don’t get to be my age and not have to attend a few funerals.” Abe nearly held his breath waiting for the answer.

  “The women.”

  “What women?” Abe had responded almost too quickly, it seemed, for both men’s liking.

  “The ones who all died,” Rashid finally replied in an openly suspicious tone.

  The old man stopped stirring the pot of rice and beans he was tending, and quickly spun around to face his recalcitrant guest, noting how the young man immediately drew back and clutched the wall, as though he were playing the game of tag with the wall representing base.

  “Boy, you awful jumpy for somebody not on drugs, and for somebody that’s lookin’ for a church home.”

  “Ain’t lookin’ for no church home. I’m lookin’ for the source of the lights.”

  “Look in my eyes, if you supposedly can see things,” Abe challenged in a low, threatening tone. Their gazes locked and Abe prayed silently for discernment. “If something chased you to my door, then there is a reason beyond what you and I can conceive of, so, where’s your faith?”

  The two stared at each other in a deadlock for a few moments before Abe began his inquiry again. “If you saw lights here, then maybe I’m not so ready to have anyone of darkness breach my threshold, either. So, cut the games. Why do you have to seek the light?”

  Rashid considered the old one’s statement and his question. There was a simple truth to both, and somehow because of that, the man’s gaze had him transfixed. He could feel sentences forming in his mind as reluctant trust began to build. It had been a very long time since he’d felt a sense of safety envelop him.