Lightning erupts from Van Owen’s hands, striking Carl in his chest and knocking him to the ground. Dara screams in pain, but Carl does not. His skin smolders, and his shirt fumes, the tatters burning. But there isn’t a mark on his skin. His eyes, though, are still glassy, for Dara is still in control, and Carl is somewhere far away, lost in a fantasy.
“Please, Carl,” Dara pleads from her room, “wake up. I don’t know how to…”
“How did you survive that?” asks Van Owen. “You’re Dara’s husband, aren’t you? And she’s protecting you somehow—throwing some sort of shield around you?” He looks up toward the window from which young Terry is watching. “You’re up there, aren’t you, Dara? Up there controlling your powerless husband like a puppet, protecting him. It won’t help you, Dara. I’ll be up there soon to retrieve the girl. She will be mine.”
“No!” Dara shouts. Van Owen is right—Carl is like a puppet. Dara is controlling his body as if holding the strings of a marionette, but Van Owen is wrong about one thing: Carl is not powerless. Dara can see into her husband’s mind, read his thoughts, see his memories. After sixteen years together, she finally knows who her husband is, and so do I: the direct descendant of Kwame, heir to the Merlante clan.
I’ve lived longer than anyone has a right to. I had the power of foresight. I saw things that few have ever seen. But I could never put together what was so obvious—Kwame survived his leap from the ship. And Carl is his great-great-grandson, blessed with Kwame’s abilities.
But Dara doesn’t know how to use those abilities. And Carl is lost in a dream and won’t wake from it. So Dara decides that if she can’t make Carl fight with lightning, then she will make him fight with his hands. She concentrates and forces Carl up to his feet, makes him run directly at Van Owen, wrap his hands around Van Owen’s throat. The two tumble backward, falling to the sidewalk, with Carl on top.
Van Owen’s hands begin to glow again. He puts them to both sides of Carl’s head. Electrical flames flare from Van Owen’s palms, lighting Carl’s head in a sickly fire. Carl doesn’t even wince, but from her bed, Dara cries out in pain. Her body bobs and writhes as if she’s being electrocuted. Her heart shudders. In Terry’s arms, the baby wails. He folds her under one arm and runs to his mother’s side. He grabs her hand, saying, “Mommy…Mommy…”
“Why won’t you die?” Van Owen rages outside at Carl, electric sparks still shooting from his fingers.
Terry pleads to his mother, “Mommy, make it stop.”
Suddenly, Dara stops moving. Her head drops back onto the pillow. Her breathing becomes shallow. Tears drip from her eyes. “Terry?” she says weakly.
The boy squeezes her hand. “Mom?”
“Your father…?”
Terry releases her hand and runs back to the window. Carl is lying face down on the pavement. Van Owen is gone. “I don’t know, Mommy. He’s not moving. The white man’s gone.”
Dara lies still, her glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling.
“Mom?”
No response.
“Mom?” Terry asks again as he returns to the bed and shakes his mother’s arm.
“She’s gone,” comes a voice from the bedroom doorway.
Terry turns and sees the tall, pale stranger. His white blond hair is stringy and matted now, his hands dirty and scraped from climbing up the broken staircase. His blue eyes are sunk deep in his head, but they sparkle with joy as he speaks. “Now give me that baby.”
Terry presses Regina against his chest, both of his arms wrapped around her as if she is the most precious thing in the world. She has stopped crying but is making an odd, rhythmic, moaning sound, almost like a song. Terry backs up toward the window. He looks down at the pavement, hoping that his father has risen, but Carl is still motionless.
“I told you to give me the girl. Do as I say, boy.”
Terry doesn’t flinch. “No. I’m protecting her. Mommy told me to.”
“Ignorant cur,” Van Owen hisses as he steps closer, holding out his hands. He raises his voice: “Get away from that window and give me the girl. Now!”
Terry is frightened, but he glares back at the stranger and tells him flatly, “No.”
Van Owen grabs for Regina. Terry tries to maneuver away but Van Owen catches the baby under the shoulders and pulls at her.
“No,” shouts Terry, his voice filling the room. He shuts his eyes as he shouts again, his voice booming. “Let go of her. Get away from us! Get out of this house!”
Abruptly, Van Owen releases the baby, and his hands fall to his sides. Terry falls backward and tumbles to the floor, Regina still safe against his chest. He checks that she is unharmed. Then he sits up, his eyes darting around the room. The white man is gone.
Trancelike, Van Owen walks through the creaking house. He jumps from the second floor landing to the bottom of the shattered staircase and exits through the smoky doorway.
Downstairs, Willa is waking. “Dara?” she calls out in a weary, pained voice.
“Grandma,” Terry stutters, “we’re up here.”
“Where’s Van Owen?”
“Who?”
“The white man…”
“He left.” Terry clambers up and peeks out the window. Van Owen is walking slowly across the lawn, past his car, into the street. “He’s outside.”
“I see him,” Willa says softly. She groans as she extricates herself from the splintered staircase. Her body is bruised, her legs fractured and twisted beneath her. She cannot stand, so she drags herself along the sawdust-covered carpet toward the front door, her arms straining with every yard, a trail of blood behind her. She stares out through the demolished entrance to the house. “There he is,” she whispers. “There he is.”
Van Owen stops walking. He just stands in the middle of the street, gazing straight ahead, mesmerized. A car honks as it veers around him. Another one passes, its driver eyeing the odd, pale man in his path.
“Too small,” says Willa, watching each passing vehicle. “I need something bigger.”
A newspaper delivery truck turns the corner. Suddenly Van Owen’s eyes lose their glaze. He turns back toward the sidewalk where Carl lies, still unconscious. Van Owen seems confused, as if he doesn’t remember where he is or why he’s there. Then, his glance shoots upward to the window. A scowl crosses his face. He’s aware again.
“How did you do that, Dara?” he asks. “How did you make me leave the house? Aren’t you dead yet?”
“You bastard,” cries Willa. She’s crawling, pulling herself outside on her stomach, her legs scraping along the concrete. She looks toward the delivery truck. The driver is honking his horn at Van Owen. “Big enough,” says Willa. Van Owen spins to see the truck and starts moving toward the curb. “No,” Willa whispers. She waves her hand at the truck, and it picks up speed, racing toward Van Owen, tires squealing as the driver tries to brake.
“No,” Van Owen shouts, his eyes meeting with the driver’s.
The driver tries to spin the steering wheel, but Willa balls her hands into fists, and the wheel remains rigid. There is a hollow thump as the truck slams into Van Owen, knocking him backward before slamming into him a second time, crushing him against his own car. His head slumps forward across the truck’s hood, his lips parted, blood dripping from his mouth.
Police cars appear. An ambulance carts the unconscious Van Owen away. Paramedics surround Carl, trying to revive him. Finally he wakes, dazed, unaware of what has happened. He fingers his singed shirt. He staggers to his feet, shrugging off any help. He notices Willa on the ground near the doorway. She tries to wave off the ambulance workers as well, insisting that she needs to go upstairs though she clearly cannot even stand.
“Willa, what happened?” Carl cries. “What happened?”
“I…I don’t know…” she lies. “I think there was…a gas explosion of some sort. Go check on Dara…upstairs…”
Carl races inside. He climbs up the rubble staircase and bursts into the bedroom. Terry is standi
ng by the window, staring out. He’s still holding Regina, rocking her gently. As his father enters, Terry spins to see him.
“Dara?” Carl asks as he inches toward the bed. His hands are shaking.
“She left,” Terry says with a distant expression. “She went to help you. She said you wouldn’t let her out.”
“Dara,…no…” Carl pleads, hugging her against him, pulling her face to his. “Please don’t leave me.”
“She said she had to help you,” says Terry.
Carl seems not to hear. He lowers Dara back to the bed, covers her with the sheet but leaves her face exposed. He finally notices the baby in Terry’s arms. “Terry…? What happened? The baby…”
Terry seems barely awake. “Mommy said to protect her.”
Carl staggers toward them and holds out his hands for Regina, who is sleeping. “Give her to me, son.”
“No,” shouts Terry, suddenly furious. “I have to protect her.”
“From what?”
“From the evil man.”
Carl’s eyes open wide. “What evil man?”
“The one you and Mommy were fighting. He wants to take Regina.”
“The one Mommy and I were fighting? I don’t understand. Tell me what happened.”
Terry is shaking, shivering. “The evil man…he wants Regina…”
Carl looks around, his eyes wild. “Terry…was there someone here? A white man? With white hair?”
“Yes…don’t you remember, Pop? You were fighting him…you and Mommy…”
“No…I don’t…” Carl’s face is all pain. He’s breathing quickly, almost as if the air is too thin to support his lungs.
Suddenly, Terry bursts into tears, shaking uncontrollably as if all of the restrained anguish has finally broken through and overwhelmed him. Carl can barely look at him.
There are more voices outside and then footsteps downstairs, someone climbing up the rubble. “Mom?” comes Warren’s voice. “Mom?” he shouts as he plows into the room and stops in the doorway.
“She’s dead,” says his father, his voice flat.
Warren walks to the bed, his footsteps soft and slow. Dara lies on her back with her eyes still open, her expression almost complacent. Warren kneels beside her and lays his head on her shoulder.
“You see,” Carl goes on, his voice still a monotone, “this is why I was always so careful—why I trained you so hard and made you watch out for your brothers, why I wanted you home all the time. This is why.” His head starts shaking back and forth. “You did this. You caused this.” Tears roll down Warren’s face. He is shattered even before Carl speaks again. “Look at what’s happened because of you. Your mother’s dead. Because of you.”
“Pop,” Warren pleads, standing, “I…”
Carl’s voice is so weak I can barely hear him. He doesn’t even sound angry anymore. Just empty. “Get out. Get out and don’t ever come near this family again. Don’t ever come back.”
Why? I ask myself. Why am I shown this vision now—when it’s too late?
All this time, I thought Kwame died when he dove from Van Owen’s ship. But he lived, he married, he had descendants. Terry and Warren and Jerome and Regina are descended from both of us. The Mkembro and Merlante peoples both survived and finally united through the union of Dara and Carl.
Why? I ask again. Why only now?
No answer comes. Instead, the visions jump forward in time. Terry is tied to a chair. And he’s remembering something. He’s crying as his own memories mix with the ones he watches in his mind. It’s all coming back to him. He’s remembering what he has kept quarantined in his brain for years. He remembers what I have just seen—the day Regina was born, the day he used his power for the first time, to protect Regina from Van Owen.
He dwells on what comes next, and I watch it with him: his father blaming Warren for everything, Warren running away, Carl moving the family to Harlem, hoping they’ll blend in there, invisible in a community of African Americans.
Terry thinks of Regina and wishes she were there with him. He thinks of a night two years earlier. In their Harlem apartment. Upstairs in his room. Regina is nine. Terry is thirteen. He has spent years forgetting the way his mother died, burying the memory of the pale stranger who came to his house in Saratoga. Regina has grown up without a mother at all, nurtured only by her grandmother. Miraculously, though, she is a happy child. Terry and Regina sit there playing, laughing, blissfully ignorant of the horrors that have come before and those still to come.
They are playing the card game War. Regina has won three games in a row, so Terry tries to cheat. Instead of drawing the top card on his pile as he should, he searches his stack for a higher card one than the jack that Regina has just discarded.
“You can’t do that,” Regina shouts at him, still speaking in her own childlike voice.
“It’s only fair,” Terry replies, laughing. “Come on. My cards suck. Let me win one round.”
Regina folds her arms across her chest. “No. Stop cheating.”
Terry laughs as he draws his next card—the queen of diamonds—from the bottom of the deck.
I wish I were a younger woman. I wish I could live long enough to know them, to pass my knowledge to them. To tell them of their history. To tell them who they are. To tell them of Africa.
Then it occurs to me: maybe I can. I’ve seen Regina in later visions; her powers will be like mine—she’ll use her mind, communicating without words. Perhaps, through this vision, I can communicate with her somehow. I don’t know how to speak to her from here, but perhaps I can send her a message—or at least a vision—to assist her. Eventually, she will have to face Van Owen; they all will. Perhaps if they know what I know, they can find an advantage.
“Not fair,” Regina howls at Terry. “You’re still cheating. You pulled that from the bottom of the deck.”
“Did not,” he snickers, not even trying to hide his deception.
“I saw you!” With a quick grab, she snatches his stack of cards from his hand. “Let’s see what your next card should have been.”
Regina is laughing. She is comfortable and calm, her mind open. Perhaps this is the right moment. I reach out across time, across generations, across births and deaths and wars, across Dara’s and Rolanda’s sacrifices, across Warren’s drug habit and Carl’s anger—until I find Regina. I feel the apartment, the room, the floor, the playing cards, all of them as real to me as if I were sitting there on the floor with my two youngest descendants.
I simply want to tell Regina what it took me more than a century to learn: Van Owen must bleed. I focus on the blood, on Van Owen lying in the snow, weak from the bullet wounds that I inflicted, weak from loss of blood. I mold the memory, I make it as real and harsh and detailed as I can, I cast it like a fishing line across the chasm of years. And then I release it into her mind.
In just an instant, I know I have erred. Regina doesn’t yet know about our history or about her ability. She doesn’t know how to accept what I’m sending her.
Her body tenses. Her senses go numb. The gore of the image—Van Owen, his ghostly white skin riddled with bullet marks, blood oozing from them—is too much for her. She has never beheld such a thing. What was I thinking? What have I done?
Suddenly she lets go of the cards. Terry watches them spill to the floor. Regina is sitting upright, staring straight in front of her, her expression bare. She is frozen, unable to break free from me or from the grisly image. She begins shaking, moaning.
“Oh, very funny,” Terry laughs. “What—you’re in shock that I cheated? I always cheat at cards. You know that.” Regina still doesn’t respond. Her eyes start to roll back into her head. “Regina?” Terry says, frightened, as he grabs her by her shoulders. “Gina?”
I try to withdraw my connection, to retreat, but I’m too slow. Regina starts to fall backward, and Terry her head before it strikes the floor. And his entire body stiffens. His hands and arms begin to tremble as the currents of time race through them, c
limbing up his torso, flowing into his neck, through his head, into his brain. The vision drains from her and flows directly into him. Regina slides to the floor, unconscious, but Terry remains lost in my past, linked to it. But then he does something worse—he begins exploring it. Instead of being repulsed by the gore, as his sister was, he becomes curious. His mind latches on to mine, hungry for answers, trying to draw them from me. It is all so fast that I have no time to stop him. He doesn’t take only the message that I was trying to send. He takes everything. All of my memories rush from my mind and pour into his. He sees all of it: my wedding in Mkembro, my cage on the deck of the ship, my years on the tobacco plantation, the murders of my husband and daughter. A century of hunting and hatred, the denigration of slavery, the horror of the entire African-American existence, and the dark shadow of Hendrik Van Owen that follows our family across time.
For me, here in the snow, only seconds go by. For Terry, it is as if he is living all of it, decades of subservience and scorn and fear and violence and death—every moment in an instant. His hands and arms shake as if he has touched an electrified fence. “No,” he moans softly, over and over. “No…”
Regina wakes. She rises from the floor, not sure what’s happening. She grabs Terry by the wrist. “Terry,” she cries, her voice loud and odd somehow. The tone is lower than it should be, the cadence Southern. “Terry, wake up? What’s wrong with you?”
“Regina?” Willa’s voice comes from her bedroom. “Was that you? You don’t sound like yourself. Your voice sounded just like…”
“Terry!” Regina shouts. She takes him by his shoulders and shakes him, staring into his distant face, trying to find some spark of consciousness. “Wake up!”
His eyes shoot open, but then they shut immediately. And he crumbles to the floor in a heap. Regina screams, her cry echoing through the house.
From down the hall, Willa groans as she forces herself to stand. Slowly, she makes her way out of her bedroom. “Regina,” she says in a stunned tone, “I can hear your voice in my mind…just like…”
Chains of Time Page 24
