Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  It wasn’t surprising that his son didn’t feel much warmth for the recently buried Sadie Myrtle Jones Williams. Charlotte’s parents had swapped Christmases between Oakland and Gracetown, but Uncle Harry’s seat at the table had always sat empty. His four sisters had taken bets on whether he’d show up for the funeral—and he had, sobbing worse than the rest. “I thought I’d have more time,” he’d cried out in the church, although Grandmama had been six days shy of eighty. Still, he had refused to set foot in Gracetown for a luncheon at the home of Grandmama’s childhood friend. Kai was more a novelty than family to Charlotte, one reason she had been glad to give him a ride. She’d only seen the kid three or four times, and the last time he’d been only nine. Twelve was a different story: he was almost as tall as she was and—

  “Shit, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Kai said.

  “Hey!” Charlotte said. “Watch that mouth.”

  “You’re not my mom. You don’t tell me what to do.”

  She stared at him so long that she nearly veered off into one of the ditches that yawned open on either side of the road. He’d been so quiet until now that his sudden rebellion surprised her. Her voice was ice. “Don’t start with me, baby boy. This is not the time.”

  His tone softened. “I’m just saying—nobody wants to be driving around in the middle of nowhere, dang.”

  He had a point, but although she was only twenty-two, she felt obligated to sound parental. “Watch your mouth around me—or you can walk,” she said, and threw in, “Hear?” Grandmama had always said that: Hear? Charlotte heard Grandmama’s voice in her ear, sharp as a whip. Her throat pinched tight with a smothered sob. This awful day had no end in sight.

  Kai looked away toward the unbroken forest and its tangle of trees. “My dad got locked up here,” Kai said. “He said that place was just a bunch of rednecks who hurt kids for fun. And he said Gracetown is haunted as shit.”

  His voice trembled. For the first time, Charlotte realized he was cursing because he was genuinely afraid. What kinds of stories had Uncle Harry filled his son’s head with? Grandmama had always said Uncle Harry should see a therapist, although she’d said it more like an insult than a recommendation. Her aunts said he’d never been the same since the Reformatory, and maybe Grandmama had been in denial because she hadn’t fought harder to get him out. (To hear Uncle Harry tell it, his parents’ attitude had been Maybe it’ll be a good wake-up call for him.) Charlotte’s mom had superstitions about ghosts too, but nothing like Uncle Harry’s.

  “That was a long time ago,” Charlotte said. “That place is closed now.”

  “Whatever,” Kai mumbled.

  But again, Kai was right: they were alone. Charlotte hadn’t seen another car in ten minutes, maybe longer. A thick fog bank sat across the road ahead like a wall, and Charlotte felt a strong urge to stop the car and turn around. She checked the navigator: SATELLITE UNAVAILABLE. The map showed the dot of their car surrounded by a sea of nothing. She and Kai had given up on getting a cell-phone signal soon as they passed the county line. It never failed: whenever one thing went wrong, everything else joined in a chorus. She’d had her first car accident two years ago, when she swerved to avoid hitting a dog on her way from getting her wisdom teeth pulled.

  Today felt as cursed as that one. Worse. She’d just buried a grandmother she’d barely bothered to get to know, so both of her grandmothers were gone. She’d had a much closer relationship with her father’s more cosmopolitan mother in Oakland, who ran a bookstore and hadn’t been nearly as hard to understand beneath a thick country accent and old-school rules.

  “Fuck,” she said under her breath, and drove through the fog. It was so thick, she braced for the car to shudder, hardly breathing while all of the windows went gray.

  “I can’t see!” Kai said.

  But as soon as he said it, they passed through to the hot sun again, everything in bright focus. Only then, she allowed herself to ponder it: Fog in the middle of the day? During the summer? The oddness skittered across her mind, but she shut down the part of her that wanted to panic. Like Kai had said—whatever.

  Evidence of civilization emerged ahead, a small billboard nearly covered by the trees with large red letters: LAST STOP ON ROUTE 9—1/2 MILE-GAS-FOOD. All of the paint was cracking in visible rivulets across the weathered wood.

  “Yes!” Kai said, at the same time she’d been thinking Thank fucking goodness.

  She kept deities’ names from mind to avoid blasphemy so close to where Grandmama had lived, as if Grandmama might still hear her. Or maybe, just maybe, cussing alongside God’s name really was a sin.

  “Listen…” Charlotte began slowly, wondering if she’d been too harsh on Kai by threatening to make him walk. “It sounds like your dad’s said some stuff to you that’s pretty confusing. And… raw. Maybe he should have waited until you’re older.”

  “Dad says you’re never too young to know the truth.” Kai recited it like a mantra.

  That sounded like Uncle Harry, all right. Every conversation was a speech. But he’d never told her about his time at the Gracetown Reformatory. Not that she’d asked.

  “What did he say happened to him when he was locked up, Kai?”

  Kai parted his lips as if to answer, but changed his mind. He stared at the road ahead, eyes searching for the promised gas and food. Like her, he looked hungry enough to eat a wrinkled gas-station hot dog. Or two. She’d been looking forward to the feast after the funeral.

  “Well, whatever it is…” she went on. “It’s not happening now. It won’t happen to you.”

  “What if we get pulled over? And I get locked up for no reason like him?” His voice’s pitch grew higher with his agitation. “And then… then…”

  “Who’s gonna pull us over—a racoon?” she said. “Nobody’s out here. Right?”

  Kai surveyed the empty road and both sides of the thick woods and nodded, smiling a bit at her joke. Poor kid! Charlotte needed to talk with Uncle Harry and let him know to ease back on his Gracetown horror stories. Uncle Harry was the eldest of the siblings and Kai was a son he’d had from his third marriage, late in life. He and his son were from two different worlds. When would Uncle Harry have been locked up? The late 1960s? Black drivers in the South could just disappear in those days. Times weren’t perfect, but they weren’t still like that, at least.

  The gas station appeared. And Charlotte’s stomach knotted. Shit.

  This building was an artifact, shuttered with planks across its windows. She could barely read the faded sign above the door: HANDEE GAS. It was an old-fashioned station with only two bright red pumps long out of service, their hoses emptied on the ground like oversized snakes in a blanket of pine needles.

  “What the hell?” Kai said, exactly what she was thinking.

  As Charlotte slowed, hoping the gas station would morph into an AM/PM like the convenience stores in California, she noticed a light in the woods to the left. A driveway from the road led to a second structure behind the gas station, a wood-paneled house hardly bigger than a cabin. But a light was on behind sheer white curtains, and a vintage round-hooded pickup truck was parked in the driveway, white paint also fading.

  Charlotte turned into the driveway at the last second, her car’s tires skidding on mud.

  “What are you doing?” Kai said.

  “There’s a house. I’m just going to knock on the door and ask for directions.”

  “That’s crazy!” Kai said. “Haven’t you ever seen Deliverance?”

  Again, Charlotte looked at him with surprise. She’d seen the film once in college, and once was enough. The banjo theme played in her head, cryptic. “Your father let you watch—”

  “He says Gracetown is like Deliverance. I’ve never seen it. Don’t want to either.”

  “Kai, stop freaking yourself out. Just stay in the car.”

  Charlotte rarely missed a hashtag, so she knew what sometimes happened when black people knocked on strangers’ doors, only to
be met by gunfire. She still remembered a black woman’s name: Renisha McBride. And there were others. But she also wasn’t going to let fear rule her life. It was broad daylight. She was lost. She was dressed for church. She would be fine.

  Charlotte didn’t want to block the cabin’s driveway, so she veered slightly to the right of it a few yards from the house’s door, parking beneath an oak tree that looked a century old. Something crunched beneath her tires, the sound of bad news. Dammit! Had she damaged the car? She turned off the engine, and the insects’ songs grew louder.

  As Charlotte opened her car door, Kai grabbed her wrist. “Wait! Don’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what, sweetie?”

  He stared at her, earnest, trying to choose words. His grip was a vise. “It… it feels… mad. Like, everything is pissed off.” When she squinted, trying to make sense of what he’d said, Kai sighed and let her go. “I can’t explain. My dad says you can’t always explain.”

  “Lock up behind me. I’ll be right back.”

  When Charlotte closed her car door behind her, Kai hit the electric lock right away. The humidity felt soupy, and her armpits pricked with sweat as soon as she stepped outside. In a way, maybe the air did feel pissed off. She wanted to laugh at Kai, but she couldn’t. And it was smart to leave Kai in the car, she remembered. He was a black male, too tall to be considered “cute” by many strangers; instead, he looked like the national boogeyman since The Birth of a Nation and before. Kai was wearing a dress shirt and tie, but still.

  Charlotte glanced at the gas station behind them. Someone had made a junk yard of the station’s side wall, not as visible from the street: rusted old cars, discarded gas cans, an old road sign advertising Fatima Cigarettes, which she’d never heard of. Maybe this was what Kai had meant, too: these items were pissed off because they were old and forgotten. Like she had so often forgotten Grandmama.

  Music was playing faintly from the house. Elvis? It was impossible to mistake the voice, but the music was gospel, not rock and roll. She recognized the song, “Peace in the Valley,” from the handful of times she’d attended church with Grandmama at Christmas.

  Charlotte did not go to the little house’s sagging front porch right away as she’d planned. She stared, thinking it over.

  The plants on the porch, even in the hanging basket, were dead. Only a screen door was closed across the doorway, but despite the light she’d thought she’d seen from the road, the house was dark now. It was hard to imagine that light had ever shone from this house, much less a moment before. A hidden hinge squealed lazily back and forth. At the edge of the wooden awning, she saw the chain from a ruined porch swing rocking in the mild breeze. Somewhere behind the house, a dog was barking. It might not be big, but it wasn’t small. Maybe it was on a chain, maybe it wasn’t.

  Then Charlotte noticed the Confederate flag on the bumper sticker on the oversized truck parked near the porch. The words printed beside it had faded, but the crossed blue stripes and white stars still showed. Charlotte’s heart thumped her breastbone. She’d known a girl at UCLA who defended the flag as “heritage” and insisted it wasn’t racist despite the way racists loved it, but now Kai’s words came back: Everything is pissed off. How hadn’t she noticed it right away?

  None of it felt right. Instead of stepping toward the house, Charlotte stepped away.

  She looked back at Kai, and he was watching her wide-eyed, his nose pressed to the window on the driver’s side. She gestured toward the house dismissively: never mind. And he nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly. He motioned for her to come back.

  Charlotte walked back toward her car—but then she remembered the crunching sound when she’d parked. It would drive her crazy to wonder if she’d damaged a tire, so she leaned over to take a peek.

  Her left front tire had knocked over a mound of large, sharp-edged stones, alongside a silver cross, tarnished black. Shit! She kicked the closest tire for firmness to make sure it wasn’t punctured, then knelt to see if the stones had left any marks on the bumper the rental guy in Tallahassee would notice. The car was fine. But broken glass was scattered across the soil from a cracked picture frame near the cross. She picked up the frame and saw a decades old photo she could barely make out, the image splotched by rain and time. Vaguely, she could make out a white man’s long, gray beard.

  “Desecration!” a woman’s voice screeched from somewhere. From everywhere.

  Charlotte dropped the photo frame, gasping. She was so startled, she had to hold the car’s warm hood for balance, her neck yanking around too hard to see who had spoken. A woman was standing behind the house’s screen door, features hidden by the mesh. All Charlotte could make out was a powder-blue house dress, maybe a floral pattern. Her face was in shadow.

  Desecration. Had she damaged a memorial site, or even a grave? The word charged Charlotte’s thoughts, so violent that it felt imposed: DESECRATION. The insects’ buzzing seemed to flurry between her ears rather than beyond them. Kai was thumping on his window.

  “Let’s go!” she heard him call, muffled through the thick buzzing.

  Unsteady with fright, Charlotte stumbled back toward her car door. She tried to raise her voice so the woman could hear her apology. “I’m… so sorry. I won’t… disturb you.” She raised her hands slightly in case the woman was armed. She expected a gunshot.

  Although the woman’s features were fuzzy, Charlotte thought she saw her mouth and jaw open into an impossibly long O, stretched beyond the boundaries of where her face should be. The woman let out a shriek too loud to be human. The sound echoed through the woods, rattling the metal and glass in the gas station’s debris. Birds flocked from the treetops, shrieking and calling in response. The unseen dog barked in a frenzy. Charlotte’s limbs locked, her mind emptied of thought.

  Then came an eerie, sudden silence, all sound stripped, even the dog’s. Charlotte’s hand fumbled with the door handle two or three times before she remembered the car was locked. She slapped at the window. Let me in, she tried to say, but her mouth was parched mute.

  The CLICK from the car door came at last, breaking the unnatural quiet, and Charlotte rushed back into her seat, banging her knee hard against the steering wheel in her rush. Kai was sitting on the passenger-side floor, his face wet with tears. After he pulled his hand away from the electric lock, he rocked himself like a toddler, arms wrapped around his knees.

  “It’s OK,” she said, absurdly. She was lying to both of them.

  Just go. Just go. Just go. Her thumping heart had learned language, preaching to her.

  When she turned the key, she expected the ignition to ignore her—a waiting tide of grief and terror she did not know how she could withstand—but the engine roared with fiery life. That’s a great car, that one, the rental guy had said. The memory of his gaudy yellow blazer was her mind’s anchor to the world she knew. Charlotte yanked the car into reverse and swerved back so far that she almost hit the truck before she shifted to plow back toward the road. Her heart was thunder. How had Kai known to keep away from this house on sight? How had he sensed the rage boiling just behind the screen door?

  She made a frantic turn to the road, back toward the fog, the way they’d come—the only way she knew—so sharply that one of the tires plunged halfway into the roadside ditch, but she quickly righted it. Mud sprayed the underside before the car was back on solid ground.

  “What was that?” Kai said, pleading for an answer.

  Charlotte could only shake her head. Her existence had shrunk to her beating heart, its rhythm pulsing to her hands tight on the steering wheel and her foot pressing the gas pedal with all of her strength. Since the too-loud screeching, her muscles felt drained. Emptied out.

  The radio came on with loud squeals and pops. Charlotte glanced at the glowing dial, hoping to see Kai’s hand near it, but he was still hugging himself tight. He stared at the radio too, then back at her with the same plea in his teary eyes. His jaw trembled.

  “I wanna go home—” Kai
whimpered.

  The radio answered him with the same woman’s reedy tremolo voice filling the car’s front and rear speakers: “THE DESECRATION IS YOU. I CURSE YOU BOTH TO HELL. I CURSE YOUR PARENTS. I CURSE YOUR TAR-BLACK BABIES—”

  Frantic to banish her voice, Charlotte looked away from the road to the radio dial. She jammed at the power button with the heel of her palm—once, twice, three times—until the terrible voice was gone. By then, Kai was sobbing.

  “It’s OK—” she started to say again.

  But it wasn’t.

  As soon as Charlotte looked back to the road, a sun-reddened white man with a pea-green hunting jacket and an unkempt gray beard appeared in her windshield—he hadn’t walked there, he wasn’t standing there, he simply was—and she only had time to scream and jam on her brakes so hard that the car skewed sideways after a horrible THUNK sound beneath her floorboard. She felt the unmistakable bump of rolling over a mass on the road. The car shook from end to end, flinging Kai so much that he hit his head on the glove compartment as his arms flailed to hold on to something.

  The car lurched to a stop as if it had been yanked back by invisible wires. Kai was wailing more loudly than she was, but not by much.

  In the long aftermath with nothing moving, Charlotte stopped yelling as her thoughts unscrambled. The yellow blazer. She had to get back to the rental guy in the yellow blazer. And Kai was her cousin; if she let anything happen to him, the family would tell the story for generations. She would be reliving this day on her deathbed in a loop, the way Grandma Bernadine couldn’t stop talking about a lightning storm that had set her rooftop in Port Au Prince on fire when she was a child. The fire that had killed her baby sister.

  “Are you OK?” Charlotte whispered. She didn’t know why she was whispering, but she was sure whispering was the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t nearly enough. She needed to do far more. Kai shook his head NO, his braids whipping his face.