The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  Tap-tap-TAP-taptap Tap-tap-TAP-taptap Tap-tap-TAP-taptap

  Her body swayed gently to the call, and she slipped again, deeper into herself.

  Corey is here. Corey’s spirit is strong, and he makes Gramma Marie stronger.

  The realization came to Angela so vividly that she nearly snapped back to herself, wanting to reach out to her son somehow, but she willed her mind to remain calm. She allowed her heart and mind to follow only the sound of the rain.

  Bad images came, because she could not avoid them.

  She saw Mama standing beside her dresser in house shoes and a thin pink nightgown, a pistol stuck in her mouth like a toothbrush.Don’t worry, Sugar. It’s not loaded. She saw Mama’s cornrowed scalp on the kitchen table beside a glass of orange juice. She saw Mama as a girl with bows in her hair, clapping her hands over her ears and screaming the day the demon came.

  Have you ever seen magic, Bo?

  Involuntarily, Angela stiffened when she saw the next image: Corey and Sean yelling and crying as they witnessed a horror, trying to pull someone out of the mud. Then, she saw Corey climbing down the stairs to the wine cellar, grinning back at her.I’m gonna take care of you good, Mom. And Corey’s blood on the floor, snaking toward the wall.

  I can’t do this,she thought.I can’t do this.

  Yes,cher.Yes, you can.

  The images faded. Instead, she felt herself floating, flying.

  “Come to me, Gramma Marie,” she whispered. “I surrender to you. Come.”

  Then, Angela felt herself digging her fingers into the damp ground, pulling out clumps of soil. When she had two hands full of soil, she raised them to her face and smeared the soil on her skin, rubbing it into her hair. She felt her entire body tingle the way her arms had been, coming to life.

  Vinn jwenn mouin, Angela Come to me

  With her hands that no longer felt sensation, Angela reached for thegovi. More than ten years ago, three days before her dying breath, Gramma Marie had blessed thisgovi, leaving strands of her hair and clipped nails inside to preserve hergros-bon-ange, her life-spirit, which would become heresprit when she crossed to the plane of death. She had labored to paint the wall blue so she could send Angela or Corey to find her when the time was right. She had screamed from the effort of pushing the stove in front of her altar, so it would be hidden. She almost hadn’t bothered with so much effort, but she’d had a terrible dream the night before that thebaka was perched in her walnut tree, reminding her thatsomething could go wrong with the papers she’d left in the closet.

  Thegovi was her secondary plan. If the papers failed to bring someone to rid this place of thebaka, she would have to find the strength to come back through hergovi. With Corey’s spirit beside her, she had that strength at last. She herself would set it right.

  Angela poured the hair and nails from thegovi into a hole in the soil, then she buried them, patting the soil down. She was nearly finished. She had only to remember the word now, speak it.

  But the smell was here already, rancid, as if it were rising from a mass grave directly beneath her. Thebaka was still strong. Thebaka would fight. This was its last chance to live.

  Angela’s index finger burrowed into the soil, drawing the characters from her ring in a circle around her, to spell the stolen word Papa Legba craved to have returned to him.

  But hurrying was useless. The fight had begun.

  A terrible shout came. Angela leaped to her feet dizzily, popping back into her own head. Her limbs felt awkward to her, difficult to control. She swayed and blinked, confused by the trees bowing around her. Why was she outside?Where was she?

  Then, she saw Myles.

  Myles stood outside his hiding place, his face in a grimace, his arrow pulled back to his cheek. He was going to shoot her. His face looked as if he had waited all his life for this opportunity to shoot an arrow through her chest. Angela felt more disappointed than frightened when she saw the alarm and hatred in Myles’s face. Thebaka had circumvented his charm, and now poor Myles was suffering just like Art Brunell. The demon was probably making him watch.

  Nearly too late, Angela thought to raise her gun. But her gun was no longer in her hand.

  “Down!”Myles shouted at her.

  Angela didn’t pause to think. She dropped flat to her back like a rag doll. She immediately heard ashwwwwwuNNk sound, and she watched Myles’s arrow fly only three feet above her eyes, gone in a blink. Behind her, someone howled.

  Angela turned toward the cry. Tariq came limping out of the brush with his Glock, his mouth wrenched with pain. Myles’s arrow was buried in the meat of Tariq’s upper left thigh. He must have been hiding on the other side of her, ready to shoot, but Myles had seen him first.

  Tariq’s gun was aimed directly at her.

  The last time Angela had seen Tariq was in divorce court, when he was all composure and his pain-reddened eyes turned from hers after she’d ignored his attempts at a greeting. He had not seemed so big then. She would have felt sorry for him, if her anger had allowed it. Seeing him now, Angela remembered how much she used to cringe when the anger in Tariq’s voice passed the danger point, when she knew he was ready to hit her. Or, if he could have his wish, to get his gun and kill her. All these years later, he was ready to use his Glock to shut her up.

  Another arrow flew, this one lodging in Tariq’s left shoulder, inches from his heart. With another howl of pain, Tariq stumbled, turning off-center as he absorbed the impact of the arrow, but he did not fall, and he did not drop his gun.

  This time, he didn’t aim at Angela. He aimed beyond her, toward Myles.

  Angela saw Myles reaching for his quiver. For an arrow.

  Her hands grabbed her .38, her last gift from the man whose grandfather had run a mile to tell Gramma Marie that her daughter wouldn’t stop screaming, a kindness Gramma Marie never forgot. Angela had a firm grasp, and she aimed the gun toward Tariq.

  Five bullets. Shoot twice. Her mind knew what to do.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  The trigger held firm, not moving. Still, a gunshot exploded in the quiet woods, crumbling Angela’s thoughts and chasing away the birds that had been nesting silently around them. Angela tried to pull the trigger again, but there was silence this time. She checked the safety, and it was still in theoff position Myles had shown her. How had she fired if the trigger hadn’t moved?

  A moan made her look back at Myles. His bow had fallen, and he was doubled over, making a terrible noise she had not allowed herself to hear before she looked at him.

  Tariq staggered behind Angie, within five feet of her, so close she could smell the stink of thebaka on him. The terrible reeking almost drove her to vomit. “I’m disappointed in you, Angie,” Tariq said, his voice surging low from his throat. “He’s the best you could do?” Tariq was festooned with the two arrows, wincing in pain, but he grinned at her.

  With a scream of frustration, Angela aimed directly up at his broad, smiling face, tugging on the trigger again. Again, it stuck in place. Thebaka hadn’t been able to still Myles’s arrows, but it had frozen her gun. Her body felt full of sand, heavy and useless.

  “Angie,run!” Myles groaned, and she turned in time to see him fall to his side, curled in a ball.

  “No, Angie, please stay,” Tariq said gently. “I planned this especially for you, Snook.”

  “Leave him alone!”Angela cried. As Tariq strode toward Myles’s prone form, Angela hurled large stones from the fire-pit at him. As a stone sailed over Tariq’s head, she heard Myles’s bow crack beneath Tariq’s foot. The next stone hit Tariq squarely in the back with athunk, but he only turned and wagged a finger at her. Then, he aimed his Glock at Myles’s head.

  Angela begged, blubbered, bawled. She felt as detached from herself as she’d been as she poured the contents of thegovi into the soil, present and yet not present. Her mind was breaking.

  “Run—”Myles implored again, through gritted teeth.

  Tariq fired.

  With a
scream, Angela wrenched her eyes away. But not before she saw the spray of blood.

  Angela’s legs rediscovered their strength, and she pitched herself toward Tariq’s van, pushing off the rear bumper to help her run faster into the woods. When she heard the third gunshot, Angela’s legs felt so drained of strength that she had to cling to a tree trunk to keep her balance. Her scream became a sob. The tree was friendly, covered with soft moss that caressed her face as she fell against it. She swung by her arms, steadying herself. The tree helped her run on.

  Angela was crying and blind from tears of grief and fright, but she ran; leaping over fallen trunks, squeezing between standing trees, fighting her way into vine maple and salmonberry.

  She ran as if she were flying.

  Thirty-Three

  JULY4, 2001

  SO, WHAT DO YOU THINKyou’d like to do with your life after college, Corey?”

  The woman had to ask him twice, because although Corey heard the question, he didn’t remember to answer. He kept looking toward the foyer, watching new people come into the house, hoping to see Sean. Corey had been stuck at a movie with his parents yesterday, and he hadn’t had the will to leave the house since. He wanted to be near his parents, even if he was only sleeping in his room with his blinds pulled down and his curtains closed tight.

  But tonight wasthe night. Within twenty minutes, he and Sean needed to start driving to Portland, or they would never make it to thebotanica before it closed at eight; they were lucky it was open on a holiday. Sean was supposed to come pick him up in his friend’s car, but Sean was baby-sitting until his father came home, trying to win enough points to be in his good graces.

  Corey didn’t know what had happened between Sean and his father, but Mr. Leahy had knocked on Sean’s door at eight yesterday morning and told Corey he had to go home. He sounded mad as hell, and Corey wondered what Sean had told him. Even without knowing Corey had been out all night, Mom had been riding him from the moment he came home.Where did you leave your jersey? You look like you didn’t get a wink of sleep. Why are you so quiet?

  Corey felt himself pulling away from his surroundings, his mind floating, which had been happening a lot since yesterday. He gave himself a reality check: He was in the living room talking to a doctor at his parents’ party, a woman in her thirties he’d never met. Her hair reminded him of Becka’s, so he kept his eyes away from her hair.

  “I write lyrics. I think maybe I’d like to work with horses, too, be a vet or something,” Corey said, answering her question at last. He was thinking about Sheba.

  “My sister is a vet,” the woman said. “Let me know if you have any questions about schools.”

  “Yeah, a’ight,” Corey said, but he drifted away from her and her hair, staring toward the door.

  He wanted to go back to bed. He didn’t rememberever feeling as sick as he felt today. Likedeath warmed over, as the saying went. Every part of him felt wrong, wrecked. Whether it was because of his beating or reasons he didn’t want to know, his entire body felt as stiff as a slab of concrete, his stomach worst of all. His mind felt sick. His heart felt sick. He wanted to crawl into his closet and sit in the dark, if he weren’t so afraid of what he might see in the shadows, the way he felt afraid whenever the walnut tree bumped against his window.

  He wanted to close his eyes and feelnothing.

  What he really wanted, maybe, was to be dead. Maybe Mom’s mother had known what she was doing when she took all those sleeping pills. No pain. No worries. No guilt. Freedom.

  Bad, bad thoughts.

  Corey didn’t like having such bad thoughts, but he’d given up on having what he wanted. Hewanted to be able to go back to The Spot and change what had happened. Hewanted to take back his wish against Bo. He wanted to stay safe in his house tonight instead of having to walk back into the house of whatever spirits had been toying with him at The Spot. He didn’t have a damn thing he wanted. All he had was bad thoughts.

  And a stomachache.

  Corey couldn’t be sure, but the bad thoughts seemed to be hatching in his stomach. The stomachache he’d first noticed at The Spot had never left, and it only felt worse after three cleansing baths, even when he followed Gramma Marie’s instructionsto the word. Nothing soothed the grinding ache in his stomach. Some of it was a souvenir from Bo, but there was something else hiding inside the pain. Maybe it was thebaka, Corey thought. Maybe this was what it felt like when thebaka crawled inside you.

  Fuck that, he thought. He’d rather be dead.

  Mom gave him a look from the other side of the room, checking on him. She was talking to a family wearing identical T-shirts in the foyer. Corey smiled, trying to pretend he was having a good time, but he knew it must be one sorry smile. He tried to duck out of Mom’s sight on the far side of the living room, where there weren’t as many people. The jazz saxophone from the speakers squealed in his ear. Coltrane. “A Love Supreme.” Mom played that all the time.

  A woman’s voice near him broke through the music. He heard her sayElijah Goode.

  The woman who was speaking was standing near the piano, with a thin face that could use some sun. “He chose this place because he said the land felt ‘blessed beyond all description,’ or in any case that’s what he wrote to his brother. Marie Toussaint worked for him for a time, and he left her this house in his will.”

  Gramma Marie worked for him, all right, Corey thought.

  “Are you kidding me?” said the man who’d been talking to Mom, the T-shirt man. He lifted his red-haired son to his back the way Corey’s father used to give him rides when he was little. Watching, Corey wished he were young enough for his father to carry him again. “I never heard that. I figured it was something to do with Mrs. T’saint and her teas.”

  “Oh, no. It’s much more than that,” the woman went on. “In 1929, three years after Marie Toussaint took ownership of this house, a mudslide destroyed the other homes on this side of town….”

  The wordmudslide made Bo’s sinking head pop into Corey’s mind, and his stomach squirmed, this time with nausea. Why had she broughtthat up? It had to be a bad omen to hear someone talk about the mudslide, today of all days. Thebaka was proud of the mudslide.

  Corey didn’t want to hear the rest. He slipped past the French doors into the dining room, hoping he could find some quiet. He was in luck. Although the people in the kitchen were louder than he wanted them to be, the dining room was empty, a sanctuary.

  Corey walked to the rear picture window, where he could see Dad standing over the grill on the corner of the deck, basting ribs while he talked to three or four guys. Corey wondered if the other men were standing close enough to get a good whiff of his father in the breeze; even though Dad loved soaking in the bathtub, he smelled like shit today.

  Corey watched his father a long time, pressing his palm to the window. He felt like a prisoner in his new life, locked away from Mom and Dad both. Corey had never known he hated lying so much.

  You just have to go to The Spot one more time. Tonight, it’s all over.

  For once, good thoughts came. Uplifting thoughts. He could do this.

  But first things first. He had to give Mom’s ring back. Thebaka had ruined it for him.

  “…He said it was voodoo for sure,” the man’s voice floated in from the living room behind him, and people laughed as if he were telling jokes.Art Brunell, that’s his name. But he won’t think that’s funny before too very long. He’ll learn some respect. The thought appeared, sure of itself, although Corey didn’t know the man’s name and didn’t care.

  Not all of his thoughts were his own anymore.

  As he shivered, feeling disoriented, Coreysmelled the mud that had killed Bo, and the smell reminded him of Becka. As soon as he thought of her, dead leaves blew across the dining room floor, fanning near his feet. He heard something fall over inside the china cabinet, glass toppling. Leaves were in the china cabinet, too, bunched against the glass.

  When Corey gasped, the leaves were gone.


  But it was here.It didn’t look like Becka anymore—that was onlyone way it could look—but Corey felt something slide past him like a jellyfish, cold and soggy. The smell alone made him take two steps back, covering his nose. One of the dining room chairs skittered to the side, rocking back and forth on its legs before settling again. Corey swallowed, trying to dislodge what felt like a rock in his throat. His heart was pummeling him. Gramma Marie’s blessings should have prevented thebaka from walking inside the house, but it was here. Hadhe allowed it to come inside?

  The French doors shuddered. The thing was moving into the living room.

  Corey burst through the French doors, trying to follow its invisible trail. But there were too many people in here, and how could he track something he couldn’tsee?