by R. K. Syrus
His brother had no name, not from his tribe or from the holy father’s water ceremony.
Before he could explain, the door was knocked open. The document man half jumped out of his seat, then relaxed. It was only the eyeless, skinless, tongueless head of a sheep poking into the room. All the good parts had been removed and were pickling in a tub of vinegar. The result would be poured into gelatin molds and was considered a delicacy with the curious name “head cheese.”
The butcher’s assistant mumbled, “Sorry.” The flayed skull withdrew, leaving smears on the door.
“Ach!” The man shook his head, cursing his assistant for leaving the bloody mess. His fat sweating head turned to Elahaj. “So, my friend, the name we shall put down for your brother?”
Elahaj hesitated. If he gave the wrong one, the documents might not do the right magic. The man stared. The place smelled quite foul. He blurted out the first thing he could think of.
“So be it.” The man wiped perspiration from the rim of his hat. “Meet me at the café in five hours. Bring my money, or you’ll regret it.”
Elahaj dashed up the stairs, quite glad to never have to go back there. He was quite busy. There were other hands to fill with Mr. and Mrs. Bryan’s cash. If everything went as planned, they would take his brother far away and give him a proper American name.
Years later, when he had learned to read them, he looked at a copy of his brother’s travel papers. He smiled grimly. Somehow, he thought, the world of spirts had a way of marking what belonged to them.
Surname/Nom/Apellido
BRYAN
Given Names/Prénoms/Nombres
SHETANI ZERU
Elahaj had one photo of the two of them. It was a type of instant picture. It came out of the camera a glossy gray rectangle. Their images appeared before his eyes.
Over the years, it had become yellowed and faded, even though he kept it in a plastic case among his most valuable things. Every time he looked at it, no matter how badly things had gone for him that day, he took heart. His brother was growing up far away, free from mindless bigotry and hateful prejudice.
2
30 YEARS AGO
NEAR THE OLD REIDT MINE
OUTSIDE FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
SHAY BRYAN
“You know why God made albinos, don’tcha?” a boy hollered into the dark woods. “So’s Africans could see how ugly they would look if they was white!”
Taddy Eddington tried to laugh at his own taunting joke. But the “haw” only came out as a short-of-breath whistle. In addition to having some kind of asthma, Taddy had something wrong with the right side of his mouth and jaw. The other kids with him were even more goofy looking. Suspenders trailing, buck teeth grinning, they supported their leader with belly laughs and catcalls.
Lungs burning, with cold sweat trickling down between shoulder blades, Shay Bryan peered out at them through a thin line of bushes. Taddy was older. The Eddingtons’ oldest son had been held back from twelfth grade twice. He was huge. He had man-teats. They were the two funniest things at their high school that no one ever laughed about.
Last year, one of their high school’s A-list bullies decided to have a go at Taddy. On the way to the practice field, a tall and athletic senior thought Taddy’s titties would make for an easy prank target. His stunt to try and impress random girls in the hallway was now school legend, but not the way the tall muscular fellow intended. He’d jumped behind Taddy, gave him a bear hug from behind, and then tried to milk him. Big honkin’ mistake.
Taddy wrestled the Colts’s best linebacker down. He pinned him face-down with Lord knows what ginormous weight of blubber. Enraged and hissing, drool coming out of the sunken side of his face, Taddy whammed the football player’s grill over and over down onto his own steel cleats.
Taddy only got a couple weeks’ suspension, on account of it being judged more like an accident than an attack using a weapon. Shay also got the idea people were kind of afraid of Taddy Eddington, Sr. After they sewed up the football player, he looked like Frankenstein’s monster and never came back to class. Shay heard he got homeschooled for the GED.
After that, no one messed with Taddy, but that didn’t mean he was respected. As a bully, that is. He was still a wheezing, crater-faced boob boy, and his posse wasn’t much more.
That night, while running for his life, Shay Bryan cussed his luck. As if he didn’t have it crappy enough already being an albino and looking at himself with glowy red vampire-bat eyes. He just had to be set upon by the runts of the local bully litter. Crouching down further into the undergrowth, he looked skyward. A big pale moon was high. His skin felt like that reflective paint they put on ambulances and cop cars. Any bumslack moron could spot him.
“I seen him,” said one of Taddy’s hangers-on, a bumslack moron.
“Watch the road. It’sh th’only way outta here.”
“He can’t be far.”
“I wish I had Ketchum. He’d sniff that pale bastard out.”
“We can git him ourselfs,” their leader admonished. “An’ don’t talk foolish. If your dog bit, they’d put her down. No sense riskin’ a perfectly good dog.”
“How would they know it was Ketchum who bit?”
“They got doggy CSI and such. They can match dog teeth marks to the one what bit. Shore ’nuff that damned pale creeper would fink on you.” Taddy spat. He’d probably snuck his daddy’s dip, which didn’t help his verbal articulation any.
“Over here!” said Jeep, a kid in Shay’s own grade. “The dandelions is bent here. Let’s follow.”
They looked where Jeep was shining his little stick flashlight and followed. Going the wrong way.
That didn’t lift Shay’s spirits any. The gravel road into these hills led to a dead end at the old mine. It was shut down. For some business reason, they kept the trees and bushes along the road and tracks cut back. There was no way to keep to cover while making a break for it.
His best bet was to hope the smaller kids in the pack would get whiny and tired and want to go home. There would be no point in Taddy puttin’ a wuppin’ on him if no one was there to see it. Everybody had come out into the hallway to watch him tenderize the linebacker’s face. Pictures even got posted. Taddy was hungry for more local fame.
Suddenly something tickled Shay’s nose fiercely. He bit his lip to stop from sneezing. The moment passed. Gosh-darned dandelions were everywhere. He wiped snot on his hands, trying to keep it off his clothes.
He felt hemmed in. He was faster than any of them. But for that to be an advantage he would need open ground, and around the mine there was precious little. As quietly as he could, Shay slid down the bank of a slow-moving creek. Making sure of his footing, he hopped over the dark molasses water.
Some of the rocks he saw in the moonlight were pretty good for throwing. He could stop running. If he launched a surprise attack, he could bean a few of them before they even knew what was happening. He could. But that would give away his position. And Taddy was the only one he really wanted to hit. Just his lousy luck the rocks would probably bounce off those chest udders.
By rights, Jeep should be on his side. His mom was from Egypt, which, geographically was located in Africa. Fat chance of that working for him. Shay had seen stuff online from there about how they hacked up and even ate people who looked like him. He was way too pale for his own good.
He did not personally know any other albinos. The closest people to him in stories were the elves in Tolkien’s stories. At a time like this, their leader, Elrond, would have told him: “Our list of allies grows thin, Ser Bryan.”
“Lord Elrond,” Shay whispered, clinging close to a big boulder overlooking the scene. “If only on this, of all evenings, I had brought my shadow cloak. Yet we have not staff, sword, and sling? With these can we not defeat the Dark Lord of Chubb?”
“A wise general considers all options. Even painful ones.”
The imaginary elf had a point.
Shay looked at
his nice shoes and then at the rough terrain. If he continued to run, his shoes, his pants, and his nice shirt would get messed and torn. Most of these kids ran wild after school. They could keep him out way past his own absolute red-line home time.
Whatever abuse Taddy had planned, he would suffer it anyway when they caught him. Then at home he’d be punished a second time. Shay wasn’t a tattler, not for his own sake. He’d have to make up a story that fit the time, state of his clothes, and any injuries.
He considered a Riders of Rohan-style surprise attack.
If he tried to isolate and fight a few of the stronger attackers at a time and outrun the slower ones, maybe they would lose interest. But that would take time and he’d still take some licks. Same outcome: messed-up clothes, missed curfew.
Also, to have any chance against the larger group, he’d have to fight sneaky and underhanded. There were smaller kids pulled along by Taddy’s charisma, though he couldn’t really see what charisma there was in Cheetos-smelling belches. Point was, they were in the line of fire and likely to get hurt. He’d been brought up never to hurt people smaller or weaker; it was cowardice in its purest form.
Holler out and set some kind of surrender terms? That might let him hobble back home a little late. He could make sure his clothes didn’t get ripped or too badly soiled.
A gravel sanding on his ass, or whatever measly torment they had planned, might be okay. If he kept his pants on at gym, no one would see while the scabs healed. And after tonight, if he gave up, they might lose interest in him and pick another victim, one who put up more of a challenge. A scraped butt would be better than a broken leg.
That’s what he’d get running around here, even with his abnormal vision. Rocks that looked steady slid right out from under you. Roots that looked flat and dry reached up and grabbed your ankles. If he didn’t watch his step, he’d have to drag himself to the road and get someone to call 911. Even worse, he knew from a field trip to the mine that there were plenty of hidden air holes cut up to the surface from shafts deep underground.
If he could find some high ground, his ability to bean people with rocks might give him a negotiating advantage. Maybe they’d be happy if they beat him with some sticks and made him eat a couple bugs and worms. He wouldn’t even have to take off his pants.
As Shay considered surrendering and taking his lumps, his pursuers crashed this way and that among the bushes. Their lanterns darted left and right.
“Who’s got the trap?”
“Got it.” Someone rattled the equipment for his planned torture.
Clink, clink, clink went the chain.
“And the padlock?”
For a guy who couldn’t get a job taking out trash, Taddy’s evil recreational activities sure were organized.
“Yup.”
That upped the ante. Shay had seen enough animal toes and feet left in the jagged metal teeth of leg holds. Fat chance of them hauling that trap all the way out here and deciding not to spring it while they held him down. The medicine Taddy’s gang was fixed on dishing out was too strong to stomach.
Gandalf whispered in his ear, “Fly, you fool!”
He did.
• • •
Around the old Reidt Mine, every rutted little roadway, every animal path through underbrush just went in circles. There was no escape, only hiding.
Around a bend, Shay saw the A-shape of a roof. On top stood a haggard cross. Moss hung down from it like a gray-green beard. The chapel. Old, abandoned. Doorless.
He wasn’t that far up in the hills, but damn if it didn’t seem a lot colder. If it had a belfry, maybe the other bats wouldn’t mind some company for a while.
There was a plaque. He read the faded inscription easily.
DEDICATED TO THE 8 FREED MEN AND ABOUT 120 CONVICTS KILLED IN THE REIDT MINE CATASTROPHE OF MAY 25, 1877.
AND ALSO TO ALL THOSE, BEFORE AND AFTER, SACRIFICED ON THE ALTAR OF MAMMON.
Maybe if he hid in the chapel, Taddy’s gang would get tired, get cold, and get gone. Shay decided he wouldn’t come out until they were all the way down the gravel road. Back to their nasty houses and their greasy dinners. Taddy’s huge helping of pork rinds—or whatever his parents fed him to blimp him up—getting all cold and disgusting.
Shay didn’t have a lantern. He didn’t need one to see the wrecked inside of the small wooden building clearly. He picked his way over the strongest looking floorboards. It would be hella embarrassing after all this to fall through the floor and get stuck.
Maybe there were rusty nails that would hurt and tear worse than that little old leg-hold they had. Shay imagined himself calling out to Taddy’s gang for help before he bled to death. Not that they’d hear. The trees, with their swish-swaying, swallowed up all sounds human and animal.
He checked his phone. One measly bar flickered.
Besides Elrond and Gandalf, there was really no one he could call for help. He had friends he did assignments with and sat next to at lunch, but he always got the idea people either thought he was sick or were waiting for him to do something crazy. Outside his home, away from his parents’ ministries and not being examined by doctors who kept writing papers on his visual abilities, he was as alone as this old chapel.
He gave it a good once-over. There was nothing much on the first floor. All the seats had been taken out or used as firewood. A cooking pit had been dug into the middle of the small room. Its sides were charred.
On one side of the chapel, most of a crooked staircase was still standing. He picked his way up over missing steps. At the top landing, something fell over with a couple of small thumps. It started smelling bad.
It was a group of opossums. Stiff as week-old roadkill and just as gamey. They weren’t dead, just playing.
They fainted like that. Hag Glantzer had shown him a while back. The crazy one-eyed woman was related to the Bryans in some way. Glantzer had called him out one day, told him she’d show him something more educational than anything he’d find at the library, where he’d been headed. The woodswoman snuck up on an opossum and barked, imitating a hound perfectly. The critter fell over, stiff as a board.
Hag Glantzer was delighted. She picked it up and put it into Shay’s schoolbook knapsack. Said it would wake up in an hour or so, and he could show his classmates.
“What you kids need is real, practical education about wildlife and such,” Glantzer said, zipping her satchel closed. “While you’re studyin’ the opossum—that’s the proper name for this marsupial in the Americas, by the by—you might let it slip to who’s ever in charge that I’m open to teachin’ a class here and there.”
Glantzer patted the knapsack and handed it back.
“Nothin’ formal, mind ya. I cherish my ad hoc schedule. And I take cash only, in advance. Tell ’em Darina Hofer Glantzer, bachelor of science, magna, is willin’ if they are.”
Shay had left the stiff body of the educational opossum by a tree, but he did convey the message. The administration of the high school was not willing to take her up on the offer.
In the dark, cobwebbed recesses of the miner’s chapel, each member of the opossum family at his feet was spewing nasty stuff from both ends. Five jaws were frozen in snarls, their pointy little teeth bared. He left them to sleep off the fright he’d caused.
What an undignified way to avoid predators, he thought.
Peering out the broken window, he saw his own predators were still there, in a sort of huddle. They were not moving.
He slumped down against moldering wood. Was he any better than an opossum? According to Glantzer, they couldn’t help fainting when they were scared. Why the heck would the Lord make them that way?
He looked at his hands. Their white skin shone like phosphorus. The tips of his fingers blazed hotly with his uncanny heat-sensitive vision. They looked like extremities of something less natural than an animal.
“Look at me,” he said to the catatonic opossums. “Who am I to make fun of you?”
Down belo
w were torn-up pews. He guessed only about eight or ten people could have fit in the place. The church he and his parents went to was a hundred times bigger.
Opposite the entrance doorway, on the high wall, was a space. A big cross had hung there. They probably took it when they closed the place. But the wood remembered. For decades, the crucifix had blocked light, leaving a permanent shadow on the planks. For him, it was the perfect icon. A zeru cross, one only he could see.
His adoptive parents, Mom and Dad, were so filled with Spirit, so busy with ministry, that he was determined not to add to their burdens. No matter what Taddy and his gang did, he would just say it was an accident. He couldn’t let his parents down by telling them he felt out of place and picked on. How ungrateful would that be?
He’d recently exchanged messages online with his natural brother, Elahaj. He’d gone to the cyber café in Fayetteville to play Moats and Monsters. That was not an approved game for him, on account of the demon and undead toons being the preferred choice of guild champions due to their racial buffs. But just try explaining that to lay preachers who ran an appliance shop.
His brother in Africa played on a different server, where they spoke French. It would have cost too much game gold to move their main toons. So they had created level-one avatars in each other’s domains so they could chat when they were both online. Best of all, it was free from any chance of parental monitoring.
Some of the things Elahaj told him were pretty crazy. Shay could tell he was holding back details of how and why his brother and parents got him away to America. Then it kinda started to make sense why the Bryans never tried to change his first name.
They were lay preachers, and their kid was named after Lucifer. That was odd, even if the language was Swahili, which nobody he’d yet met in North Carolina spoke. Opening up the paperwork on his adoption was probably as risky as opening a can of wriggly worms. If something was wrong with those papers could “the Man” (who Shay always pictured as an older version of Taddy who worked for the government) send him back? He didn’t know. He suspected his parents didn’t either.
