Unlike other chickens, they were used to being handled and could be counted on not to squawk. He felt for a moment like he was in charge of a firing squad.
Creed took out his paper sack, put in two of the silkies and closed off the bag with a twist tie. He began to trace his steps, but stopped. The smell of cinders grew stronger, putrid as the flesh of a spoiled, half-smoked ham. Above the Dutch door at the front of the barn, the shape of Ruiz under a stray beam cast by the rising moon was melting into the darkness of the early night, hands ablaze.
Creed froze, not fluttering an eyelash, mind a whirl of calculation. He’d been in much worse positions, professionally. The ghost had weaknesses, he knew. For one, it was stupid. Secondly, it must’ve been posted there to keep watch on the kitchen door, not on the barn. Further, even if it turned around, it might not see him, considering the absence of any light source other than that coming from its hands. It was important not to make a sound. Lucky the chickens in Creed’s bag were quiet fowl.
Creed took a single soft step in the direction of a horse stall that he knew was empty. He needed to overcome only five obstacles to make it back to the kitchen. Mr. Petty would be guarding the front of the house, Crockett stationed near the side porch to the east, Mr. Ewell still in the north pasture beside the barn, and Deputy Leveaux still busy revving the motor of the Ford 8-N. As for Deputy Ruiz, with hands afire, she was probably a rover.
Creed took another step in utter blackness, and then another. Thanks to the noise of the rain, the sound of the stall door creaking as it opened and closed was probably muffled. Creed crouched behind the half door, the bag of silkies in his arms.
He was learning a lot about automatons, at least these particular creatures. They had limited vision and hearing, which probably meant they weren’t bloodhounds, either, when it came to their sense of smell.
He set the bag of silkies on the straw beside him, trying to ignore the stirrings of the horses that had wandered into their stalls to get out of the weather. Some began to whinny—at a mouse, at the rustlings of leaves or some other imaginary intrusion. Slivovitz kicked at a wall. Creed pulled the folding knife out of the belt-pouch of his soaked jeans. He opened the blade, listening, sniffing the wet air for ashes. The sound of shuffling steps reached his ears. Probably Ruiz drifting down the line of stalls.
Creed cut his left wrist. When his inner arm was awash with blood, he wiped it across the top of the stall door.
After she turned the lights off, Rachel allowed Sheriff Wise to shoo her and everyone else but Dave out of the kitchen.
“I’ll stay here and watch for Creed,” Dave said.
Rachel dragged her ass into the dining room. She was tired, her mother’s heart was all but spent, and Lev needed help. He was her greatest hope. The boys her greatest worry. Lest she forget: Nuno Sievers was after them primarily. The boys had barely caught sight of Deputy Crockett’s specter, but what they told Rachel snapped her into a new appreciation of the occasion’s horror and solemnity. Being the eldest, Zack had seen the likeness of Crockett with what had seemed the most accurate of eyes—as a pure-white scarecrow in its ungainly pose. Leo had seen it as if in a fun-house mirror. To him, Petty had been a stick figure with a massive white head, as big as a beach ball and flashing shark teeth of gleaming white.
“Are you all right?” Rachel said to Leo as she retied her ankle boots at the dining room table. Her youngest ran to her as quickly as he could, straight to her arms, but instead of throwing himself into her embrace, he pulled up short as if to maintain his dignity.
Wolfie was whimpering at the pantry door.
She ignored the dog’s dismay, and held her breath as Zack put on a cloak of bravado and went again to the porch door to stare through its dripping panes.
“Nothing there now,” said Zack, “Just darkness, coagulating.”
Like blood, Rachel thought. My boy is growing up, and good with words.
Zack went to the head of the table and firmly plopped down in Dave’s vacated chair. “Mr. Nelson and Isabel have nothing to do with this,” Zack said to his mother. “I don’t think there is very much of Mr. Nelson left.”
“But…” Rachel began.
Beatricia, slumped in the chair beside Rachel, put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “There’s only Isabel,” she said. “Mr. Nelson died when the old Zebulon tavern burned. He deposited his chaotic energy and here it magnified.”
Zack nodded.
“Isabel died much later in some other place and followed the light into the closet, which happens to be a portal,” continued Beatricia. “There, she found Mr. Nelson’s animal magnetism and gathered it. When you moved into the house, Zack, she had a reason to stay.”
“How do you know, Mother?” Rachel’s hand tightened on Beatricia’s arm as if it were a coupling that could maintain a link through the most humbling darkness.
Beatricia smiled. In the past, Rachel would only ask how she knew something because she doubted her mother’s word. Things were different now. Her voice was soft, but insistent. She wanted and needed the knowledge.
“How do I know anything?” Beatricia said, her face aglow, but exhausted, as if she had traveled too far, too long.
“I’d like to know why Isabel stopped here,” said Rachel.
“Ask Zack.” Beatricia looked into Rachel’s staring eyes, then glanced toward her grandson.
Rachel said. “I want you to tell me if Grandma is right.”
“I think so.” He looked down at his folded hands on the table.
“So tell me why Isabel stayed here, in the closet on the landing.”
“Because she loves me.”
Rachel felt faint. A host of questions ran through her mind. What was the meaning of the giggles and whispers on the stairway? How far had he gone with a ghost? Had they held hands? Kissed? Gone further than that?
“How solid, how real is she?” Rachel asked.
“Just like you and me.” He kept his back straight at the head of the table, like Dave sat. “When she wants to be.”
Rachel was stunned. “Are you telling me the truth, Zack?”
“Yes. I love her.”
“Then you have to let her go, because she needs to be somewhere else.”
“No.”
“You must.”
“But why?” Tears grew like pearls, trapped in his black eyelashes. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“You said love was never wrong!” He pounded both his fists once on the table.
Wolfie whimpered. Leo sat down on the green velveteen dog bed and rubbed the animal’s belly.
Zack sunk into silence, staring into the polished mahogany finish of the table, mesmerized, as if an image of Isabel were reflected from its thin veneer of wax.
“Leave it alone, Zack. You don’t know what she is,” said Rachel.
“No! You don’t know! I know Isabel inside and out.”
“Rachel,” said Beatricia, cutting in, gently thumping the floor with a cane. “Isabel is a beneficent spirit.”
She rounded on her mother. “How do you know?”
“That’s the question. How do I know and why don’t you?’” Beatricia cracked her neck and rolled it around. “Pay closer attention, Rachel. Isabel is good and loyal to Zack. You feel that as well as I. As well as Zack does.”
Leo was playing tug of war with Wolfie, with a blue and white chew toy that once resembled a raccoon.
“Mom, Isabel is nice,” Zack said. “Sometimes she helps me with my math homework.”
Rachel’s cheeks filled with blood. She was jealous. Simple as that. Why hadn’t she seen it? She felt the nape of her neck grow warm and a surge of heat pass from her hand to her mother’s arm. Zack was a magnificent, talented boy. She loved to touch his brown face and stare into his dark, beautiful eyes. There was a tug of war going on, between her and Isabel. The once strange entropy that ruled the closet on the landing now seemed less chaotic. Spare saddles and
bridles hung askew from racks and hooks. Sometimes she’d find saddles sprawled on the floor. Once she’d found a tack trunk standing on its side, way too heavy for the boys to have lifted. Had Isabel used her animal magnetism, the law of ghosts, to place it as a barrier? Was the little room on the landing a love bower built by Isabel and Zack as their connubial home?
What Beatricia implied was true. Rachel did know, deep down, that Isabel was Zack’s loved one, not an enemy. She also knew there was a good reason she would get headaches when the door creaked open, seemingly of its own accord. She wanted Zack exclusively for herself. Her eyes burned with shame.
Where was Creed? He should be back. Dave was pacing in the kitchen. When he passed by the open doorway, she could see him wringing his hands.
Now that the talking had stopped, the only sounds were the whisperings of the wind, the hammering of the rain, and a clunk from the landing on the stairs. Zack sat bolt upright.
“You stay right there, young man,” Rachel said. “Isabel is one thing. We’re trying to deal with another ghost that is trying to kill us. Probably all of us.”
Zack leapt from the table and ran toward the stairs. “Isabel!”
“No, Zack,” said Rachel, standing, letting her mother’s arm go. “Please. I’m sorry. She’ll be all right for now. We need you here. We have to stay together.”
At once, the clock that couldn’t tell time began chiming. Zack stopped in the foyer, looking back at it. “Mom, the clock’s moved itself.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“But Mom—it’s in the foyer again.”
Rachel was unimpressed. Compared to the dead coming back to life, the clock walking around the house was nothing now. “Come back to the table, Zack. We need to make a plan.”
Zack returned to the dining room, face flushed and forehead sweating. He sat back down in Dave’s chair. Beatricia leaned over and put a calming hand on his shoulder.
Sitting back down, Rachel gazed at Zack. His chin was stubbled, slightly. He was becoming a man. She was a liberated mother. Once she’d sent Zack a copy of Playboy Magazine, return address from a wayward uncle she rarely saw, a bartender on a cruise ship. She felt another wave of jealousy and brushed it off.
Zack touched her hand. “I love her, Mom.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say. The only sound in the room was the snapping of wood burning in the stove.
“Let’s drop it for now,” said Lev, “please.” He turned to Zack. “We have more important things to talk about.”
“Our next step, for instance,” acknowledged Rachel.
Leo’s eyes widened with fright. She pulled him into her lap, where he squirmed and asked, “Where’s dad?”
“We should talk about the Seder,” said Lev. “It’s more than just a simple dinner.” Zack snorted.
“That snort is a family trait,” Beatricia explained.
Lev shifted his frown from Zack to the window of the woodstove that draped the walls of the dining room in warm robes of gold. Softly, yet urgently, he spoke of the Seders of his childhood… the perfect preparation of the food… his family gathered round… the Haggadic readings… the empty seat in the best chair for the Prophet Elijah …the small ornamental pillow at the left arm of the Seder leader’s chair…the white linens…his father’s permanent frown…his mother’s coral lipstick. His mother, progressive as she was, always left a cup for Miriam on the right hand of Elijah’s, and the front door to the house open to welcome the prophet.
Lev closed and clenched his fists. “But I can’t remember how to do it.” He leaned his cheeks on his knuckles in search of more detailed memories. “I can’t remember the order.”
“Just do the best you can, Lev,” said Dave, standing. “Maybe we should clean some more, wipe down the pipes under the sink.”
“I really think the house is clean enough,” said Lev. “Let’s make the meal.” He slid a King James across the dented mahogany dining table to Beatricia. She caught it with a slap.
“Grandma won’t be able to read that without her old-lady reading glasses.” Leo flung open one of the Tansu’s junk drawers. He dug elbow deep and pulled out a pair of drugstore spectacles he found under a stack of old bridge toll tickets stapled together. He spat on the lenses and wiped them off on the hem of his Metallica T-shirt.
He walked over to Beatricia and set the grape-colored spectacles on her nose, then kissed her cheek and smiled.
“That’s perfect,” she said, opening her Bible. She cleared her throat and squinted over the top of the glasses. “Now these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.”
“Who’s going to help Lev and I make the Seder?” Rachel said, feeling like the little red hen.
Beatricia continued reading verses of Exodus.
Zack and Leo said nothing, only exchanged glances and shrugs, which lead to punches and giggles.
“Be serious.” Rachel shook her head. “You two will help whether you want to or not.”
“Stop guilt-tripping us,” said Zack, inflating his chest, pushing his voice into a lower range. “Of course we’ll help.”
“I’ll set the table,” offered Leo, slugging his brother’s shoulder as scooted past, out of reach, into the kitchen.
“Good, Leo,” said Rachel. “You can help me cut the vegetables, Zack. I have some really sharp new knives. You’ll have to be careful with them.”
• • • •
Crouched in the darkness of an empty stall, Creed had the sudden notion that he was probably the only person who’d ever be stalked in a barn by a ghost who would be able to evaporate him. The smell of ashes grew more intense. He could hear the whoosh of the spook as it turned and headed down the central aisle, jiggling latches. Creed almost laughed. He stifled himself. This was a dangerous game.
Another door opened and closed. One of the horses whinnied and stomped a foot. Creed held his breath, kneeling behind the blood-smeared door. The moments dragged on. Soon, there would be an explosion of air from his lungs. He released the tension in his body, with concentration, and let the breath go, slowly, not making a sound, and then peered through a crack. Nothing, only darkness.
Then something. In the black of the barn, he saw Ruiz’s blazing hands push a door closed, and move toward him down the aisle, sailing like two slow-moving birds on fire.
The stall doors opened and shut one after the other, the horses snorting and stomping. One stall to go. Creed pulled his door tight so there was no crack and listened to the dull thud of striking wood—Slivovitz kicking the door of his stall. The flaming hands of Ruiz cast a red glowing bowl on the stable’s ceiling.
Creed recalled a song he’d learned in childhood. There is power, power, power. Wondrous working power. In the blood of the lamb.
He didn’t feel like a fucking lamb.
But Ruiz passed his door without pausing, without touching it.
Creed swore to himself that now he would go to church. Or to a gun show—whichever came first. Ruiz finished her survey of the stalls and floated out the back door. The smell of ashes, which had hung heavily over the hay mangers with alfalfa spilling out of them, was gone, leaving behind only the pleasant thick aroma of horses and pine shavings blended with the freshness of rain.
The blood had worked. It’d actually worked. Maybe cleansing the house of chametz had helped. No telling.
Creed stood. No ghost in the aisle now, only darkness. He imagined Ruiz circling around the stable, drifting toward the round pen and dressage arena as a vaporous spirit, her glowing hands like the eyes of night. Creed spat in contempt. It was good to breathe freely again, to stretch and move. He felt his way in the dark to the stall at the front end of the stable and flung open the door, then scuttled as quickly as he could down the aisle and threw open every door. In the last stall Queen Mary was waiting, Creed hoped, ready to run.
She whinnied and cantered down the aisle into the windblown night rain n
ow falling in sheets that blanketed the stars and obscured the moon. The other horses followed. At the stable door, they broke west and turned to the north pasture, flaming hands following—too slowly to catch them.
Laughter bubbling from his chest, Creed lowered his head in the rain and ran like hell for the lights of the house.
The men stood in shadows of the kitchen, Dave at the back door and the sheriff looking through the window over the sink. Rachel steadied a pan hanging from a rack over the butcher block, wondering why it had been swinging, then took it down. Passages from Exodus floated through the open doorway connecting the kitchen to the dining room, interrupting the hum of the refrigerator, the dripping of the faucets, the gurgling struggles of the water pump.
“Creed should’ve been back already.” Hunched in a stream of moonlight escaping from the umbrella of clouds, Dave rubbed his eyes, then pressed his forehead against the glass.
“Ain’t necessarily so.” Wise whispered. “He might be lookin’ to sneak back. Could take some time.”
“Make room,” said Rachel. “We have to cook.” She turned to Leo. “Go get some white candles out of the tansu, left side, up high, behind the tablecloths. And see if you can find the plain linen runner. We might need it.”
When he scurried into the dining room to get the candles, his drumsticks fell out of his socks. Lev excused himself for bumping into Rachel and the sheriff, then leaned over Wise’s hump of a shoulder to pull open the eyelet café curtains at the kitchen window.
“We need the shedim out there to see that we’re doing our damndest to make a Seder meal,” he said.
Rachel half-opened the refrigerator door, panicked at the light, then pressed the button to turn it off. She felt around the bottom shelf where the short items usually were and jerked out a package of half-eaten, dried-out corn tortillas.
Passover Page 23
