Blood Born

by Chris Neeley

  She had some time to kill.

  ***

  Seph rolled over, trying to get away from the heat. In his dream, he was burning, boiling, wet. The inside of his eyelids glowed red. His eyes fluttered open, the afternoon sun lanced at them. He closed his eyes, scrunching them in pain. What was so hot in this bed?

  Chloe.

  Now he remembered. Chloe was sick. Seph tried to pull himself awake so he could tend to her. He had the creeping feeling that someone was watching him. Seph rolled over again and snaked his hand under the covers, touching Chloe's back. Her nightgown was sopping wet. He opened his eyes.

  "What are you doing in here?" Seph asked, his throat feeling like sandpaper.

  James was standing just inside the bedroom door.

  "I heard that Mom was sick. I wanted to check on her," James said, not moving from where he stood.

  Seph rose up. His hands went to his head, trying to hold his brain in. "You go on about your business. I'll take care of your mother," he said to James. Lord, he didn't want to open his eyes again. The sun hurt all the way to the back of his head. He rubbed his temples. He didn't hear James making any move to leave.

  Seph looked to the doorway, one-eyed.

  James hadn't moved. His face reminded Seph of a tornado he'd seen on the news once. Seph could see the boy was worried but he didn't want to argue with him. Not now.

  "I said go on." Seph kept his eye on James.

  James shifted his weight and glanced at Chloe. "How bad is she?"

  "Never you mind. S'just some kind of bug." Seph slung his legs over the side of the bed and fought back the urge to let out a groan. His head felt like it was about to explode.

  James gave a grunt, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Seph loved James, his first-born, but with all the lying Seph had done lately and the girl, he was taking it out on everybody, including James. When he got himself straight, he'd have to make it up to James. Get their relationship back on track.

  Seph leaned over, wished that he hadn't, and got his pants from the floor and slipped them over his feet. He stood up too fast and the room spun in circles. His stomach flipped. He closed his eyes, letting it pass. He zipped his pants and went out into the hall and on to the bathroom. After splashing cold water on his face, he hurried back to the bedroom.

  Chloe was bathed in sweat. The sheets beneath her were soaked, the outline of her body was a wet stain.

  Seph sat on the edge of the bed and brushed limp curls back from her forehead. "Chloe, honey," he said softly.

  Chloe licked her dry lips.

  Seph ran his hand down her arm. "Come on Chloe. You need to drink something." Seph manhandled her up to a sitting position, her back resting against the headboard. She mumbled something that Seph couldn't make out. Seph reached for the glass of water on the nightstand and raised it to her parched lips. She looked like the fever was burning her up inside.

  "Come on Chloe. Take a sip," Seph said, touching the glass against her bottom lip.

  She batted at the glass half heartedly, then took a tiny sip. She gagged, coughing. She raised a hand to her mouth. Her eyes went wide. Chloe pushed Seph backwards and threw up over the side of the bed. Seph rubbed her back while her stomach threatened to come out of her mouth. It was too late to run for a bucket. Seph's stomach was doing a funny little dance of its own.

  When Chloe caught her breath, she raised up. Looking at him through blood-shot eyes, she croaked, "Seph, I think I need a doctor." Her breath came in watery gasps.

  Seph scooted her back down in the bed. "I'll call him. You just lie here and rest."

  Seph called the doctor and got his service. He told them to have the Doc call him back as soon as possible. He was really getting worried now. If the doctor didn't call within an hour, he'd just load Chloe into the truck and take her into Rockside to the emergency room.

  He went back upstairs and started to clean up the mess that Chloe had made on the floor beside the bed.

  The sun was finally starting to go down, but Seph's safe little life was getting worse by the minute.

  ***

  James was pissed at his father.

  The man couldn't even take care of himself, let alone his mother. She had looked bad, worse than he'd ever seen her, lying there in that bed.

  James had left his parents' bedroom and went down to the kitchen. Fern was just starting supper, so he made a suggestion that Fern should heat up some soup for their mother.

  Then, he grabbed the keys to his father's truck from the nail beside the door and started outside. He heard Fern yell through the window. "Dad'll kill you if you take that truck, James!" James just waved her off and hopped in the truck. He backed out of the driveway and headed toward Rockside, toward the cemetery.

  He needed to be near Aunt Doll.

  He pulled into the town cemetery, parked the truck as close as he could to Aunt Doll's grave and walked the rest of the way across the neatly trimmed grass. The sun was on its way to bed and the trees threw long shadows in his path. He walked from the darkness of a shadow thrown by an ancient weeping willow into the fading amber light that illuminated Aunt Doll's marker. The tiny angel that he had craved basked in the light.

  He sat down in the grass, plucked a blade and twiddled it between his fingers. He wasn't sure how to begin. He'd talked to Aunt Doll many times before when he'd been here, but now, somehow, her presence was stronger than he'd ever felt it before. It was like she was looking over his shoulder, sizing up if he was grown enough to understand what he had been seeing. The signs had been getting clearer over the last couple of days.

  He stuck the blade of grass in his teeth adn chewed, freshness grazing his tongue, and looked up into the darkening sky.

  "What's going on, Aunt Doll?" he asked around the grass in his mouth, "Mom's sick and I've seen sign. Is it just a natural thing or is there an enemy about, one I don't know?"

  James waited. A bird flew overhead. He watched it spread its wings, golden in the waning sun. It floated on a thermal, effortless. Carefree. Gliding on the breeze. He wished it was him up there where no one could touch him.

  "James," a voice carried to him on the breeze.

  He went still, not wanting to break the spell.

  "James, your momma."

  "Mom," he said. He listened intently.

  "The onion," the voice said.

  Onion? James didn't understand. What onion?

  "Don' let her--your momma--don't--plant the onion don't let--" the voice muttered, closer now.

  Frustrated, James called out to the wind, "I don't understand!"

  "Dig up the onion or your momma will DIE!" the voice screamed in his ear.

  James jumped to his feet, his hands raised to the sky.

  "What onion!?"

  ***

  Anna came upon a mulberry tree. Crow was in the air right behind her. She wasn't far from the clearing where she had seen that first red bird on the spring morning, not so long ago. Dusk was falling in the Hollow, washing the Hollow of its color. Things were starting to dim, devoid of life. The tree line up on the Ridge was a sickly gray, shading on to black. The birds were roosting for the night, saving their songs for the morning sun.

  Anna blended into the background. Her hair, tangled and dirty, no longer caught the light that could make it look as if it were a fire, blazing red. Her arms and legs, even her bare feet were coated with a thin layer of dust and mud, as were her dress and the shawl that she kept around her shoulders though it was still warm. She sat down in the weeds, far enough away from the mulberry tree so that Crow wouldn't shower her with droppings, but close enough so that she could watch his dark shape skip back and forth between the branches as he searched for the juiciest berries. Crow was blacker than the darkest night in the Hollow and probably just as mean, Anna thought as she felt the night wrap around her like a cloak. The dew was starting to fall, a fine mist, almost nothing at all. Anna turned her face skyward, letting the falling dew dampen her.
Night breezes soughed through the trees, singing a mournful song all their own. Anna rested, her back against a tree trunk, saving what energy she had left for the night ahead.

  Something fell into her lap. Her eyes popped open.

  Crow stood in her lap, his claws clinging to the folds of her dress. Crow opened his beak, then clicked it shut with a snap. Black as an ink well, except for his beak and legs, Crow glared at her. He raised one foot, his claw catching in the material of her dress. He yanked it free.

  Anna cocked her head at him. "What?" she said softly.

  "Caw!" Crow's scream echoed through the trees, sounding like a dozen crows instead of just the one in her lap.

  Anna's ears hurt from the screech that he had made. That crow had lungs on him, she thought. "It's not time to go yet. I want to wait 'til full dark." Crow bobbed his head in agreement.

  "'Til the midnight."

  Crow flapped his wings, the wind from them lifting a blast of air to Anna's face, and flew back to the mulberry tree.

  Anna drew her potato sack into her lap. She slipped her hand inside and caressed the old cracked binding of her ancestral book.

  She would wait.

  Waiting wouldn't do her any harm.

  ***

  Seph paced in the upstairs hall.

  The doctor hadn't called, the doctor's service hadn't called. Hell, no one had called.

  Seph had just finished trying to get Chloe to sip a little chicken soup. He had got a couple of tablespoons down her and she had kept it down, thank God, but she was till burning up with the fever. She looked like she had shrunk by twenty pounds since this afternoon. It was nigh on to dark now. Damn it, James, he thought. Why did that boy take that truck, tonight of all nights?

  When he had went down to see if Fern had supper ready yet, she had told him that James had taken the truck.

  "He didn't say where he was going, Dad," Fern had said as she ladled soup into a coffee cup.

  "Well, why did you let him take it?"

  "He won't listen to me. I told him that you'd kill him if he did, but he went on anyway." Fern handed him the cup of steaming soup. "Is Momma any better?"

  "Not yet. Maybe this soup will help her. I tell you, I'm so pissed about James taking that truck. James should have thought that I might need it to take your Mother into town if she gets any worse. Your Mother's car has something wrong with the fuel pump and I haven't had time to fix it so now, thanks to your brother, I'm up a shit creek."

  Fern looked down at her feet. "I'm sorry, Dad."

  "It's not your fault. I've just had so much on my mind lately that I can't see straight." Seph patted her on the back and went back upstairs to Chloe.

  Seph's legs were getting tired of pacing the upstairs hallway. It wasn't doing him any good just walking back and forth.

  He went back downstairs again. Chloe was sleeping. He left her to rest. Seph wondered if maybe she had eaten something bad, a bad egg maybe, and that's what was causing her to be sick.

  He walked out on the front porch and looked as far up the road as he could see in the darkness. Nothing, not even a pair of headlights. Seph felt like he was being wrapped in a tomb.

  Where was that boy?

  If he had to, he'd call a damn ambulance. If Chloe started having trouble breathing or anything, he'd do just that. Her keeping down that tiny bit of soup was a good sign, though. At least, he hoped it was.

  Seph sat down on the porch swing and lit up a cigarette, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. Chloe didn't like it when he smoked in the house. The front porch swing was where he smoked his evening smoke.

  He thought back to what he had done, earlier that morning. Burying that babe had been the most awful thing that he had ever had to bring himself to do. It haunted him now as he sat, slowly swaying, waiting for his son to come home.

  He remembered something that the crazy girl had said. Something about if he didn't give the babe his name that his family would be cursed. He thought of Chloe, lying upstairs in between the sweaty sheets. He shook his head. If he thought that the crazy girl had anything to do with Chloe's sickness, he'd better check himself into the looney bin. That girl was just a crazy fool. She could no more curse his family than she could join the Country Club out on the old highway.

  He flicked the butt of his cigarette, the end of it still glowing red, over the porch rail. It made a fine arc as it sailed over the rail and landed somewhere in the front yard. Seph stood, looked down the road one more time, and went back in the house to check on Chloe again.

  ***

  Anna watched the cigarette arc, shining like a firefly. She had seen Seph come out on the porch and sit in the swing in the dim light. Now, she watched him go back into the house, the light coming from inside highlighting him as he went through the door.

  She waited, her hand grasping the loaded onion inside her potato sack. She didn't want to move too soon. He might come back outside. She watched the light coming from an upstairs window at the front of the house. She saw Seph's shadow move across the upstairs window, bend down, then disappear below the window sill.

  Anna rose from the log.

  Crow flapped his wings.

  "Shhh," Anna said to him. She didn't want him to let out one of his nightmare screeches. Not now.

  She started to pick her way over the weeds and brush, heading for the edge of the road. Now was the time to move.

  A stick cracked beneath her bare foot. She pressed her lips together. The stick had sent a sharp thorn into the ball of her foot. She leaned against a sapling, raised her foot, bracing it on her knee, and pulled the thorn out. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but she had to be quiet. She wasn't sure how far the people in the house could hear.

  She got to the edge of the road, stepping into the gravel that lined the berm. She glanced in both directions, looking for signs of a car coming toward her. Nothing. Good. She stepped out onto the pavement.

  Anna crouched low, looking more like a witch than anything, dressed in her raggedy old dress with her shawl pulled up over her head. She walked as fast as she could across the pavement until she got to the edge of the grass that marked the Mayhew's front yard.

  Staying low, she crossed half of the front yard and hunkered down next to a hickory tree. She watched from the shelter of the tree, making sure there was no movement from the house.

  Anna continued up across the yard until she was at the edge of the front porch. She looked up at the house. The lights glowed inside, dim and homey. Anger and jealousy filled her.

  She got the onion from her potato sack and laid it in the grass at the side of the porch steps. Then she got out a small gardening spade. She started to dig, as quietly as she could, at the side of the steps. She made a hole big enough for the onion. She placed the onion, wax plug facing the sky, in the hole, making sure that the side of the onion touched the cement of the steps. Then she covered the onion over with dirt. She patted it in place, trying to make it look as if nothing had happened in the spot. It was hard to judge. The shadow of the steps fell right over the spot. If she was lucky, the deed would be done before morning light. It would be too late then for someone to dig up the onion and break the spell. Finished, she scuttled across the yard back to the hickory tree.

  Headlights flashed across the yard, cutting a wide arc. Anna ducked down. It was Seph's truck. The truck pulled in the driveway.

  She scrambled around to the other side of the tree so that the boy that was getting out of the truck couldn't see her.

  It was Seph's oldest, she noted.

  He scanned the yard, his eyes resting on the tree for a second. She thought she was had, but then he looked on past the tree and finally went into the house.

  Anna watched for a few minutes. Shapes moved behind the windows. Anna giggled at the thought that Seph's family had no idea what was going to happen.

  Suddenly, the boy looked out the front door.

  Anna slapped her hand over her mouth and tried to blend into the grass. It looked as i
f he was looking right at her.

  Anna held her breath.

  The boy hesitated, staring through the screen. The light came from behind him, outlining his form in a golden halo. But his eyes.

  Anna could see the color of the boy's eyes. They gleamed in the night, blue, like his father's. Anna's hand dropped from her mouth. She knew who her adversary would be. She'd been worried about the woman knowing sign, but it wasn't the woman that she needed to worry about. It was the boy.

  He knew things. She could tell it now.

  Anna laid down flat in the grass. "Don't see me," she whispered.

  The boy turned his head, as if listening.

  Anna glared at him.

  The boy turned, moving away from the screen, and walked back into the interior of the house.

  Anna let out a long breath and laid her face down on her hands. That had been close. She breathed deeply until her heart stopped fluttering.

  Slowly, she rose up on all fours, never taking her eyes off the house. She backed away from the tree, stood and walked crablike across the road and into the woods. A winged black shape joined her. The two of them slunk off deeper into the woods.

  Bubbling laughter floated through the darkness of the night.

  ***

  James had pulled into the driveway prepared to do battle.

  He had two battles in mind, the first concerning an onion. He had no idea where it was but he had to find out. His time spent at the cemetery, listening to a voice that he knew in his heart was Aunt Doll, had told him enough to know that what was happening down here in this backwoods Hollow had nothing to do with natural things or things of this day and age. Someone or something was working magic. Black magic.

  And he was prepared to do battle with the tiny bit of knowledge he had of the old southern folkways. He might not know everything, but he hoped that he knew enough to stop his family from a kind of torture that hadn't went on in these hills since his Aunt Doll had been young.

  First, he had to find out which one of his family had done something to piss someone off enough to make them want revenge.

  His mother was the one that was sick. His mother was the one who would die if he didn't find some stupid onion.