by Libba Bray
Isaiah wanted to tell the old man what he could do. Memphis always said not to talk about it, but Memphis wasn’t there. He’d gone off somewhere and forgotten all about his brother. It made him feel like crying, but boys weren’t supposed to cry. Seemed there was a whole list of things Isaiah wasn’t supposed to do, and he was tired of it.
“I can do magic,” Isaiah blurted out.
“Can you, now?”
“Mm-hmm. Sister says I’m something special.” If Memphis was keeping secrets from him, then Isaiah could keep secrets from Memphis. He could tell them, too.
“Does she, now? What makes you so special?”
“Sister says I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Well, now, you can tell old Blind Bill, cain’t you? Who’m I gonna tell?”
“Sister says no.”
“Mm-hmm. I see. You gonna let a woman own you, little man?” Quick as a snake, he grabbed the ball with his left hand and held it up out of reach.
“Hey!”
“You so special, how ’bout you take it from me? Or maybe you not really special after all, is that it?”
“I am!”
“ ’At’s all right, son. We cain’t all be special.”
“I am special!” Isaiah said, so angry that the tears came.
Blind Bill gave Isaiah his ball and patted his head. “Now, now, I didn’t mean any offense, little man. ’Course you special. I can tell. Blind Bill can tell.”
“You can?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir.”
The old man’s words settled over Isaiah like a balm. At least somebody cared about his feelings. Isaiah was tired of being small and easily dismissed. He was tired of everybody—Sister, Memphis, Octavia, his teachers, the folks at Mother AME—telling him what he could and couldn’t do. What good was it having something special if he couldn’t let anybody know about it?
“All right, then. I’ll tell you. But you have to promise to keep it a secret.”
The old man crossed his heart with a long finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
That was the most solemn promise Isaiah knew.
“I can see things in my mind. When Sister’s holding the cards, I can tell what shapes she’s got without even seeing ’em.”
Bill’s mouth twitched. “ ’Zat so? You’d clean up real good at poker.”
“Sister won’t let me.”
“No, I expect she wouldn’t.”
“And sometimes…” Isaiah paused.
“Yes?”
“Sometimes, I can see things that haven’t happened yet.”
A tingle started in Bill’s stomach, working its way through his blood like a hunger.
With a shaking hand, he patted the top of the boy’s head again.
The boy took the blind man’s big paw, turning it over. “You got a mark on ya.”
“Old cut from back when I used to work the cotton. Them bristles reach out and GET YA!” Bill spooked Isaiah, who shrieked, then laughed. He liked Bill, liked being teased by the old man. It made him think of his daddy, how he used to swing Isaiah up by both of his arms when they walked down the street, and his mother would scold the both of them, saying, “Now, Marvin, you’re going to stretch his arms clean out.” Thinking about his mama and daddy made him sad.
They’d reached the small alley Bill had told him to be on the lookout for. “Shortcut,” he said to the old man.
“Thank you.” Bill’s walk slowed. “You all right there, little man? You sound sad.”
“Just thinking about my mama. She died.”
“Well. That is sad.” Bill slowed just a hair more. The alley, he knew, would dead-end at a brick wall. He’d slept there a few times. “I could take the sad right out of your head if you want.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“Come on over here and I’ll show you.”
Isaiah was dubious. It wasn’t just that his auntie had told him about being careful with strangers; Blind Bill wasn’t a stranger, exactly. There was just a moment’s pause, something deep down that made him wary, but he followed Bill anyway.
“Not much of a shortcut, Mr. Johnson. Got a brick wall at the other end.”
“My mistake. Must’ve been thinking of another street. Hard for a blind man, you know. Now come on over here. Come on, now.”
Isaiah looked back down the alley at the empty street.
“You not scared, are you? Special fella like you?”
“No. I ain’t scared,” Isaiah said. Not scared, Memphis would say. Well, Memphis wasn’t there. Isaiah went to the old man.
“I just have to put my hand on your head, like so. That tickle?”
It did just a bit, and Isaiah laughed.
“I take that as a yes. How ’bout here?” Bill moved his hand forward so that the tips of his fingers gripped the front of Isaiah’s forehead firmly.
“That’s good.”
“All right, then. Gonna be a little squeeze, and then you won’t feel sad no more.”
Anymore, Isaiah silently corrected. Just like Memphis. He had a sudden premonition about his brother, the growing sense that he was in trouble, that something wasn’t right.
“I have to go home, Mr. Johnson. Octavia’ll be waiting dinner on me.”
“Just hold still, son.”
“I have to go.”
“Don’t struggle, now. Don’t struggle.”
Panic beat its fists against Isaiah’s rib cage. The sense of dread bloomed into a terrifying vision: He saw his brother standing at a crossroads under a blackening sky.
“Let me go!” Isaiah shouted, trying in vain to break free from Bill’s fierce grip. “Let me go, let me go!”
Bill grunted and held on tightly and was rewarded by the electric jolt.
Under his grip, Isaiah twitched and shook, and if it was anything like the past, when he could see, Bill knew the boy’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets. Maybe a small bit of drool foamed in the corners of his mouth. Bill’s own heartbeat sped up, and for a second he remembered running through tobacco fields barefoot under skies that stretched in every direction. A number floated before him—one, four, four. A number. He’d gotten a number in the bargain! Another jolt rocked Bill’s body, stronger than the first. His tongue curled in his mouth and he tasted metal. He saw a crossroads, and a cloud of dust billowing up on the road as if before a storm, and tall, gray stick of a man in a stovepipe hat. Under his palm, the boy was still and quiet. He dropped to the pavement at Bill’s feet and the old man crouched next to him, listening to the sound of his breathing.
“Hey! Hey!” someone yelled from the street.
Bill cursed under his breath and pulled his hand back. “Over here! We need help over here!”
The voice moved toward them and became the dim outline of a man. A shadow. Oh, if only he’d had a few more moments! How much more could he see? How much more power could he taste?
“What happened?” The man’s voice was hard, accusatory.
“I don’t know. The little man was lost. I was trying to help him find his way, and he started having some kind of fit, I think. I couldn’t rightly tell ’cause of my condition.” Bill put a hand on his cane. “I been calling out—didn’t you hear me?”
“I expect so,” the man answered. “I expect that’s what brought me. It’s lucky you were here.”
“The Good Lord musta been looking out.”
People were so suggestible.
Octavia cried out when she saw the man carrying Isaiah’s limp body up the walk, Bill Johnson trailing just behind. The boy was put to bed. A doctor was called.
Plates of spoon bread were offered. Bill cradled his on his lap and gobbled it down. He hadn’t tasted home cooking in a long time, and Octavia was a fine cook.
“What happened?” Octavia asked.
“Well, ma’am, the little man was lost, and I was just tryin’ to help him out….” Bill told her the same story he’d given before. He was nearly finished when he heard the older Campbell boy bursti
ng through the front door as if he might break it down.
“Where is he? Where’s Isaiah?” Panic in his voice.
“Resting.” Steel in hers.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Save your breath for prayer, Memphis John. I already heard from Mrs. Robinson that you were arrested and Papa Charles had to bail you out,” she said bitterly.
“Can I see Isaiah?”
Bill didn’t hear anything, and he could only assume the communication was a signal—a nod, a gesture. How many such silent conversations had he missed over the years? He could hear Memphis slinking away to some other room—to his brother’s side, no doubt. Those two were close, a bond forged by tragedy. That gave Bill the smallest pause, but he pushed it away. It wasn’t his job to put the fairness back into the world.
“Don’t be too hard on the boy,” he said to Octavia, a peace offering. He stood to go, and Octavia gave him his cane plus another piece of spoon bread in waxed paper.
“Thank you, Mr. Johnson.”
“Bill.”
“Thank you, Bill.” He could hear the catch in her voice. “Oh, my sweet Jesus, Lord Jesus. What if you hadn’t been with him? What if he’d been alone?”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Miss.”
“You call anytime,” Octavia said after him. He was at the little gate out to the street.
“Thank you. I believe I will.”
Bill Johnson turned toward the night, which was not as dark as the place he’d been. He took the rose from his pocket and curled it tightly in his left hand. “I’m sorry, little man. I’m real sorry,” Blind Bill whispered. When he opened his hand again, the rose had turned to ash.
In the quiet of the back bedroom, Memphis watched his brother breathing in and out. Each breath felt like an indictment: Where… were… you… brother? He swallowed dryly, terrified. What if he had brought this on Isaiah? What if a curse meant for Memphis had reached out and touched his brother instead? He felt sick inside, and sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Don’t you worry, Ice Man,” he whispered. “I’ll make it right. I’ll take it on.”
Memphis placed his hands on Isaiah’s small body, shut his eyes tight, and waited for the warmth and the trance, the strange dreams of healing. But nothing happened. His hands never gained warmth. His brother slept on, like the enchanted resident of a bespelled fairy-tale kingdom, and Memphis, the dragon-slayer, stood on the other side of the kingdom’s unassailable walls.
He slunk down by the side of the bed and buried his head in his useless hands.
BRETHREN
The ruins of old Brethren lay up in the heavy woods of Yotahala Mountain, a name the Oneida had given it, meaning “sun.” But there was precious little of that as Will’s Ford made the steady two-mile climb over the narrow dirt road through heavy woods barely touched by the late-afternoon gloom. A light early-October snow had begun to fall. The wispy flakes danced in the glow of the Model T’s headlights. The car hadn’t much heat, and Evie shivered as she sat in the backseat, absorbing every bump.
“Close now,” Will declared above the steady whine of the engine. “Look for a twined oak. That’s the turnoff.”
“I wasn’t doing a thing but walking past,” Evie said, continuing an earlier conversation. She was still shaken up about the encounter with the faithful outside the fairgrounds. “Not a thing.”
“It isn’t your fault. There’s nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he’s right,” Will said. He was hunched over the wheel, craning his head this way and that, not content to trust Evie and Jericho to do the searching on their own. “The records keeper told me there’s been a resurgence in the Brethren cult in recent years.”
“But why on earth?”
“When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear,” Will explained. “Let’s hope they remain at the fair. I’d hate to think what would happen if they should discover us exhuming the body of their prophet’s son.”
On the right side of the road, where trees with bark like skinned knees stood guard, Evie spied an animal-skin charm branded with the familiar pentacle hanging from a scraggly branch. Mechanically, she drew the flap of her coat across her bare neck. “I think we’re getting close.”
“There’s the twined oak.” Jericho pointed to a massive tree whose gnarled limbs had come together in a strange ballet of twisting bark.
Will angled the car off the road and into the clearing, parking it behind a still-lush thicket and saying, “Hopefully these bushes will obscure our presence long enough.”
From the trunk Will retrieved a kerosene camping lantern, which he lit and keyed to a soft glow; a flashlight for Evie; and two shovels, one of which he handed to Jericho. As he did so, Evie was reminded of their grim purpose. Will shouldered his shovel and lifted the lantern toward the imposing wooded mountainside ahead. “This way,” he said, leading them up the hill over a faint scar of dirt path. The hazy, dying light lent the woods a deep grayness. Evie tried to picture young John Hobbes living in such isolation, away from the welcoming fires of taverns and the fence-post talk of neighbors, these woods his only companion.
It was straight uphill, and Evie’s legs protested the climb. She was glad she’d worn sensible shoes. The air thinned, making each breath more of an effort. She glanced behind them and could no longer see the Ford in its hiding spot.
“How… much… farther?” Evie panted out. Her muscles screamed.
“Almost,” Will answered, just as breathless.
Almost magically, the path evened out, flattened. It wound around a jutting face of hillock and the little breath left in Evie’s lungs caught.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Old Brethren,” Will said in a hushed voice.
They’d come upon the abandoned ruins of the old camp. A handful of moldering log cabins were spread out in the clearing. A splintered door hung open on rusted hinges; its dark, empty windows gave it the appearance of a skull house. Weeds sprang up around the stone carcass of a well. A stone path was still somewhat visible beneath the cover of leaves and clover. It wound through the mist-shrouded trees. To their left, the sound of the river mingled with the chirruping of crickets and birds. Evie’s flashlight reflected in the eyes of a fox, making her jump. The fox skittered back to safety; the flashlight shook in her hand.
“The old church,” Will said, making quickly for a large square in the center where a raggedy mess of charred timber lay in silent testament like a mausoleum. Carefully, Evie stepped over the splintered threshold, ticklish with tall weeds, and into the remains of the church. In all their late-night philosophical wranglings about the nature of evil, nothing had prepared her for the feel of it, the actual weight of some hungry wickedness pressed against her bare skin. For the old church of Brethren carried within its decay the unmistakable heft and patient persistence of evil. Under the wind, she could nearly make out a child’s laugh, a swell of moans, a threat of whispers. She wanted to run. But where was there to run? What place lay beyond the reach of evil?
Piles of crumbling bricks formed a semicircle in one corner, and Evie recognized it as the fire pit she’d seen when she’d held John Hobbes’s ring. It was nothing but a blackened trough now, the bricks gone gray and slick with moss. Just behind it in the grass lay a branding iron. Evie picked it up delicately. The Pentacle of the Beast. She dropped it quickly, startling a tiny grass snake slithering out from under a pile of stones. Evie peered into the abandoned pit and saw fresh kindling, half nubs of candles. Someone had used it recently. Her heartbeat quickened at the thought of who or what could be out there in those woods.
“They’re still using it as a meetinghouse,” Will said, as if reading her thoughts. He pointed to the arrangement of flat rocks placed in a circle around a tin sign. With his shoe, he nudged the sign over. The back was also adorned with the five-pointed star and snake.
Will gazed up at the fading light. “Let’s find that grave.”
> Dusk fell quickly now. The woods were shrouded in dark-blue shadow. A half coin of gauzy moon appeared as they walked beyond the burned church and down the hill. The low stone wall of the graveyard appeared in the light of Will’s lantern. Behind it, blackened gravestones tilted like crooked teeth in a rotting mouth. Evie shone the flashlight from stone to stone, trying to read the names there. Jedidiah Blake. Richard Jean. Mary Schultz. Each gravestone bore the inscription HE WILL RISE.
“Look for anything out of the ordinary—animal bones, a pentagram, charms or other offerings. They’d probably want to venerate his grave,” Will instructed.
Evie stuck close to Jericho. Her heels sank into the soft ground, and she tried not to think about what was buried beneath that ground. She wished she had on her woolen stockings; it was much colder here than it was in the valley. Their breath came out in small gray puffs, their lungs expelling ghosts of air. The last of the light had slipped from the sky, like a hostess shutting the door on lingering guests. A smattering of early stars twinkled awake. The beam of Evie’s flashlight bounced over gravestones made ghoulish in the glare.
“What if we can’t find it?” she said.
“We’ll have to dig up every grave until we do,” Will answered.
The wind whistled over the mountain again. It felt like fingertips brushing her skin, turning her about in some child’s game where she was blindfolded.
“Over here,” Jericho called. Will came to his side and held the lamp over a spot marked by a simple wooden cross hung with charms. The skull of some small animal had been left at the base of it.
“Do you suppose this is it?” Evie asked.
Will wiped a smudge of dirt from the cross, revealing initials carved into the wood: YHA. “Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode,” Will said. “Let’s start digging.”
Will parked the lantern by the cross. He and Jericho removed their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and got to work with the shovels. Evie’s job was to keep the flashlight trained on them and keep alert for sounds. She jumped at everything, swinging the flashlight wildly.