by Kwame Mbalia
Wind lashed at my face, and the night insects seemed to cackle as they watched my desperate sprint across the hard-packed dirt. My hair stood on end as a jagged bolt of lightning hit the ground, followed by a bone-rattling thunderclap.
BOOM!
Wait. That wasn’t thunder.
That sounded like…
I leaped up the front stairs and skidded to a stop on the wooden porch. The door had been smashed open, knocked nearly off the hinges. It was like someone had taken an ax to the farmhouse in a rage.
The lights were off inside. Shadows lurked in the hallway. I wished I hadn’t left my flashlight in the barn.
“Hello?” I called.
The only response was silence. I thought I heard something moving around, but it could’ve just been the wind dancing past me, daring me to go in.
Thought you were a hero, big boy.
I filled my lungs with air and took a step forward. Then another. The moon peeked out from behind a cloud and faint light fell across my shoulders, adding my shadow to the others. I held my breath. Even the crickets outside had gone quiet. A floorboard creaked underfoot, and I winced. But nothing jumped out at me, so maybe—
“So…you are the Anansesem, grum grum.”
I froze, my heart in my throat. The words were muffled, almost garbled, and the voice was deeper than that of anyone I knew. But I recognized it. I’d heard it during the video call with John Henry. So that had been the Shamble Man!
“Who’s there?” I asked, hating the way my voice shook. “Come out where I can see you!”
The Shamble Man continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “The hero of Alke. The savior of Isihlangu.” The voice paused, then continued in a harsh growl. “The destroyer of MidPass.”
An image of MidPass burning flared in my mind, friends screaming, and I closed my eyes at the sudden wave of pain.
“Yesss, the Destroyer. I like that title better, grum grum.” The voice grew lighter, almost playful, as the intruder sang:
“Tristan Strong punched a hole in the sky
And let the evil in.
Cities burned.
Now what did we learn?
Don’t let him do it again.”
I gritted my teeth, willing myself to ignore the disturbing—and yet accurate—lyrics. “Stop hiding and come out where I can see you. Or are you scared? You just gonna shout insults while hiding?” I held up my left arm so Anansi’s adinkra shone in the darkness like a tiny green star, warning me that iron monsters were near.
“‘Come out,’ says the little hero. ‘Come out’! But does he really want me to, grum grum? Little man might not like what he seesss.” The words ended in a hiss that swirled from the far corner, where I thought the door to Nana and Granddad’s bedroom was. There, a group of shadows seemed to ripple on top of the darkness. Something thumped on the floor, shaking the house, and I thought the refrigerator had fallen over. But then it thumped again, and again. A chill swept over me when I realized that what I was hearing were the footsteps of something massive. Something…monstrous.
A figure slowly emerged. My muscles locked up and a deep chill settled in my bones as my worst fears became reality.
Two huge feet covered in fetterling chains. Arms and legs armored with the rotted wood of a hullbeast. The broken, jagged halves of a bossling’s manacle-like head rested on either shoulder, and a long, tattered cloak was fastened to them. And in between the iron halves, I could now see a face…
“No,” I whimpered.
On the face was a gleaming, twisted amber mask, knotted and warped, the eye and mouth holes ringed with the crumpled insect-like bodies of brand flies.
The Shamble Man moved closer, one arm tucked into his cloak, and I took a step back without thinking. He laughed, and the mask shifted slightly. I flushed in hot anger and embarrassment, and I forced myself to hold my ground and clench my fists.
“What do you want?” I shouted.
The mask tilted, as if the wearer found the question amusing. “By grum, the little hero has some courage after all. But he keeps asking questions he might not like the answers to. Look at him shake. Look at him shiver. This is the Destroyer? He is a whelp, a child, grum grum.”
“I am not—”
“So eager to leap into battle,” he continued, talking right over me. “Not knowing what he risks losing.” He raised one arm to open the cloak, and in the faint light of my adinkra bracelet I saw two figures curled up in fear on the floor next to him.
Granddad and Nana.
They were holding each other, each trying their best to shield their partner in life, and when they saw me, they stiffened. Granddad struggled to his feet and put up his fists.
“Get out of my house!” he shouted at the monster.
“Walter, don’t!” Nana said. “You don’t know what—”
“I said, leave!” Granddad edged forward and threw a few jabs at the Shamble Man. But the masked intruder just chuckled, a harsh sound that filled the room with violent foreboding. Granddad bobbed and weaved, then rushed forward with a flurry of punches. I held my breath, hopeful.
An armored hand shoved my grandfather aside, and he collapsed against the far wall.
“Granddad!” I shouted. I started forward, then stopped. The Shamble Man was in my way.
“Finally, some fire. You see, little hero? There was still some pride in that one. But I’m sorry, grum grum, I’m not here for the old man. No, not here for him at all. There’s another whose legend is just as strong in Alke as your false epic, little hero. Someone who taught you everything she knew. Yesss,” he hissed, turning.
“No,” I whispered.
The Shamble Man pointed an armored hand at Nana.
“Here we are, grum grum.”
I didn’t think. My body just acted on its own. I lunged forward, desperate to get in between my grandmother and the Shamble Man, but the huge figure sprang into my way and I was forced to throw myself backward with a yelp. Something gleamed in the darkness and a thunderous crash sounded from the spot where I’d stood only a second earlier. I clenched my fists and activated the akofena adinkra, High John the Conqueror’s gift to me before the Battle of the Bay. Four obsidian black boxing gloves shimmered into view. When I swung my right fist, two of the gloves mimicked the action in a vicious hook Granddad would’ve been proud of….
Only to be batted away like flies by a whirling metallic blur. The impact spun me in a circle, and when I turned back around, I froze in confusion.
The masked intruder held something I’d never dreamed of defending myself against. I knew it on sight, had even fought alongside its owner in battle. But that was back in Alke, not in Alabama. And the last time I’d seen it, it had been swinging toward the leader of MidPass.
“Come, little hero. Let me smash you to bits.” The masked intruder held up the weapon and prepared to charge. I gulped, my eyes glued to one of the most powerful items in all Alke. A smooth wooden handle carved with symbols. Cold polished iron engraved with the adinkra symbol for strength and protection.
John Henry’s hammer.
The hammer slammed down into the floor again and again as the Shamble Man attempted to crush me in my grandparents’ kitchen. He didn’t chase me, however, and I noticed he never moved far from the doorway. He was stalling for some reason, but I didn’t exactly have the time to stop and work through that mystery.
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted as I dodged another swing. The hammer crashed into the sink, demolishing the countertop and sending water spraying into the air.
“‘Why?’ the little hero asks.” The hammer swung again, obliterating the pantry door as I ducked the wave of splintered wood fragments. One of them glanced off my cheek, stinging, and I felt something warm run down my face. “‘Why?’ says the Destroyer. After burning the homes of thousands. Sending hundreds to lie in chains in the walls of a monster. ‘Why?’ he asks.”
“That wasn’t my fault—” I started to protest.
“NOT YOUR
FAULT?!” the Shamble Man roared. John Henry’s hammer twirled above his head before he swiped at me, the iron head barely missing as it whistled past. It was starting to glow in a familiar way, and I felt I should know what that meant. But it’s hard to think when you’re dodging and ducking to save your life. The hammer head swung left and right, scraping the floor and scarring the ceiling. “Everything is your fault. Everything! So now I must do what is best for my world, for Alke, and I do it gladly.”
He lunged forward, the hammer raised, and I threw myself backward. But he had tricked me. As I tumbled head over heels, the masked intruder stepped into the hallway, scooped up Nana, and tossed her over his shoulder like she was as light as a pillow. She fought him. Somehow she’d grabbed her quilting bag and was smacking the Shamble Man upside the head with it. But it was all in vain.
“Put her down!” I screamed, scrambling to my feet. My akofena shadow gloves appeared again as I started to dash forward, but a swipe of the hammer sent me crashing into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.
The Shamble Man turned and pressed the head of the hammer, now glowing hot orange, against the floor of the hall and shoved it downward. A golden seam appeared. It was as if the air unzipped itself and an entrance to another world appeared. Now I remembered where I’d seen this before. John Henry and Brer Rabbit had done the same thing when they sent Gum Baby from Alke into my world. This was another tear, but smaller, controlled. Was this how the spirits were crossing into my world?
“Good-bye, little hero,” the Shamble Man said. The hood of his cloak was pulled low, but I still saw red-orange eyes brimming with hate behind the mask he wore. They glared at me with such fury, I took a step back without thinking. “May your heart wither. May your tears fall endlessly, as mine once did.”
With that, the man in the amber monster mask stepped toward the glowing seam.
“Nana!” I screamed.
My grandmother, still hammering her kidnapper upside the head, met my eyes. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t understand it. My arms reached out to try to grab his swirling cloak, to try and hold him back, but the Shamble Man stepped through the seam between worlds. Behind him the golden line in the floor disappeared, leaving me stumbling to a stop.
They were gone.
“TELL ME AGAIN, SLOWER THIS TIME.”
Anansi’s stern voice cut through my panicked breathing. I was sitting on the floor of the barn where I’d left the SBP, my head between my knees. Ninah was nowhere to be seen—probably scared off by the Shamble Man. Granddad was back in the house, hollering into the phone at the police while a large welt grew on the side of his head. I’d slipped away without him noticing. I couldn’t blame him.
“Nana…” I whispered. It felt like my chest was gripped in a vise.
“Tristan,” Anansi said again. The SBP vibrated in my lap to get my attention, and I looked at it through tear-blurred eyes to see the trickster god standing in his partial-spider form with two hands on his hips. “Tell me what happened.”
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice steady. “He was here.”
“Who?”
“Him. The one who attacked John Henry…the Shamble Man.”
A chill swept down my arms and I shivered as I continued. “He was wearing iron monsters as armor. He destroyed the farmhouse and…and…took Nana. And he did it with John Henry’s hammer.”
Anansi’s eyes grew wide. “He still has the hammer?” When I nodded, he rubbed his chin and shook his head. “So that’s what that surge of energy was. A wave of magic slammed through this place, so powerful it knocked me into full spider form for a second and dispelled the river spirit. It was incredible.” He saw the expression on my face and quickly added, “But dangerous. Very dangerous. I could tell the intent was filled with wrongness. Wielding another god’s symbol is…it’s unheard of. And the armor…did you by chance get a look at it with the sun god’s adinkra?”
I clapped a hand to my forehead in embarrassment. “No, I didn’t. Everything happened so fast.”
“Hmm.”
“Anansi,” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“What am I going to do? He took Nana. My grandmother! I need to go after them. I can’t leave her in that monster’s hands. He was so…angry, like I’d done something to him, but I’ve never even seen him before.”
The image of my grandparents, assaulted in their farmhouse that had survived so many other tragedies, so many hard times, filled me with helpless rage. Burning tears appeared in the corners of my eyes and I cuffed them away angrily.
“Whatever we do, it has to be together.” Anansi began pacing along the edges of the SBP’s screen, walking up one side, across the ceiling, and back down the other. “This new threat is powerful. More powerful than I wanted to believe. How did he know the hammer could allow passage through the realms? What other tricks does he have up his sleeve? No, for this we need help. We need to contact the other gods and—”
“There’s no time for that!” I exploded, jumping to my feet. The SBP clattered to the floor and Anansi shouted in dismay as he tumbled around the screen. “We have to go now! I need to get to Alke immediately. Nana could be hurt, and I can’t sit around and wait for y’all to have a conference call! Help me get my grandmother back, please!”
Anansi sighed. “Tristan…you said that he knew everything about you. Your history, your strengths. Who your grandmother is and why she’s so important to you. Have you ever stopped to think you might be doing exactly what he wants?”
“I don’t care, I have to! Don’t you see? I have to. What would you do if you were in my place?” The phone grew blurry, and I shook my head quickly to scatter my tears to the dusty floor. “Huh? Would you wait?”
“No. No, I wouldn’t.” Anansi rubbed his chin, and, for a brief second, a look crossed his face. An expression of remorse, or regret. Before I could ask about it, he stood up. “Okay, we’ll go. But we have to be smart about this…. We’re going to need help once we get there. And it’s gonna take time. You need to give me a little bit more freedom—a few more unlocked doors in this here phone—if you want to move quickly after this Shamble Man.” He raised an eyebrow.
I hesitated. Giving Anansi more freedom to use the Story Box, the one thing he wanted more than anything, set off a few alarm bells in my head. But then the image of Nana disappearing in the clutches of the Shamble Man reappeared, his burning, hate-filled gaze searing my brain. I swallowed my questions and nodded. I took a deep breath, then climbed to my feet and dusted myself off. There was no time to worry. If I was going to get Nana back safely, I needed to be on my game and ready for anything.
Anansi let a wide sly grin split his face and he nodded with approval. “There we go. Nothing wrong with crying, but when you’re done, it’s time for action. Now, here’s what I’m going to need….”
“Are you sure this is the only way?”
I walked on the dusty path that wound around the farm, circling the cornfields and heading farther and farther away from the safety and comfort of the farmhouse. It was dark outside—so dark everything looked like shadows and spilled ink. The air was cooling rapidly, and the clouds overhead were bunched on top of each other angrily, ready to send torrential rains crashing down.
That was fine.
A storm had already ripped through my life. What was a few more drops of water?
Luckily, I had the SBP on, and the glow of the screen cast a soft white light around me. I wore an old gray training hoodie, a matching pair of gray shorts, and a beat-up old pair of black-and-red Chuck Taylor sneakers. A slim backpack was slung over my shoulders, filled with water, snacks, and an old pocketknife I had found on one of the shelves in the barn. I’d even stuffed in the remains of Nana’s tattered quilt—to have a part of her with me, I guess. More importantly, I wore the enchanted fingerless gloves John Henry had given me, as well as my adinkra bracelet. No way anyone was gonna catch me unprepared again.
“For the last time, bo
y, it’s either this or nothing. Now pay attention.” Anansi was crouching on the screen. He’d built a pixelated fire below the blank, rounded square of an app icon. He was in human form, and as I watched, he pulled a spool of silk from one of his pants pockets and sat down next to the fire and began to weave. Silvery thread began to spool out behind him, curling into connected shapes that gathered in piles in the corner of the phone.
“Don’t just sit there, storyteller.” Anansi spoke without looking away from his work. “You’re the Anansesem—I’m just a god trapped in a phone. Never mind the centuries of knowledge and skill restricted by this tiny rectangular prison, just because ole Sky God couldn’t take a joke.” He cleared his throat. “At any rate. I’m not bitter.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
“Do your job, boy. This doesn’t work without you.”
“What job?” I asked, confused.
“The god—excuse me, goddess—we’re attempting to summon. What, did you think I could tear open another hole between worlds? If I recall, that’s your specialty. We’re going to do things the Anansi way this time.”
“Get someone else to do it?” I muttered under my breath.
“No!” the spider god snapped. Then he thought about it. “Well…actually, yes. In this case, you.”
I rolled my eyes. In nearly every Anansi tale that exists, the trickster attempts to get others to do the hard work, then cheats them out of the fruit of their labors. Sometimes it’s literally fruit, and other times it’s fame and recognition. If there was a way Anansi could get the most while doing the least, you’d better believe he’d find it.
“I assume,” Anansi continued, “you know the story of Keelboat Annie, yes? Strongest woman on the river? Go ahead and tell the tale, and I’ll collect the power of your words.”
I didn’t really like the sound of Anansi “collecting” any power of mine, but I didn’t have a choice. “Okay. I can do that, I guess.” I walked on for a little bit, trying to gather my thoughts. “Okay.”
“Anytime now.”
I racked my brain and licked my lips. Come on, Tristan. Of course I’d heard about Keelboat Annie. Everyone had. I just needed to spit it out. But for some reason, trying to gather up the story felt like collecting water with a vegetable strainer. It was like I couldn’t focus. As soon as I thought I was ready, the image of the Shamble Man looming over Nana flashed in my brain, and all the words and characters and images just fell out of my mind and scattered in the wind.
