“Get dressed,” Rebekah said, and motioned with the lantern toward his clothes, laid across the back of a chair. In a pocket of the jeans was the piece of coal, which she’d carefully examined when he showed it to her, earlier in the evening she’d put a coating of shellac on it so the black wouldn’t rub off on his clothes or hands.
He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “What time is it?”
“Time starts now,” she replied. “Come on, get up.”
He rose and dressed, his mind still fogged with sleep. His stomach heaved and roiled, and he feared throwing up again. He didn’t know what was wrong with him; after a supper of vegetable soup and chicken wings, Gram had given him a mug of something that was oily and black and tasted like molasses. She’d said it was to keep his system “regular,” but within twenty minutes of drinking it he’d been outside, throwing up his supper into the grass. He’d heaved until there was nothing left to come up, and now he felt light-headed and weak. “Can I have some water?” he asked.
“Later. Put your shoes on.”
He yawned and struggled with his shoelaces. “What’s wrong? Where are we goin’?”
“Just outside, for a little walk. Your mother’s going to meet us.”
Billy wiped the last ghosts of sleep out of his eyes. Gram was still wearing her overalls and plaid shirt, but she’d taken off her hat and her silver hair gleamed in the lantern’s light; there was a brightly colored scarf tied around her forehead like a sweatband. “Follow me,” she said when he was ready to go.
They left the house through the kitchen door. The sky was filled with stars, the moon as orange as a bloated pumpkin. Billy followed his grandmother to the small smokehouse, and saw a column of white smoke curling up from the chimney. Suddenly Ramona stepped out of the darkness into the lantern’s wash, and she placed a firm hand on his shoulder. His heart began beating harder, because he knew that whatever secret lessons he was supposed to learn were about to begin.
Ramona brushed off his shirt and straightened his collar, as if preparing him for church. She was smiling, but Billy had seen the worry in his mother’s eyes. “You’re going to do just fine,” she said in a small, quiet voice.
“Yes ma’am.” He was trying to be brave, though he eyed the smokehouse nervously.
“Are you afraid?”
He nodded.
His grandmother stepped forward and stared down at him. “Too afraid?” she asked, watching him carefully.
He paused, knowing they wouldn’t teach him if he didn’t want to learn; but he wanted to know why he’d seen Will Booker crawl up from the coal pile. “No,” he said. “Not too afraid.”
“Once it starts, it can’t be stopped,” Rebekah said, as a last warning to both of them. Then she leaned down in front of Billy, her old back and knees cracking, and held up the lantern so the light splashed across his face. “Are you strong, boy?”
“Sure. I’ve got muscles, and I can—”
“No. Strong in here.” She thumped his chest, over the heart. “Strong enough to go into dark places and come back out again, stronger still. Are you?”
The old woman’s gaze defied him. He glanced up at the white column of smoke and touched the outline of the piece of coal in his pocket; then his spine stiffened and he said firmly, “Yes.”
“Good. Then we’re ready.” Rebekah straightened up and threw back the latch of the smokehouse door. A wave of heat slowly rolled out, making the lantern’s light shimmer. Ramona took Billy’s hand and followed her mother inside, and then the door was shut again and bolted from within.
A pinewood fire, bordered by rough stones, burned on the earthen floor; directly above it, hanging down several feet from the ceiling, was a circular metal flue, through which the smoke ascended to the chimney. The fire, Billy saw, had been burning for some time, and the bed of coals on which it lay seethed red and orange. There were wooden racks and hooks for hanging meat; Rebekah hung the lantern up on one and motioned for Billy to sit down in front of the fire. When he’d situated himself, the hot glow of the flames like a tight mask across his cheeks, his grandmother unfolded a heavy quilt from where it had lain on a storage rack and draped it around Billy’s shoulders, working it tightly so only his hands and face were free. Brightly colored blankets had been draped along the smokehouse walls to seal in the heat and smoke. A dark purple clay owl dangled from one of the hooks, its ceramic feathers gleaming; from another hook hung a strange red ceramic mask, from another what looked like a hand gripping a heart, and from a fourth hook a grinning white ceramic skull.
Ramona sat on his right. The old woman reached up to the flue, touched a small lever, and a baffle clanked shut. Smoke began to drift to all sides, slowly and sinuously. Then Rebekah reached into a bag in the corner and came up with a handful of wet leaves; she spread them over the fire, and the smoke instantly thickened, turning bluish gray and curling low to the floor. She took three more objects from the storage rack—a blackened clay pipe, a leather tobacco pouch decorated with blue and yellow beads, and a battered old leather-bound Bible—and then eased herself down to the floor on Billy’s left. “My old bones can’t take too much more of this,” she said quietly, arranging the items in front of her. Flames leapt, scrawling crooked shadows across the walls; burning leaves sparked and crackled. The smoke was getting dense now, and bringing tears to Billy’s eyes; sweat dripped down his face and off the point of his chin.
“This is the beginning,” Rebekah said, looking at the boy. “From this time on, everything is new and has to be relearned. You should first of all know who you are, and what you are. A purpose sings in you, Billy, but to understand it you have to learn the song.” The firelight glinted in her dark eyes as her face bent closer to his. Beads of sweat rolled down from her forehead into the sweatband. “The Choctaw song, the song of life sent to us from the Giver of Breath. He’s in this Book”—she touched the Bible—“but He’s everywhere, too. Inside, outside, in your heart and soul, and in the world…”
“I thought He lived in church,” Billy said.
“In the church of the body, yes. But what’s brick and wood?” Rebekah opened the pouch and began to fill the pipe with a dark, oily-looking mixture of bark and herbs, plus green shreds from a fernlike plant that grew on the banks of the distant stream. “Hundreds of years ago, all this was Choctaw land,” and she motioned with a broad sweep of her hand that stirred the layers of smoke. “Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia…our people lived here in peace, as farmers near to the earth. When the whites came, they wanted this land because they saw how good it was; the Giver of Breath decreed to us that we should accept them, and learn to live in the white world while other tribes fought and perished. The Choctaw survived, without fighting, but now we’re the people no one remembers. Still, our blood runs strong and proud, and what we’ve learned in our minds and hearts goes on. The Giver of Breath is God of the Choctaw, but no different from the white man’s God—the same God, without favorites, with love for all men and women. He speaks in the breeze, in the rain, and in the smoke. He speaks to the heart, and can move a mountain by using the hand of a man.” She finished with the pipe, touched a smoldering twig to the tobacco, and puffed on it to get it going. Then she took it from her mouth, her eyes watering, and gave it to Billy, who looked at her with bewilderment. “Take it,” Rebekah said. “It’s for you. Ramona, we need more leaves, please.”
Billy took the pipe while his mother fed more wet leaves to the fire. He took a tentative puff that almost knocked his head off, and he was convulsed with coughing for a moment. The smoke and heat seemed to be closing in, and he could hardly breathe. Panic streaked through him, but suddenly his grandmother’s hand was on his arm and she said, “It’s all right. Relax; now try it again.”
He did, as acrid gray smoke bellowed from the fire. The pipe smoke seared the back of his throat as he drew it in, and black dots spun before his eyes.
“You’ll get used to it,” Rebekah said. “Now where was I? Oh, yes. The Giver of Breat
h. God of the Choctaws. God of the white man. He also gives gifts of talent, Billy, to use for His good. Inhale the smoke, all the way. Yes, that’s right. Some people can paint beautiful pictures, some can make sweet music, others work with their hands, and some with their wits; but in all people is the seed of talent, to do something of value in this world. And doing that—perfecting that talent, making the seed grow to good fruit—should be the aim of this life.”
Billy inhaled again and coughed violently. The quilt was damp with his sweating, and still the heat continued to mount. “Even me, Gram? Is that seed in me?”
“Yes. Especially in you.” She took off the kerchief, wiped her eyes with it, and handed it across the boy to Ramona, who mopped at the freely running sweat on her face and neck.
Billy stared into the fire. His head was full of a burning-rope odor, and now the smoke even tasted sweet. The flames seemed to be flaring brighter; they held beautiful glints of rainbow colors, entrancing him. He heard himself speak as if from a distance: “What kind of seed is it?”
“Billy, all three of us share something very special, something that’s been passed down to us through the generations. We don’t know how it began, or where it will end, but…we can see the dead, Billy, and we can speak to them.”
He trembled, watching the flames shoot out brilliant green-and-orange lights. Through the thick haze of smoke shadows capered on the walls. “No,” he whispered. “That’s…evil, like…like Daddy says!”
“Your father’s wrong,” Ramona said, “and he’s afraid. There’s dignity in death. But sometimes…there are those who need help in passing over from this world to the next, like Will Booker did. Will couldn’t rest until he was lying next to his folks, but his spirit—his soul—will go on. Call them haunts, or ghosts, or revenants—but some of them cling to this world after death, out of confusion, pain, or fear; some of them are stunned and wander looking for help. But all of them have to find peace—they have to give up their emotions, and the feelings they had at the instant of death if those feelings are keeping them here in this world—before they can pass over. I’m not saying I understand death, and I’m not saying I know what Heaven and Hell are going to be like, but death itself isn’t evil, Billy; it’s the call to rest after a long day’s work.”
Billy opened his eyes and put a trembling hand to his forehead. You’re in the darrrrrk place, a voice in his head hissed. It became Jimmy Jed Falconer’s thunderous roar: YOU’RE A GUEST OF SATAN! “I don’t want to go to Hell!” he moaned suddenly, and tried to fight free of the constricting blanket. “I don’t want Satan to get me!”
Rebekah quickly gripped his shoulders and said, “Shhhhhh. It’s all right now, you’re safe right here.” She let him lean his head on her shoulder and rocked him gently while Ramona added wet leaves to the fire. After another moment he calmed down, though he was still shaking. The heat was stifling now, but most of the smoke had risen to the ceiling where it undulated in thick gray layers. “Maybe Hell’s just something a man made up,” she said softly, “to make some other man afraid. I think that if Hell exists, it must be right here on this earth…just like Heaven can be, too. No, I think death’s apart from all that; it’s another step in who and what we are. We leave the clay behind and our spirits take flight.” She tilted his face up and looked into his eyes. “That’s not saying, though, that there isn’t such a thing as evil…”
Billy blinked. His grandmother was a shadowy form, surrounded by a halo of reddish white light. He felt weary and struggled to keep his eyes open. “I’ll…fight it,” he mumbled. “I’ll hit it…and kick it, and…”
“I wish it was as simple as that,” Rebekah said. “But it’s cunning and takes all kinds of shapes. It can even make itself beautiful. Sometimes you don’t see it for what it is until it’s too late, and then it scars your spirit and gets a hold on you. The world itself can be an evil place, and make people sick to their guts with greed and hate and envy; but evil’s a greedy hog that walks on its own legs, too, and tries to crush out any spark of good it can find.”
As if in a dream, Billy lifted the pipe and drew from it again. The smoke tasted as smooth as a licorice stick. He was listening very carefully to his grandmother, and watching the undulating smoke at the ceiling.
The old woman brushed a sweat-damp curl from his forehead. “Are you afraid?” she asked gently.
“No,” he replied. “But I’m…kinda sleepy.”
“Good. I want you to rest now, if you can.” She took the pipe from him and knocked the ashes into the fire.
“Can’t,” he said. “Not yet.” And then his eyes closed and he was drifting in the dark, listening to the fire’s soft crackling; the dark wasn’t frightening, but instead was warm and secure.
Rebekah eased him to the ground, tucking the blanket in around him so he’d continue sweating. Ramona added more leaves to the fire and then they left the smokehouse.
19
BILLY CAME AWAKE WITH sudden start. He was alone. The fire had burned down to red embers; the heat was still fierce, and thick smoke had settled in a calm, still cloud at the ceiling. His heart was beating very fast, and he struggled to get free of the blanket. The grinning ceramic skull glinted with low red light.
And suddenly something began to happen in the fire. Flames snapped and hissed. As Billy stated, transfixed, a long fiery coil slowly rose from the embers. It rattled, sending off tiny red sparks.
A bunting, spade-shaped head with eyes of sizzling cinders rose up. Red coils tangled and writhed, pushing the fiery length of flaming rattlesnake out of the fire and toward Billy. Its eyes fixed upon him, and when its jaws opened drops of burning venom, like shining rubies, drooled out. The snake slithered closer, with a noise like paper charring, across the clay floor; Billy tried to pull away, but he was tangled up in the blanket. He couldn’t find his voice. The flame-rattler touched his blanket; the cloth sparked and burned. It reared back, its body a seething red, to strike.
Billy started to kick at it, but before he could, something gray and almost transparent swooped down from the cloud of smoke at the ceiling.
It was a large, fierce-looking eagle, its body and wings wraithlike, flurrying smoke. With a high, angered shriek that echoed within Billy’s head, the smoke-eagle dropped through the air toward the flame-rattler, which reared back and spat sparks from between its burning fangs. The eagle swerved and dived again, its smoky claws gripping at the back of the snake’s head. The two enemies fought for a few seconds, the eagle’s wings beating at the air. Then the fire-snake’s tail whipped up, striking into the eagle, and the eagle spun away.
Balancing on tattered wings, the smoke-eagle dropped down again, its claws clamping just behind the snake’s head; the flame-rattler buried its burning jaws within the eagle’s breast, and Billy could see its dripping fangs at work. But then the eagle slashed downward, and parts of the rattler’s body hissed through the air in fragments of fire. Coils of flame wrapped around the eagle’s form, and both of them whirled in a mad circle for a few seconds like a burning gray cloth. The eagle’s wings drove them both upward, up into the cloud of smoke, and then they were gone except for a few droplets of flame that fell back into the embers.
Sweat blinded Billy, and he frantically rubbed his eyes to clear them, expecting the strange combatants to come hurtling back.
“It’s sin, Billy,” a quiet voice said from just behind the boy.
Startled, Billy looked around. His father, gaunt and sad-eyed, sat there on the clay floor in overalls and a faded workshirt. “Daddy!” Billy said, astounded. “What’re you doing here?”
The man shook his head gravely. “This is all sin. Every last bit of it.”
“No, it’s not! Gram said…”
John leaned forward, his blue eyes blazing with reflected firelight. “It is rotten, filthy, black evil. That woman is trying to mark your soul, son, so you’ll belong to Satan for the rest of your life.”
“But she says there are things I have to learn!
That I’ve got a purpose in me, to…”
He moaned softly, as if the boy’s words had hurt him. “All this…this talk don’t mean a thing, son. You’re a smart, upright boy, and you’ve never given heed to talk about haunts and spirits before, have you? This Mystery Walk thing is wrong, and it’s deadly dangerous.” He held out his hand. “Take my hand, Billy, and I’ll lead you out of this vile place. Come on. Trust your daddy.”
Billy almost reached out for him. His father’s eyes were bright and pleading, and he could tell how much his father was hurting for him. Still…something wasn’t right. He said, “How…how did you get here? We came in the car, so…how did you get here?”
“I came on the bus as fast as I could, to save you from Satan’s pitchfork. And he’ll stick you, Billy; oh yes, he’ll stick you hard and make you scream if you stay in this dark place…”
“No. You’re wrong. Gram said…”
“I don’t care what she said!” the man told him. “Take my hand.”
Billy stared at the fingers. The fingernails were black. “You’re not…my daddy,” he whispered, recoiling in terror. “You’re not!”
And suddenly the man’s face began to melt like a wax candle, as Billy saw him clearly for what he was. The nose loosened and oozed down on thick strands of flesh; beneath it was a black, hideous snout. A cheek slid down to the point of the chin like a raw egg, then fell away. The lower jaw collapsed, exposing a thin mouth with two curved yellow tusks. One blue eye rolled out of the head like a marble, and underneath it was a small, terrible red orb that might have belonged to a savage boar. As the face crumbled, that red eye was unblinking. “Boy,” the thing whispered in a voice like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, “get out of here! Run! Run and hide, you little peckerhead!”