“No other way this could end,” those mouths speak at once. “Hate is our domain. Those meddling Aunties never told you why you were chosen to wield that sword? Just filled your head with stories about being their champion? Think what you will of us—at least we tell you true. Said before we wanted to make an offer, Maryse. Give you what you want more than anything—power over life and death.”
“Go to hell!” I spit. “You got nothing I want!”
He shakes his head, pulling off his hood. “Perhaps you need to be made more amenable.” He sticks out a fleshy tongue to pinch off a piece that squirms between his fingers. Behind me a Ku Klux grips my head, prying my jaws apart. I watch that unnatural meat come close, wriggling and reaching for my lips, eager to push its way inside. For some reason, only thing I can think of is my brother telling me ’bout Bruh Rabbit, caught and trying to trick Bruh Fox into letting him go.
Gon’ ahead and roast me or skin me—just don’t throw me in that briar patch!
A shrill whistle goes up. Butcher Clyde turns, and I follow to what he’s looking at. Chef! She holding a stick of dynamite in one hand and her lighter in the other.
“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” she says. “But Imma need you to let her go, or I might have to do something drastic. Got enough blasting powder and silver enough to blow all your ugly asses to kingdom come. Best believe that.”
Butcher Clyde eyes her before giving a signal. The hands holding me let go and I get up, staggering over to Chef, who catches me. Together we back off a ways before she bends down to whisper, “I don’t have any more dynamite! Or silver! Run!”
We do. I turn back once to see if we being chased. But the Klans and Ku Kluxes just standing there. My eyes meet Butcher Clyde’s.
“Come see us, Maryse!” he calls. “You know where! Told you, we got what you want! More than anything!”
SIX
Nana Jean’s farmhouse feels like a tomb. Been an hour since we got back. The Gullah woman took the news hard. She in her chair, a hand covering her face while Molly tries to console her. Chef over at a table holding hands with Emma. The rest of the Shouters are singing some mournful song as the Stick Man beats a slow funeral march.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
To lay dis body down.
I’ll walk in de graveyard, I’ll walk through the graveyard,
To lay dis body down.
Their voices sound a deep wailing, filling up the place with its strength. But none of it feels real.
Sadie. Dead. How can that be real?
Was just hours ago we was here, listening to her complain and carry on. Now she’s gone—burned up inside a juke joint. My fists clench as I pace about, digging nails into my palms until it hurts. That pain at least feels real.
“What we gon’ do?” I call out, needing to talk. Either that or I’ll scream.
All eyes turn to me. Even the Shouters go quiet.
“Do about what?” Molly finally asks.
I stare like she lost her mind. “Them Ku Kluxes is still meeting to do their conjuring! This Grand Cyclops still coming!”
“Not sure what we can do for it,” Molly answers. “The numbers against us—”
“Then get word to Atlanta to send whoever can come!”
She look skeptical and I think to Michael George.
“What about the people they took?”
“Likely for this ritual,” Emma puts in. “They have spilled blood for such before.”
“We just gon’ let them stay taken?” I ask.
Molly frowns. “We could walk into a trap.”
“Cordelia says you’ve lost your sword?” Emma asks. At this, Molly’s eyebrows rise and Nana Jean looks up sharp. I glare at Chef, but she keeps her head down. “With the terrible loss of Sadie, our forces are stretched thin.”
I shake my head. “We’ll find a way. Chef. You could rig up some bombs, blow them right off that mountain!”
“Fool buckrah dem too?” Nana Jean asks.
“And women and children,” Molly adds. “They invite them to rituals now.”
“All of them! I don’t care if they people or monsters! Blow up every last one! Make them pay for what they done!” I don’t realize I’m shouting till the room goes quiet again, and the whoosh of pounding blood fills my ears.
“That not going to bring her back,” Chef whispers. She looks up at me, eyes red and wet. I fight to talk, but it’s like the anger gripping my tongue.
“Hunnah bex down,” Nana Jean tells me. “Gwine bun up.”
She right. My skin on fire. Feel like I could rip it off. I turn and stalk through the front door. Chef calls out but I’m already off the porch, making my way into the yard of bottle trees. There’s a hornet’s nest in my head I can’t get quiet—as if a piece of Butcher Clyde’s awful singing wormed its way inside. Even worse is the guilt gnawing my insides. Whispering that I stirred all this up. That Sadie’s death is my fault. Looking to the night sky, I let out that scream I been holding in and start shouting.
“Where you at? Give me the sword and now take it back? Leave me with nothing?” Molly’s apprentices stand guard on the porch, eyeing me. But I don’t care. “If I’m your champion, then help me! Tell me what I have to do! Damn you, answer me!”
In anger I kick at one of the bottle trees and go tumbling, falling to land on my backside—somewhere else.
I scramble up on unsteady feet, swaying from the dizziness. The blue sky without a sun is now an angry orange with bits of lightning dancing across it. The big oak ain’t got leaves no more and long black sheets hang from bare branches, blowing in a breeze I can’t feel. Auntie Ondine, Auntie Margaret, and Auntie Jadine all there, wearing black dresses and broad black hats. A dark table sits between them. No drink or food this time, just a bundle of black cloth.
“Did you know?” I shout at Auntie Jadine. “You see what coming! Did you—?”
She runs forward, embracing me. I fight her, but she holds me tight, singing the same mourning song the Shouters was:
I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms,
Lay dis body down.
And my soul and your soul will meet in de day,
When I lay dis body down.
I don’t know why, but those words from her lips send every feeling I been keeping back this night pouring out. I fall into her, loosing a cry filled with a pain I ain’t tried to feel in seven years. Since the night I lost …
I lay there sobbing until I can catch a breath, then look up to face them.
“I needed you and you wasn’t there.”
Auntie Ondine glances to the angry sky. “The veil … has grown.”
“The enemy cut us off from your world!” Auntie Margaret grumbles.
“Then how did I get here?”
“You wanted to very badly,” Auntie Ondine says. “Sometimes that is enough.”
Then I remember. “My sword, it—”
Auntie Ondine’s face falls and they all look to the bundle on the table. I disentangle from Auntie Jadine, walking up to find my sword, nestled in black cloth. The dark leaf-blade is in pieces, a jagged edge jutting from the silver hilt. I run fingers along the fragments. There’s no song. No nothing.
“It returned when broken,” Auntie Ondine explains.
“Can you fix it?”
Auntie Margaret sucks her teeth. “Nobody can do that but you.”
As usual, I got no idea what that means. But there’s other things need discussing. I tell them about my confrontations with Butcher Clyde, about what he says is coming.
“There’s an evil going on,” Auntie Jadine hums darkly.
“This Grand Cyclops.” Auntie Ondine’s mouth twists up at the name. “It is an incarnation of the enemy, given flesh. I fear what it means for your world.”
“It gon’ mean the end!” Auntie Margaret huffs.
“Butcher Clyde, he tell more than that. He say he and the Ku Kluxes came looking for me seven years back. That they the
ones who…” I can’t say the rest.
All three exchange looks before Auntie Ondine nods slow.
Her answer hits like a hammer. “So all that they done, was because they wanted me? Why did you choose me as your champion?”
More exchanged glances, and I fight not to start shouting.
“To stop you from being theirs,” Auntie Ondine says finally.
I step back, staggered. “That don’t make sense!”
“They didn’t come to kill you that night,” Auntie Ondine says. “Not in body.”
“Enemy have a prophecy,” Auntie Margaret says. “To steal our champion. Make her over as theirs.”
“We stopped them from taking you,” Auntie Ondine explains. “To undo their plans. But I fear we may have unwittingly done their bidding.” She looks to the broken sword. “The weapon is a thing of vengeance. The wielder must pour their own anger and suffering into it. We thought it could take away your pain. But we have only fed that wound, made you into a killer.”
“It’s a sword,” I snap. “What else could I be?”
Auntie Ondine eyes me stern. “Very soon, the enemy will make an offer. How you choose will determine the fate of your world.”
I glare back, set to tell her she crazy, until I remember Butcher Clyde’s words: Said before we wanted to make an offer, Maryse. Give you what you want more than anything—power over life and death. I shake my head. “What they got to offer to make me side with them? They kill my people! People who look like me!”
“We can’t see—the enemy veils it from us…” Auntie Ondine begins.
“But you done accepted it more than once already,” Auntie Margaret finishes.
I don’t even have the words to ask at what she means.
“You know that Auntie Jadine can perceive the now, yesterday, and tomorrow,” Auntie Ondine says. “But it’s more than that. She can perceive many tomorrows.”
Now they really talking crazy. “How can there be more than one tomorrow?”
Auntie Margaret sighs. “Girl, every choice we make is a new tomorrow. Whole worlds waiting to be born.”
“In some, you accept the enemy’s offer, and all is darkness,” Auntie Ondine says. “Always at this point—the tip of the sword on which your world balances.”
I look at Auntie Jadine. What could those things living under Butcher Clyde’s skin offer me to make me betray all I care about?
Power over life and death.
“And if I don’t accept this offer, then we win? No more Ku Kluxes?”
“If you don’t accept,” Auntie Ondine answers, “there is the chance to continue the struggle. The hope at one day seeing victory. No more.”
That don’t seem fair.
I got a hundred questions but there’s more pressing things at hand. “We need to stop this Grand Cyclops. Not enough of us, though. We need help. Your help. With you all there, we could—”
But Auntie Ondine already shaking her head, a face full of sorry. “We made a choice long ago, to be bound to this place. Should we leave it, our powers would be lost. We may not even survive the crossing. You will have to face this on your own.”
“But we just people!” I shoot back. “They’re monsters! We need—”
“You need monsters,” Auntie Margaret murmurs, eyes squinting up in thought.
Auntie Ondine turns to her. “What are you saying?”
“That there are others who might yet intervene.”
“What others? Most don’t visit their world and take no interest in them.”
“I can think of some who do.”
“Doctor, Doctor,” Auntie Jadine sings. “Can you heal my loving pain…”
Auntie Ondine’s head whips around. Her lips peel back, and I catch glimpses of sharp fox teeth. “No! Not them. There is no love in them. Leeches! Dead things, unfeeling with cold, desiccated hearts—seeking sustenance in misery!”
Auntie Jadine shrugs. “Can’t blame a monster for doing what he do.”
“They are amoral, chaotic!” Auntie Ondine insists. “With no care for our war!”
“Maybe.” Auntie Margaret nods. “But they might find the enemy to their … taste?”
Auntie Jadine grins wide. Oh yes, definitely fox teeth.
Auntie Ondine’s face goes thoughtful. Finally she looks to me. “My sisters believe there are others who might ally with you against the enemy. You would have to convince them. But be warned. They will exact a price.”
What’s one more debt on top of all I got? “Who are they?”
“Their true names are lost,” Auntie Ondine says. “But they have been to your world before.” She lifts a hand, wriggling her fingers like she writing in the air. “There. You will find what you need in your book.”
My book? I put a hand to my back pocket. Sure enough, my book is there. I take it out and flip through pages, wondering if they mean me to find stories of the breath stealer Boo Hag or poor Big Liz, the headless slave girl. But then I stop. There’s a story that wasn’t here before.
I frown at the title. “What are Night Doctors?”
“New players on the board perhaps,” Auntie Ondine murmurs, tapping her chin.
“Playa, playa,” Auntie Jadine hums devilishly, a bit of tongue peeking between foxy teeth.
* * *
Nana Jean’s face frowns deep as I recount my meeting with the Aunties. She stay quiet, just sits in her chair staring at nothing. It’s Chef who speaks.
Night Doctors, Night Doctors
Sneak in under your door.
Thief a nigger tongue and eyes
Then come back for more.
Night Doctors, Night Doctors,
Take you live or dead,
Snip off a nigger’s hands and feet,
And even take his head.
Night Doctors, Night Doctors,
Snatch you to they white hall.
Cut a poor nigger child wide open,
Show him his liver and his gall
Night Doctors, Night Doctors
You can cry and carry on.
But when they done dissectin’
Every bit of you is gone.
When she finishes, the farmhouse is still. Outside the wind whistles through the bottle trees, the trapped haints either laughing wicked or wailing with fright. The Shouters take to staring at me like I’m John the Conqueror run off with the devil’s daughter.
“Who are these Night Doctors?” Emma asks, looking around for answers.
Across the table Chef leans back, a joker between her fingers. “Stories. Heard it from a fella in my unit, whose people was from Virginia. Told us about his great-grandpappy’s talk from slavery times. Night Doctors was supposed to be haints—tall and dressed in white—who stole away slaves and experimented on them. But none of its real. Was just old masters going around at night scaring slaves. Hear it came about, on account they sold the bodies of dead slaves to medical schools to cut up.”
Emma gasps. “That’s ghastly!”
Chef shrugs. “All of it was. But like I say, just old stories. No such thing as Night Doctors. They not real.” Her eyes turn to me, then Nana Jean. “They not real, right?”
The Gullah woman twists up her lips. “Night Doctors, dem ain a story. Disya tale true.” Her brown-gold gaze bores into me. “Hunnuh fuh go ta de ebil place t’night?”
I nod. “Need all the help we can get. I ain’t asking permission.” I try to sound defiant, but feel more like a little girl sassing off.
“Haint ooman dem tell hunnuh de way?”
I lift up my book of folktales. “Everything I need in here.”
“Ain hab no sode ’do.”
“It broke,” is all I manage.
Old woman never liked that blade, but her face now say she don’t like me going off without it neither. Still, she gives a nod—not permission, but at least understanding. Don’t realize how much I want that, till she done it.
“Mine yo self,” she warns low. “Dat ebil place ain like yuh. Hunnuh don’
tek cyare hunnuh git turn ’bout een dey hall. Wensoneba people dem da gwine dey, dey da gii up sump’n. Leabe sump’n b’hin. Sway hunnuh gwine come back yuh whole?”
“Whole as I can,” I say, remembering I don’t make promises.
Notation 25:
The Shout Eve and Adam tell ’bout them two listening to that wicked snake and eating the fruit from the forbidden tree. When God call out, Adam don’t answer. So He get to asking Eve. She say Adam going ’round picking up leaves to hide his nakedness, now that he know shame. When we do that Shout, we go ’round pretending to gather up leaves like Adam, hiding from the Lord. Suppose we making fun but it’s a warning too—be mindful of getting mixed up with old wicked snakes.
—Interview with Ms. Susyanna “Susy” Woodberry, age sixty-six, transliterated from the Gullah by EK
SEVEN
It’s still hours before dawn when I set out. Chef tries to come too, but Auntie Ondine and them make it plain this got to be done alone. Story they write in my book, say I got to go into the woods and find the dead Angel Oak tree—whatever that be.
Not much woods in Macon. Most got cut down to plant cotton. But Nana Jean say she’ll help. Tell me to walk out past Molly’s barns. When I do, the ground under me feel like it’s changing. And before I know it, I’m thick in woods I know wasn’t here before. Only these the strangest trees I ever seen: with branches growing blue bottles instead of leaves. I stare up at them and make out the trapped haints. When we was small, my brother showed me how to catch lightning bugs in jars. That’s what they remind me of, twinkling so.
I pick my way through the strange woods, touching the rough bark and wondering if it’s real. In my head, I recite the story Auntie Ondine wrote in my book: To find the dead Angel Oak tree, you have to want to badly enough. So I’m thinking up all the reasons I’m hunting it. This Grand Cyclops we have to stop. Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes. Rescuing Michael George. The offer Auntie Jadine sees me taking, betraying everything. Mostly, I think of Sadie. Remembering the light dying in her eyes like a blowed-out candle. It fires an anger in me like an animal clawing to get free.
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