Sons of Dust

by P. Dalton Updyke

Katie hesitated again, but then she heard Bo, I have to know, Katie. I have to!

  Kate sat.

  Chapter 20

  Lucien’s Story

  Lucien leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. When he moved, the chain rattled, a dry, dusty sound. Katie’s eyes flew to the chain, but she couldn’t make out any more than she had before. It was black with age, thick and heavy. Katie’s stomach did another flip.

  Lucien didn’t speak, but Katie could feel his eyes on her and it made her think of the pictures of the Saints in Sister Patrice’s classroom. The eyes followed you wherever you went. That’s what being with Lucien was like. Katie could feel his eyes on her and the feeling was like burning. The silence stretched out until Katie didn’t think she’d be able to stand another minute.

  “Who chained you up?” she asked finally, just to break the awful quiet.

  “The men in charge.” Lucien moved; the chains rattled. “It happened many years ago, before this city was born.”

  “What did you do?” Katie asked.

  “I was a man of God.”

  “You were a priest?”

  Lucien’s eyes glittered. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What did you do to make them chain you up?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, Katie thought she’d made a mistake. Her mother always said being direct was good (it demonstrated strong moral fiber) but Sister Patrice said blunt was a sin. Katie was never sure if she was being direct or blunt.

  “Direct,” Lucien said. His teeth gleamed as he smiled. “Your mother is a wise woman.”

  “You can read my mind.” It wasn’t a question, really, because inside, Katie knew the answer, but it still astonished her when he nodded.

  “Not everything you think, but as we spend more time together, my ability to… how did you put it? Read your mind increases. Soon, you shall be able to read mine.”

  “Me? Read your mind?” Katie hadn’t meant for her voice to get so high and squeaky sounding, but it did. “I don’t think so.”

  Lucien’s smile flashed. “Yes, Katrenjia. If you wanted to do it, you could.”

  Katie knew he was waiting for her to try and she also knew that he was sending her a message. But even though she could feel his mind pulsing at her, she shook her head.

  Alex shall not be the one

  Her eyes flew open, startled, and Lucien laughed out loud.

  “I told you. You can do it if you try.”

  But Katie hadn’t tried, and that was the problem. She stood up swiftly and the chair scraped against the wooden floor. “I’m sorry,” she said in a rush, “it’s late and I have a lot of homework to do.”

  Sit down.

  Katie wasn’t sure if he spoke the words out loud or not because now she could hear him in her head.

  Sit down.

  This time, she knew the words were coming from inside. She sat back down not because she wanted to or he commanded it, but because her knees were suddenly weak. The candlelight flickered as if a wind had blown through, but Katie hadn’t felt a breeze. Her eyes stayed on the candle and it flickered again, the flame billowed backward, illuminating a square of painted wall. Lucien shifted in his chair and the rattle of the chain was loud in the quiet. She wondered again about its size and thickness. It wasn’t metal, she didn’t think, it was too rough for metal—

  “The chain does not matter,” the man said in his thick accent.”What matters is that it was used to bind us until you came to set us free.” Lucien sat back in his chair, so that the top half of his face was in shadow. Katie couldn’t see his eyes anymore, and somehow, that was a relief.

  “Why is it a relief?” he asked.

  “Don’t do that! It’s not very nice.”

  Lucien laughed and while it was pleasant enough, there was an undercurrent – a thickness – that made her break out in gooseflesh. He crossed his hands, the chain clattering, Magdalene’s arm moved and there was something about her arm…something odd. Katie squinted, trying to see better in the dim light and realized that it wasn’t Magdalene’s arm that looked so bizarre, it was her hand and the reason her hand looked funny was because her fingers ended abruptly…and then she realized that the fingers weren’t fingers at all.

  They were nubs of bone where fingers had been and as she stared, unable to tear her eyes away, a rat scampered across the floor, its beady eyes gleaming like liquid. Its whiskers twitched, eyes on Katie. The rat picked his head up and sniffed the air, almost delicately, like Bailey, her hamster, and then it sat up. Its head jerked forward and its mouth opened to reveal razor sharp teeth. Lucien made a quick movement, the chain rattled, Magdalene’s arm yanked and the rat jumped, landing on the dusty sleeve and gray bone. Katie watched in horror as the rat buried its head in the cleft between Magdalene’s first and middle finger and began to gnaw.

  Katie hitched in a breath to scream, but she had no air left in her lungs, none at all, the room was spinning and she thought this is what it feels like to faint and Lucien jumped to his feet and rushed at the rat, his arms flailing, his hair a wild tangle. He roared, a sound of rage, and the rat, startled, fell off Magdalena, hitting the floor with a meaty thump. In a heartbeat, the rat disappeared into the dark shadows of the room. Katie was aware of an odd buzzing sound, a screeching noise of strangled air and it took her several seconds to realize the sound was coming from her.

  “It is all right.” Lucien’s voice was soothing, a stroke of softness. “It is gone.”

  “—want to go home,” Katie managed at last. “I want to go home!”

  Lucien knelt down in front of Katie, but still not close enough for her to see him clearly. “That is all I want as well, Katrenjia. You can help me go there.”

  Katie covered her face with her hands and began to cry. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. This was Bo’s idea, not hers. She’d never wanted to play Ouija in the first place because Sister Patrice said the game was evil, she called it the devil’s board and told her classes that children who played with the devil’s board were sure to go to hell and that was probably what was going to happen because they hadn’t listened—

  “How could God condemn a child to hell?” Lucien asked. His voice was barely a whisper. “What kind of God would subject a child to such a fate? Especially when that child has helped another soul?”

  Katie didn’t answer, but her crying slowed to a hiccup.

  “I am begging for your help, Katrenjia,” Lucien said, just as soft as before, but there was an edge to his voice now. “Offering your hand to someone in need is not a sin – it is a virtue. How could helping me sentence you to hell? There is a special place in heaven for those who reach out to others in need.”

  Katie listened, confused. She wanted to believe his words. It did say in the Bible that everyone was supposed to help their neighbors, and wasn’t there a part about ‘whoever shall help the poorest of my people shall serve me?’ Lucien was poor, wasn’t he? He needed help, didn’t he? And even Sister Lucille said it was a Christian duty to help those less fortunate and Sister Lucille didn’t like to help anybody. Katie lifted her eyes from her lap. Lucien’s face was still in shadow.

  “What happened?” she asked and her voice was just a little shaky. “What did you do to get chained up?”

  “I fell in love.” His lips trembled like he was holding back tears. “Magdalena was beautiful and I fell madly in love with her the moment I saw her.”

  Katie gripped the arms of the chair. Her palms were damp and dust and grit stuck to her. The smell was dusty, too. She swallowed. “What happened?”

  “This was long, long ago. Magdalene’s father was a magistrate – a judge—in the city where she was born. He….” Lucien’s words faltered. “He did not approve of me. In fact, he hated me because I was not of his race. I came from a different culture and my people were persecuted.”

  “Were you Jewish?” Katie asked.

  Lucien threw back his head and laughed. The sound bubbled out of his throat and echoe
d, bouncing off the crumbling walls. “No,” he said when he could speak, “I was not Jewish. There was no Judaism in this area of the world during the time of which I speak. No true break to that faith yet in this place.” He shifted in his chair and the chain scraped across the floor, but this time, Katie ignored it.

  “I was blessed in that Magdalena loved me as I loved her. We were not allowed to be together in public. After dark, we would meet, in secret. We were careful because the men in the town were suspicious.”

  For a moment, the rat and the dead body, even the smell, was forgotten. Katie imagined what it would be like to be in love with someone and not allowed to show it. Then she thought of Alex, and what would happen if he loved her like she loved him and what it would feel like if her father forbid her to see him. What would she do?

  Sneak.

  She’d sneak out of the house too. Just like Magdalena.

  “Magdalena had been promised to another man. An old man.”

  Katie wrinkled her nose. “An old man?”

  “Many years older than her. He was very smelly, with rotting teeth and a beard like a goat. This man had one leg shorter than the other and walked with a limp. He was dirty, filth matted in his hair and grit under his long yellow fingernails.”

  “Gross,” Katie muttered.

  Lucien’s smile flashed. “Yes. But worse was that he was cruel. He didn’t know love. I doubt he had ever felt it. He enjoyed giving pain. He liked to whip young women until their backs were nothing but strips of flesh.”

  “And she was supposed to marry him?” Katie whispered.

  “She had been promised to him at her birth and when she became a woman, he came to collect his bride.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “We planned to run away. We were going to leave our families and our homes. We were frightened, but also exhilarated. I do not know how to explain it to you. How we met in the dark and held each other and planned our future.”

  To Katie, it sounded like a movie or a made for TV special. “Did you run away?”

  Lucien shook his slowly. “We tried. We were caught almost immediately.”

  Katie made a small “ohhhhh” sound.

  Lucien leaned forward so that his full face was in the light. The flickering candlelight painted dancing shadows on his face. His features were carved by dark. “Feel it,” he whispered. “See it.”

  Something was happening. Katie could feel the difference in the air of the tiny bedroom. The light was changing, growing sharper somehow even as the candles burned down, wax pooling on the dusty table. Katie could hear small sounds in the darkness; mice running over the blackened bricks of the fireplace and that made her think of the rat and Magdalena’s hand.

  Katrenjia.

  She looked at the man who spoke her name and he was staring at her so intently that she felt jolted, and then it was just him… just the man in the tattered shirt. Everything faded as he became clearer and then he was talking to her, but not in words. In pictures. It was like being in the middle of a dream but the dream wasn’t coming from her imagination, it came from his. Katie forgot to be afraid because it was

  it was

  beautiful

  Katie was too young to understand the word for what was happening, too young to understand the meaning of intimate but years later, when she lay in her husband’s arms after making love, drowsy and almost asleep, that word, intimate, flashed in her mind and she thought that’s it. That’s what it felt like with Lucien.

  His eyes were blue, turning to black and the black shifted to purple

  purple

  purple robes

  men in purple robes, standing on a wooden stage, in the center of an open square. Wind flapped the robes; the sound was a noise like sheets snapping in the breeze. Drums were beating, the sound faint and faraway and then the image shifted.

  Brick buildings surrounded the square and Katie could see the ocean to the left. It was black and rolling and even though Katie could only see the picture, she could almost feel the cold. It was visible in the white capped ocean, in the crowd

  the crowd of

  pinched faces of children who clung to their mothers’ hands, white lines around the mouths of men and when one man bent to whisper something to another, Katie could see his plume of breath in the air.

  The wooden stage was long and narrow, so freshly built pine pitch oozed from the splintered wood. The sun rose, lighting the water with orange brush strokes and as the sun climbed higher in the sky, more people began to arrive. They wore black, all of them, head to foot. The women’s heads were covered with black bonnets, their long dresses high necked, long sleeved. The men wore long coats and short pants, their legs covered in stockings.

  The ocean was dark, an oily sea with purple waves. Brick buildings, darkened by soot and age, dotted the shoreline and Katie understood that this was the city before, in the olden days.

  The crowd gathered in front of the stage and Katie realized it wasn’t a stage; it was a gallows. She didn’t know where the word came from, but it was right. She knew the wharf, the buildings, but the perspective was wrong. It was like looking in a mirror from the wrong side out. The drum beat grew louder, almost a heartbeat. A bird circled overhead, its wings throwing a shadowy V over the hard packed dirt square and Katie looked at the stage again.

  High backed chairs, seven of them, lined the farthest edge. The men in purple stood silent, on the opposite side, their backs to the crowd. The sound of drums grew stronger, a steady beat that wasn’t like just any heart beat anymore; it was her father’s heart. The crowd shifted, rippling like a wave, the expression on their faces a mixture of fear and excitement. A line of people, a parade

  procession

  were making their way up the hill. They walked two abreast, their robes billowed backward. The two in front carried crosses, the men behind carried dark flags, each stitched with a gold cross. They wore ankle length robes, purple like the others, but as the procession entered the square, Katie saw that not all the men in line wore purple; some wore black and those in black had black hoods covering their faces, their eyes seen in slits.

  The crowd shifted, making room for the procession to enter the square, round the stage and climb the seven stairs leading to the platform. The drums were louder now, so loud Katie wanted to clap her hands to her ears because the sound rumbled in her chest, her teeth, filled her with fear. The men carrying the crosses climbed the stairs, and behind them, the men carrying the flags. The column of black robed men were directly in front of the crowd and Katie saw that between the hooded men were two people chained together

  Lucien

  Magdalena

  Magdalena wore a burgundy silk gown, torn at the shoulder and hip, her hair a tangled mess around her head. Her face was bruised, her lips swollen. Her skin was tinged with blue from the cold. Lucien was to her right and although he looked as bruised and bloody as she, he was standing tall, his shoulders back, a small hint of a smile hovering over his lips. As he reached the steps to the stage, his eyes scanned those watching and he winked at a woman in the front.

  Magdalena stopped at the foot of the stairs and Katie realized it was because her ankles were bound so tightly she wasn’t able to lift her feet to climb. Her chest was heaving, she was furious, her dark eyes darting over the crowd and she began to scream

  hurl words

  something foreign, the syllables rolled over each other and the cadence wasn’t Polish or German, it was an older language older than

  time

  and then they were dragged up, their bodies banging against the steps and Magdalena tripped on the hem of her gown. One of the men in black stepped forward and kicked her so hard she doubled over, words still streaming from her mouth, her face twisted but the crowd was silent and staring, watching as Magdalena and Lucien were forced to the center of the stage, their wrists bound, and then Magdalena lifted her head and screamed a curse, her face was rage—

  and then the picture wa
s gone

  Katie blinked in the sudden darkness of the room. Flickering flame from the smoking candles illuminated patches of torn wallpaper, a triangle of bedclothes, filthy and torn and she felt Lucien looking at her, but she couldn’t look back at him, not yet because—

  More, he said

  and bright light filled her head again and Katie cried out because it was so white it hurt and Magdalena was on the wooden platform, but something had happened in the void because she was bleeding from fresh wounds. Blood oozed from a cut on her cheek, ran from the corners of her mouth, pooled in the hollows of her shoulder blades. Katie felt light headed and she didn’t want to see anymore, didn’t want to see—

  The tallest man in black stepped forward and something in his hand glistened red and Katie knew it was covered with her blood. He raised his arm high and the whip slashed through the air and the sound was like traffic on the Mystic River Bridge and Katie cried out again but the sound was lost, swallowed by the drum beat and the pulsing of water against the shore and then Magdalena lifted her head and someone in the crowd gasped. They moved back as if one, black garments rustling.

  The wind stirred Magdalene’s skirts, blew her hair back. Beside her, Lucien’s body lay on the stage. The mark of the whip striped his back. His shirt was torn into strips of cloth. Tears streamed down Magdalene’s face, but Katie knew the tears were those of rage, not pain. Her eyes blazed with hatred. “You who do this dare call me evil?” Her voice rang over the square and a small child, held tight in his mother’s arm, began to cry. The child’s cries filled the air and Magdalena lifted her face to the heavens and let out a long shriek. “How can You allow this?” she screamed to the sky, “How can this be?”

  “She calls to her demons!” a man in the front cried. He was dressed as the others, in knickers and stockings, his hair long and gray, his beard speckled with white. “She calls her devils!”

  Magdalena lifted her hands, bound so tight tiny rivers of blood streamed down her arms. She raised her hands over her head, her hands clenched into fists, and an old man stepped forward, a Bible open his hands. He was one of those dressed in black, a cross stitched on the front of the long cassock, but there was no hood covering his face. A birthmark twisted down one wrinkled cheek.