“About that revolver…”
“Let’s not, okay?”
Leon kept his voice flat, but Johnny knew he didn’t want to hurt anybody. That being said, Verdine was all the family Leon knew. Johnny had to think about that, too. “Is she crazy?” he asked.
“You’re the one taking us to a dead woman’s grave.” Leon stepped across a fallen trunk. “You tell me.”
Johnny went inward after that. He tried to read Verdine, but found that the awareness dulled if he focused too closely. He felt Leon perfectly, and Jack, too. But when he closed his eyes to concentrate on Verdine, she was like a ghost. Cree was ten times worse. She vanished in the Hush, and he remembered how he’d met her that first time, invisible at the church. She was imperceptible now, too. He heard her footsteps, and saw her. He could reach out and touch her. Otherwise, she wasn’t there. Johnny studied the empty place she made, then looked at Verdine. She was watching with a smile on her face. “You see it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Yeah.” Verdine nodded and kept walking. “You see it.”
After that, it got dark quickly. Leon lit the lantern when the old woman tripped for the first time.
“It’s just a little night blindness.”
“How much farther?” Leon asked.
“This is good for now.” Johnny stopped, and everyone else did, too. “The cemetery is just there, three hundred yards through the trees.”
“We’re close, then?”
Johnny sat on the ground to show he would not be rushed. He would take her to the grave, but she had an end to keep up, too. “Let’s talk first.”
“There’s no time!”
“I have all the time in the world.”
Johnny watched the struggle at play on her face. Whatever she wanted from Aina’s grave, she’d craved it for a very long time. Anger. Need. Impatience. She pushed them all down. “Very well.” She gathered herself and sank onto her haunches. Beside her, the lantern hissed in Leon’s hand. No one else sat. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Johnny, I don’t like this—”
Jack’s worry was palpable. Johnny held up a hand to silence him. Verdine was hungry. He was, too. “Talk.”
Verdine settled lower, and grew still. “You love this land,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
“Why would anyone—?”
“Shush, boy. Do you think I’m stupid? You have the stink of power all over you. You’re flush with it. You think I’m greedy? Look inward, boy. You stink of hunger, too. I could smell it the first time I saw you. You’d kill to keep what you have.”
“I don’t … I’m not…”
“What do you see when you look at him?” She thrust a finger at Jack. “You see everything. Don’t deny it. How about her?” This time it was Cree. She shrank from his gaze, but he stared for long seconds. “You see nothing. That’s what you see. You see nothing because the power you love so much belongs to her, like it belonged to her mother, like it belonged to Aina.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Take me to her grave, and I’ll show you.”
“No.”
“Take me now, or I will tell you nothing more.”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’ll kill you myself, you stupid, selfish child.” She rose to her feet, and the rage was real, a spring so tightly wound, she trembled with it. “You Merrimons,” she spit. “You thieves and killers. You fucking, fucking men.”
“Sit down,” Johnny said.
“No.”
“Do you want to know where she’s buried or not?”
“Yes.” She bared her teeth, a hiss. “Yes, yes, damn it.”
“Then sit.” Johnny pointed at the ground. “Please.”
* * *
Like all born to life in the swamp, Luana moved well in the woods, even at night. Her feet found the soft places. She made little noise. At first, the light floated, as if carried by an unseen hand. It was a will-o’-the-wisp, a star the size of a child’s fist. She’d heard childhood stories of lights in the deep woods, and been taught early that to wander alone was more than childish disregard. It led to switches and hungry nights. Every child was taught the same.
But those were children’s stories, and she was grown.
Besides …
It was beautiful, like nothing she’d ever seen.
How, then, did she feel such a familiar pull? It was evening warmth, a mother’s touch. It was every good story told around every great meal. Luana knew it as she knew her own secret hopes.
The light was for her.
The light …
The light disappeared. It winked out, and Luana ached for this thing she’d never known.
Wholeness.
Wellness.
Luana’s legs trembled. She heard voices far away, and deeper still she saw another light. For a moment she hoped, but it was an average light surrounded by average people. Police, perhaps. She didn’t care. The other light was everything. It was strength, her life, her soul. What else would ever matter? What else could? If some part of her recognized the insanity of such thoughts, the rest of her didn’t care about that either. She was a shell in the night, a tired, lost woman with tears on her face. She would have cried for real then, but saw the light elsewhere. It flickered and danced, far away and fading. With a stifled cry, Luana chased it. No caution. No stealth. She pounded through the forest, tripped and fell and ran again. A small voice, deep down, said, Stop, this is madness. But Luana didn’t care. She felt her mother and better days, and hope so rich, she might never eat again.
“Wait! Please!”
Luana ran up a small hill and down the other side. She splashed through water and found the light waiting. It floated in a hazy void and was smaller than she’d guessed. The void around it was a trick of the night. It shifted; it flowed. Luana twisted her hands in indecision; then she reached out to touch it. For a moment nothing happened; then the void collapsed to show what hid beneath.
It was horrible.
Terrible.
Luana looked from the light to its hard, black eyes, and understood, at last, why children were made to be afraid. What she saw was a perversion, a corruption; yet it moved as others moved. It reached for her and touched her, and Luana felt loneliness, despair, the fear of another hundred years. It filled her mind with every kind of hurt, then showed her what Verdine wanted and why; it opened her mind to the hunger and hate, held her as the blackness filled her up, and broke her mind. It was too much for Luana, a thunderstorm inside. She opened her throat to scream it out, but the scream was not enough.
She was naked in the rain.
She was drowning.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
At the old church the scream seemed to be everywhere at once: above the cops, around them. Some thought it was human; others didn’t believe it. It was too high and horrible, too full of hurt.
“Jesus God Almighty.”
Captain Lee closed his mouth, and finished the prayer in silence.
“What do we do?”
The voice was behind him, but Lee didn’t turn. The scream went on and on, then ended suddenly. For a full minute, no one moved or said a word.
“Captain?”
Looking around, Captain Lee saw the expressions he expected. Some were resolved and ready, but most were pale. He’d heard the whispers all day: the swamp was haunted; Johnny Merrimon was a ghost. “Can anyone say for sure where that scream came from? Direction? Distance? Anyone?” No one spoke. No one moved. The captain peered out into the night, past the line of frightened faces.
There was no sound at all, nothing.
In the trees, a mist was rising.
* * *
Johnny was first to move when the scream ripped through the forest. He didn’t even think about it. Jack called out, but Johnny was a hundred yards away, and then a mile. He found the woman in the trees beside a trickle of wa
ter. The screams had died to whimpers, but it was enough to track her in the darkness, and that was a good thing.
Johnny couldn’t feel her.
For the length of his run, he knew little more than the sounds she made in the Hush. Finding Cree’s mother, then, was no real surprise. He had no idea why she was there or how she’d managed it, but only Cree was as blank as this; only Cree was such a nothing.
“Ms. Freemantle?”
He touched her shoulder, but her mouth hung open, the hot, quick whimpers like those of an animal in distress. Johnny had no love for Luana Freemantle, but he couldn’t leave her like this, either. “Your daughter is close. I can take you.” He gripped her arm, but her body was locked tight. “Can you hear me?”
Johnny was watching closely enough to see her eyes lose some of the glaze. The panting stopped; she tried to speak. “R … r…”
“Ms. Freemantle?”
“Run,” she said; but it was too late. Johnny felt the gathering behind him, the movement of air and sudden cold. He spun, but the black eyes held him like a fist. A voice in his mind said, Remember; and that’s what Johnny did.
He saw pieces of a dream.
Lost pages of another life.
* * *
John waited for Isaac to return with the shovel, and as he did, he watched the girl die. Her arm dangled, pumping blood that looked black in the dim, morning light. The second shot had punched through her chest right of center and blown out through the shoulder blade. He’d seen deer take similar wounds, and live this long. It was not normal, but it happened.
“It didn’t have to be like this.”
He knelt at her side, and knew she understood. The black eyes were unblinking, the lips pulled back. It was pain, John thought, and awareness. The girl knew she was dying, but Jesus …
The rage in those eyes.
“We had a deal,” John said. “You save my wife, I give you what you want.”
“Your wife lives.…”
Blood ran from her lips as she spoke. She was drowning on it. Her teeth were red.
“What you gave her wasn’t life. She breathes. She doesn’t die. It isn’t life.”
“The fault is yours.…”
“It isn’t what you promised!” John’s voice broke, and he hated everything about himself. “You should have met with me! You should have made it right!”
But the girl’s eyes were closed. Her lungs rattled.
When Isaac returned, John was on the ground with his elbows around his knees and the pistol dangling. He looked up at the big man and said, “She’s dead.”
“I doubt it.”
“She’s dead or so close, it doesn’t matter.”
“You want some free advice?” Isaac slammed the shovel blade into the earth at John’s feet. “Bury her so deep, no one will ever find her. Even I don’t want to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve seen things you haven’t. Because these people worship her like a god.” Isaac turned away, but turned back. “After this, we’re finished, you and me. I see no need for our paths to cross again.” John nodded. None of it mattered. “I’ve got the whole village working corn in the northern plots. We’ll be there till lunch. Get her buried and get out.”
Isaac left, and the dream blurred. John knew the smell of her blood and skin and hair. He knew the crunch of the shovel as he dug and shifted and heaved. Every time he thought the girl was dead, blood bubbled in the chest wound. John couldn’t get her in the ground fast enough, but it had to be deep and not findable. As fearful as some had been of Aina, there were others who’d loved her. Worshipped, Isaac had said, and John didn’t want that kind of heat should the body be found. He wanted to be alone with his wife, to stare into her empty eyes and mourn. Maybe he would lose himself there. Maybe the hatred would fade.
When the hole was deep enough, John dragged her down, and saw a glimmer of light beneath the weave of her shirt. Twitching at the fabric, he found the source of it pressed against her skin. It hung from a leather thong and looked like a stone cut with fine lines. Light shone in the cracks, and when he smoothed the blood away, he found a blue so deep and rich, it was almost purple. He touched it, and felt the power. It moved through his skin and into the bones of his hand, his heart. John was in a hole but knew the pivot of the sky, the flow of waters and saps and blood. He knew the drift of seeds on the wind, felt the pressures of life about to burst. He felt the stirrings of the world, and knew them as he knew the stars at night. Power. Movement. Inexplicable fact. Every other thought in his head felt wrong. Killing. Stealing. Stealing from the dead. He heard the scrape of dirt as she shifted in the grave. “Mine,” she said. “For my people.” Their eyes met, and he knew that she saw it, his intent. “It will not save your wife.”
But John was on the road to hell already.
He ripped the stone from around her neck.
He buried the girl alive.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
When the vision broke, Johnny fell to his knees. The dirt felt the same under his hands. The taste in his mouth was also the same.
“That wasn’t me.…”
But it was in his heart and under his skin. Johnny squeezed his head and tried to draw the line between the man who’d been and the person Johnny was.
I’m no killer.
I’m not.
It took a minute to remember the rest. He pictured black eyes, and knew them. He’d seen them in dreams, and in mirrors, and in dreams of mirrors.
“John!”
He called out in the night, voice breaking.
“John Merrimon, is that you?”
He saw forest and sky, then movement far out in the wood, a flicker of light that rose once and disappeared.
He thought it was an answer.
He thought it was a yes.
* * *
It took time to get Luana Freemantle back to her family. She was responsive, but in the smallest ways.
“Can you step over the log?
“No, no. Like this.”
Johnny would have carried her, but each time he tried, she moaned or froze; and Johnny couldn’t handle that. He saw Aina in her face; heard the cries as dirt settled on her skin. When he was close to the lantern, he called out, “It’s me, coming in.”
He moved into the light, and Cree rushed to her mother’s side. “Mom. What happened? What are you doing here?”
Luana blinked; stopped walking.
“She saw something,” Johnny said. “Something big that scared her.”
Verdine was studying his face. “You saw something, too, didn’t you?”
But Johnny was tired of dreams and riddles and half truths. He wanted Verdine broken enough to talk, and thought he knew the way to do it. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the grave.”
* * *
They moved in a ragged line, Johnny in front with Leon helping the old woman and Cree, her mother. The line moved slowly but with intent; and even Leon understood they were going to the cemetery.
“What about cops?” he asked.
“A half mile that way. It doesn’t matter. We have no choice.”
And no risk either, it seemed. Stepping from the trees, they spread out and stared in awestruck silence. The cemetery was plain enough, but beyond its walls and markers, the world ended.
Jack said, “Oh my God.”
A wall of mist rose, dense and straight, and pure white, a mass that towered even above the trees. Verdine was the first to step forward. “It appears that something doesn’t want the police to interfere.”
Johnny nodded at the cemetery. “What you want is in there.”
“It can’t be.”
“You wanted John Merrimon’s truth. That’s where you’ll find it.”
“All right, then. Leon.”
She stabbed her cane at the stone wall, and Leon lifted her over, everyone else following. At the hanging tree, Johnny stopped. Three stones marked the remains of those who’d been hanged. Aina had let
them swing for long months, and it was Isaac who’d buried them at last. Johnny pointed at the first. “That’s the foreman’s grave.”
“Yes.”
“What you want is underneath.”
“We checked the early graves eighty years ago.”
“You didn’t dig deep enough.” The old woman measured him, doubting. “I was there with John Merrimon. I saw her go under the ground.”
“She didn’t just ‘go under the ground,’” Cree said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Your ancestor shot her.”
“Yes, but—”
“He buried her alive!”
“Enough!”
“I lived it! I felt it!”
“I said that’s enough!” Verdine lashed out with the cane and struck the girl on the back of her legs. “This is beyond you, child.”
Cree bit down on a painful cry.
Beside her, Luana’s eyes flickered.
“Show me, boy.” The cane stabbed out again. “Leon, you, too. Dig.”
Johnny took the pickax, and Leon settled into place beside him. “Any chance you’re wrong about this, my friend?”
“She’s buried there.”
“Do you understand what this is about? Because I truly don’t.”
“All I can tell you is that your grandmother is a dangerous woman. Can’t you see it?”
Leon glanced over his shoulder. She hunched above the cane, both shoulders drawn up against the wrinkled neck. “Come on, boys. Kiss and get it over with or start yourselves to digging.” She clapped once, and no one could mistake the zeal. She was alive with it. She burned. “Well, come on, damn it. Not one of us is getting any younger.”
“May as well do it,” Leon said.
“It’ll get ugly, down deep.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Johnny waited a beat, then nodded once and swung the pick. In minutes, they’d found the rhythm. Johnny broke the earth, and Leon shoveled it out: lift and fall, black dirt in the clean night air.
* * *
Luana watched from the bruise of her mind. She was trapped in that soft place, but knowing in a way she’d never been. She knew what walked in the woods and what it feared. She knew what Verdine wanted, and what she would do to get it. The old woman would dig up the grave. She’d kill Luana. She’d kill Cree. Luana tried to stop it, but couldn’t move. She pictured the gun in her pocket, and used all her strength to try to speak. She wanted to call out to the daughter she loved.