The Good House

by Tananarive Due

“But promise me, Sean. No matter what. Promise me you’ll burn the papers, and you’ll never tell what happened. You’ll never tell what I did, how I…” He couldn’t say it, and he didn’t want to think about it too long. Bo’s screams were bottled in his mind.“Promise.”

  Sean blinked, his glassy eyes shining in the faint sunlight. “Promise, man.”

  They hugged a long time. Corey had never held on to anyone except family that tightly, or ever needed to. “Fourth of July,” he whispered, barely audibly, in case thebaka was listening.

  And itwas listening. It lived here.

  “Fourth of July,” Sean whispered back, a vow.

  But no matter what day he chose, thebaka was not going to allow him to come back. Just as Gramma Marie had described her feelings when she first discovered this place of spirits, Corey knew it in his bones.

  Thirty-Two

  FRIDAY

  WHENANGELA HEARD THE FIRST GUNSHOT,her legs twined as she stumbled over a vine-shrouded root on the trail. The second and third reports helped her place the direction of the noise, and she stopped holding her breath. The shots were southeast of her, from somewhere on the other side of the house. Nowhere near Myles, probably.

  But near the deputies.

  Angela didn’t have long to mourn, because she heard swishing brush behind her on the trail. With a shudder, she remembered the way the pile of leaves had crawled out of Corey’s doorway and shot across the floor. But this sounded like someone with two legs, a creature she understood. Someone was running not far behind her.

  Angela felt a gulf growing inside of her, something that wasnot her, speaking an undiscovered language in her mind; and that part of her was asking her to let Myles go. The aware creature buried in her psyche did not think Myles could follow her where she was going. Angela prayed it was Gramma Marie’s voice steering her, but even if she could have known it forcertain, she didn’t think she could want Myles any less.

  Without Myles to want, her heart was dead.

  Angela couldn’t call out, so she hid behind the nearest brush, the fingers of the damp sword ferns caressing her forehead as she peeked out. She reached inside her handbag and found Rob’s .38, which was in a separate compartment so it would not disturb thegovi she’d carried from Gramma Marie’s altar. She could not allow thegovi to fall or break, not before it was time.

  Maybe Tariq was coming behind her. Somehow, that idea scared her less.

  “Angie?”

  Myles was trying to whisper, but he was still loud. Angela waited until his parka was in sight as he ran from behind the leaning trunk of a fir tree with his bow at his side. Vision alone no longer gave her real certainty, but he smelled right, too. “I’m here,” she said, standing up, the instant before he would have passed her by. She would have stayed hidden if she had thought he would turn back.

  Myles’s face was set so hard, his jaw looked like it ached. He didn’t smile, but she saw relief in his eyes as he slid to a stop on the mud and fir needles. “There were gunshots,” he said.

  “I think it’s the deputies.” She brushed tiny dead fern leaflets from her hair, trying to summon knowledge, but nothing more came. Gramma Marie only showed her what she needed to see.

  He eyed the gun in her hand. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to face him.”

  “Please tell me you’re kidding. Is this your idea of vengeance for Naomi?”

  As soon as Myles said Naomi’s name, Angela felt her hand squeeze the gun more tightly. It might feel like vengeance, but it wasn’t. This was beyond her, Naomi, or Tariq. And it was beyond Myles, she realized. Shehad to let him go.

  Slowly, without speaking at first, Angela aimed her gun at Myles’s chest.

  Myles’s face went harder still, as fixed as one of the centuries-old trees surrounding them. Myles’s expression triggered a memory in Angela that was not her own: Red John. No,John, his true name. Angela had reached a similar juncture with this man, or one with a twin soul.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Myles said patiently, believing she was confused. “This is Myles.”

  Angela’s eyes batted away tears. “I know who you are. Go back, Myles.”

  “Don’t point that at me unless you’re prepared to do something about it,” he said, angry. His voice dared her.

  “I am.”

  His eyes cut into her. “Like hell you are.”

  Maybe it’s Dominique, John. Hell it is.

  The memories were chattering voices in the rainfall now. Angela felt a déjà vu so vivid that she could see John hidden in Myles’s face. John had hunted with a bow, too, skills he had learned from his grandfather. John had hunted in these woods long before he met Gramma Marie, and he was still somewhere here now. So was Gramma Marie, and she was trying to come to her. Gramma Marie’s memories were overrunning Angela’s, melting time, a feeling as unsettling as it was astonishing. Angela didn’t like relinquishing control, not for a minute, yet her mind was no longer hers alone. She needed Gramma Marie’s memories if she was going to prevail over whatever was driving Tariq.

  But Myles was a distraction. Angela hoped Myles couldn’t see her hand trembling on the gun. He would only leave if he believed she would shoot him. First, she had to believe it herself.

  “I’m about to count to ten, Myles,” she said huskily. “Turn and go back. This has nothing to do with you. You’ll hold me back. We’ll both die like those deputies.”

  “Then we’ll both die,” Myles said. He didn’t blink, and his face didn’t change. His breathing had become very calm. He’d made up his mind, too. He was probably as afraid as he’d ever been, but his serenity was still in place, damn him. “I don’t have a choice, Angela Marie. I can’t make you come with me, but I’m not leaving you here.”

  “You stubborn idiot,” she said. “Why can’t you just trust me to do this?”

  “Youneed to trust. Let yourself need somebody for once. I don’t think you’ve trusted a soul since the day you found your mother with that gun in her mouth, sweetheart.”

  Angela squeezed her mind’s eye shut to keep away the image of Mama with the gun. Even today, that memory cut deep. “You’re bringing that upnow?”

  “Now is when I have to. I’m trying to save your life,” Myles said.

  “Angie, Iam here for you. I was always here. Don’t run from me.”

  Angela felt her frightened heart surge, but her mind whirled with confusion. How could she tell the difference between the inklings from Gramma Marie and the deep, frightened parts of her that had always tried to send Myles away? Angela crouched down into the ferns to get out of easy view of the trail, and he crouched beside her. They both breathed a few seconds, not speaking.

  “I can’t bring you unless you’re willing to admit what you’re seeing,” Angela said finally, hushed. “You freeze when we get in trouble, trying to think it through. We don’t have time for that. You have to admit this is magic. This is a curse. If you can’t admit that, you’re no good to me.”

  Myles’s jaw shook. “Angie, if you want me to admit I’m scared, hell, yes, I’m scared,” he said, and his eyes looked plagued enough to prove it. She heard the growing tremor in his voice as he spoke so quickly and softly that she had to strain to hear him.

  “That’s not good enough. You have to accept what we’re facing.”

  At that, Myles’s composure cracked. His face looked ready to shout, but instead a strained whisper emerged from his trembling mouth.“I don’t know what I just saw at your house. I have no way of knowing that, Angie. The only thing Ido know is that I’m not leaving you out here alone.”

  She would never talk him out of it, Angela realized. She wished she did have the nerve to shoot this man in the leg, to save them both. “I do want you to be with me,” Angela said, and the words felt like burrs in her throat. “I always have, even when I acted like a fool.”

  “You’ve got me,” he said, reaching out his hand. “Come back with me, Angie.”

  Shit.She pulled away from
him, deeper into the bush.“This is what I’m talking about. You don’t understand. That’s the quickest way to get us killed.”

  “No, no, don’t go,” Myles said, grabbing her arm tightly to pull her close. “I’m sorry. I had to make one last plea.” He sighed, glancing over his shoulder, toward the trail behind them. “You say you’re relying on your instincts. Okay, I believe you. If I’m out here with you, I don’t have a choice. Just tell me why you’re out here.”

  Angela looked away from him. “I have to go to The Spot. I don’t know why.”

  “What about Tariq?”

  Angela wished she had an answer, for both their sakes. All she knew was that she had to go to the Crossroads Forest. She imagined herself rubbing her body with soil there, pouring out the contents of thegovi, burying them in the ground. That image of the burial had been in the wings of her mind since she’d first seen thegovi, she realized suddenly. But that didn’t tell her what to do about Tariq, or exactly how. “I’ll know when the time comes,” she said.

  “That time ishere. He’s minutes away, if that.”

  “Don’t argue with me, Myles. I have to do this.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Yes, it was time to start running again.

  Angela ran in the lead, keeping a steady pace. She darted and ducked past the overhanging limbs and awkwardly placed tree trunks that steered the trail right and left at whim. She heard Myles behind her, matching her pace for pace. The rainfall against the forest’s leaves and needles was a blanket of sound around them; steady, unyielding, harder and louder than it had been minutes ago. As more water seeped down to the trail, it would be harder to keep their footing. She could already hear water collecting in furrows around them, turning soil into slick mud. Much of the trail was already muddy, splashing as they ran. Her feet sank with each step, demanding more effort to pull them free, slowing her stride. Mud was appearing from nowhere.

  Like the mudslide,she remembered, jolted.

  Just keep running, she told herself. If she surrendered to fear, she and Myles would die.

  The trail was nearly impossible to follow beneath the gathering mud, so Angela concentrated on landmarks as she ran: the moss-covered dead tree that looked like it was wearing a gown. A stand of dead Douglas firs still standing upright, their stunted limbs sticking out as if the trunks had been pierced by an arsenal of thick arrows.

  But new memories were sailing into Angela’s head, making her feel as if her mind were literallyexpanding: She recognized the place where Gramma Marie’s favorite red huckleberry shrub had grown. And where John had been hiding when he shot a black bear the size of a grizzly. She recognized the place where Art Brunell’s father and his friend Lance accidentally started a fire in 1945, which had burned a quarter-acre before dying out; and they’d never told they did it. She saw the unfriendly root that had tripped Dominique and skinned her knee when she was eight, days before the demons started laughing—and then tripped Corey and skinned his knee fifty-five years later, when he was eight, too. The memories made Angela dizzy, gathering strength with the beating rain. These new memories were only the ones closest to the surface, the ones tethered to her and Gramma Marie. These woods were a haven for spirits, and spirits lived on memories.

  A question came to Angela that was so unsettling that it nearly made her stop running:How could she distinguish between the voices of Gramma Marie and whatever forces her grandmother was fighting against? What if she was becoming like Maddie Fisher in the bathtub?

  “The ring will protect you,” she whispered, trying to believe. “As long as you wear it.”

  Angela saw a dark spot on the ground ahead of her, something black, so she slowed, approaching cautiously. Was the clump real or an illusion created by another unfamiliar memory?

  “What?” Myles said behind her.

  Angela crouched, staring. It was a muddy piece of clothing. Her arms tingled decisively. She touched the fabric, lifting up the soggy rag with two fingers. It was mud-soaked except in spots; she saw shiny silver-colored numbering peeping through on each side. Hot blood flooded Angela’s veins.

  This wasn’t Gramma Marie’s memory, or anyone else’s; this washers.

  “This is Corey’s,” she said. “This is Corey’s shirt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Angela nodded. “Tariq brought it for him when he came that summer. A Raiders jersey.”

  “What do you think it means?” Myles asked.

  Reluctantly, Angela dropped the shirt where she’d found it. She should not carry anything more than she needed today; she had to leave everything behind her. “We’re closer to wherever I lost him,” she whispered. Whatever happened to Corey had started before the Fourth of July. It had started in these woods. At The Spot.

  They were closer to The Spot than Angela realized.

  Angela saw Tariq’s van parked in the clearing ahead, on the other side of the fire-pit. Its side door yawned open, but the van was dark inside because the windows were curtained. All she could see through the open door was the empty backseat.

  Angela stood stock-still as fear coiled through her limbs, and not only because of the sight of the van. Her feet told her that she stood at the heart of a site that was accursed. Corey had experienced a horror here. The demon—thebaka, its name occurred to her suddenly—had bested Corey here. Her son had watered this spot with tears. Someone had died here.

  “Down,”Myles whispered, yanking her backward.

  Together, they crawled away from the trail, following the long, thin trunk of a fallen fir tree that had been crowded out by taller, stronger trees. They climbed over the trunk, finding refuge in a thick patch of ferns. From the end of the trail, the van had been directly ahead of them, but now it was to their right. They saw the back window, the closed curtains, and theTARIQ 1 tag.

  “The police didn’t see this parked here?” Myles whispered.

  “It wasn’t here.”

  “He couldn’t have driven it back here. There’s no way to pass.”

  “He didn’t have to drive it.” Like the gun had just come to the house. Like Onyx and the van had vanished a few days before. Ordinary travel routes were not necessary.

  Myles leaned close behind her, his wet parka draped over her, and she could feel his heart pounding beneath his clothing. He whispered directly into her ear, practically soundless. “We have to know if he’s there. Are you ready for that?” His lips touched her.

  She nodded. Her heart wasn’t ready, if its feverish beating was any sign, but she had to be.

  Myles sighed, wiping rain from his brow. “Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “No.” She stared at the van’s curtains, watching for movement from inside.

  “Well, be ready to use it. I have to keep the bow. We both have to be armed.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  “This is the safety. Keep itoff,” he said, and he checked the pin on the body of her gun. She nodded, her palm tight and damp against the revolver. Thank God Rob had pressed her to take the gun, she thought. What had she been thinking to try to refuse it?

  “I’ll try to draw him out, to see if he’s in there,” Myles said. “If you see him, stayout of sight. Don’t shoot unless one of us is in danger, and make sure I’m clear. How much ammo do you have?”

  “Five shots, Rob said.”

  “Then conserve them. Don’t fire more than twice. Don’t pump away on the trigger.Two shots. Hopefully that’ll be enough to distract him, and maybe I’ll get my shot.” He was speaking so softly, his words were no more than sweet breath in her face.

  “Then I should shoot at him again right after you, or he might get you.”

  “Use your judgment, Angie. Handguns aren’t good distance weapons, not like rifles. You have to worry about what happens toyou later. This is a dangerous game we’re playing. So, I’m asking you one more time: Are yousure this is what you want to do, doll-baby?”

  Wantinghad nothing to do with it. “Yes.”
r />   Myles looked disappointed, his face tightening, but he nodded, too. His expression reminded her of the way a condemned man might look at the cook bringing his last meal: He’d eat, but it wouldn’t taste good. Myles kissed her, rolling his mouth and tongue across hers. Again, the kiss ended too soon.

  “I’m trusting you,” Myles said, resting his forehead against hers. “If we get separated, we should both head straight for the police.”

  Angela’s knowledge came again, full-blown: Theywould get separated. She didn’t know if it would happen now or later, but it would happen before the day was finished.

  “I love you, Myles,” Angela said. “I never stopped, not for a minute.”

  “I knew that, Angela Marie.” He grasped her hand tight, kissing it, then closed his eyes. “Lord, please watch over us fools today. Please keep us in the safety of your arms as we struggle to prevail against the cruel forces that have been pitted against us. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.”