Lovecraft Country

by Matt Ruff

  “What about you?” she said. “You have a dream job?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Ruby waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she adopted a teasing tone: “Is it a secret?”

  “It’s a new situation,” he told her. “Being able to choose my own destiny, I mean. Most of my life, that wasn’t the case.”

  “This got something to do with your daddy?”

  “Everything to do with him,” Braithwhite said nodding. “He was a very powerful man who didn’t like to be contradicted, even when he was wrong—and of course as his son, I was expected to obey without question. I had my own feelings about that, but for years there wasn’t anything I could do. He was stronger than I was.” He shrugged, frowning, and then, as he had several times already, turned the conversation back to her: “Do you get along with your father?”

  “I did, when he was home,” Ruby said. “I was closer to Momma, though. She passed last year. Emphysema.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ruby looked down at her drink. “I do miss her, some days,” she said. “She could be hard too, though. Especially when she wanted something from you.”

  “What did she do for a living?”

  “Talked to dead people.” Ruby smiled, knowing how much Momma would be irked by that description. “You know, a spiritualist? She worked out of a beauty salon, the Two El’s. Momma was the second El, Eloise. Her best friend, Ella Price, she put up the money to open the business, so she got to be the first El.

  “It was a package deal,” Ruby explained. “The storefront was an old photographer’s studio. Ladies would come in, get their hair and nails done, and then after, they got to go in the darkroom for a session with Momma. And the more they spent on beauty treatments, the longer the session.”

  “That sounds like a great business plan.”

  “Yeah, they did all right for a while. Then after she got sick, Momma tried to get me to come in and take over for her, but I wouldn’t. We were fighting about that up to the day she died.”

  “Why didn’t you want to do it? Because you’re afraid of ghosts?”

  “Because I don’t like lying to people,” Ruby said. “Momma did have powers. She could read your mind, but not like a psychic; more like the way my daddy did at the poker table. Not that she even had to read minds at the Two El’s. A woman sits down to get her hair done, all you need to do is listen, and by the time she gets out of the chair, you know exactly what she’s worried about and who she wants to hear from on the other side. The rest is just parlor tricks.”

  Momma would have taken exception to this description too, Ruby knew. Had done, many times, furiously insisting that she didn’t trick people, she helped them: Godly work, and true.

  But Ruby had seen more than one version of Momma’s act. Before the Two El’s opened, she’d used to conduct séances at home. Most of her clientele were neighborhood people, but now and then she’d get a white customer who’d heard about her from an employee. For these folks, she’d put on a show. She would alter and throw her voice, and crack her toe and ankle joints to simulate ghostly rapping; a ruler hidden up her sleeve gave her leverage to make the table jump even as her hands rested innocently atop it. Afterwards, Momma would laugh and joke about how gullible these people were. White folks’ belief that Negroes were magically gifted struck her as the most absurd form of superstition. Sorcery was in the Bible, which meant it was real, but to Momma it was self-evident that like every other kind of power it would be concentrated in the hands of the mighty. A real magician would almost surely be a white man, most likely the sort whose ancestors went around in powdered wigs.

  Fair logic, but Ruby had to ask: Weren’t Momma’s colored clients equally gullible? Maybe Momma could make a distinction between strangers she took advantage of and friends and acquaintances she helped, but Ruby didn’t know how to draw that line, and refused to learn, no matter how angry Momma got. And Momma got very angry towards the end, calling Ruby an ungrateful child, a foolish child, too, passing up the chance to assume her mother’s vocation; she’d come to nothing in this life, being such a fool. Fine, Ruby said, throwing it back at her, let me come to nothing: At least when I go to meet Jesus I won’t have to explain why I cheated people in His name.

  A change in the music woke Ruby to the fact that she’d been staring at the table, not speaking. “Sorry,” she said, but Braithwhite shook his head and said, “Don’t apologize.” Again she waited for him to say more, maybe offer some smooth assurance that he understood what she was feeling, but he only looked at her, his expression of concern making her think that maybe he did understand, a little.

  Ruby finished her drink and stood up. “Come on,” she said, reaching for him. “Dance me into the new year.”

  Walking back to the car at two in the morning, they stopped to kiss on a deserted street corner, then continued on, Ruby laughing and leaning drunkenly on Caleb Braithwhite.

  Braithwhite’s Daimler was parked under a streetlamp in front of a line of dark storefronts. There were two white men there, one on each side of the car, bent down trying to see in the windows. The men straightened up as Braithwhite and Ruby approached, Ruby stiffening as she realized the man on the curbside was holding a pistol.

  The gunman tilted his chin at Braithwhite. “This your car, chief?”

  “Yes,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “It’s mine.” Ruby clutched his arm, silently begging him not to play the hero, but he detached himself from her and stepped forward, a cold grin on his face, as if the threat of deadly violence were a source of amusement to him. Ruby thought about running, then, that notion joined by another, uglier one: That if the men shot Braithwhite, they might be too distracted to chase after her. But even as she was thinking this, her hand was in her purse, groping for the knife she carried to defend herself.

  The gunman raised the pistol as Braithwhite came towards him. “Keys,” he said. “Wallet. I won’t ask twice.”

  “That’s right,” Braithwhite said. “You won’t.”

  A look of surprise stole over the gunman’s face, and Ruby thought the pistol must have jammed in the cold. “What are you waiting for?” the thug standing out in the street said. “Shoot the fucker!” But the gunman didn’t fire, so the thug started coming around the car to deal with Braithwhite himself. Braithwhite put up a hand, palm out, and an invisible wrecking ball struck the thug in the gut, flinging him up and across the street to land in a boneless heap on the far curb.

  The gunman had both hands on the pistol now. “Let me go!” he pleaded, as if Braithwhite were the one with the weapon. Braithwhite carefully extracted the gun from the man’s grasp, then stood weighing it in his hand for a moment. He nodded his head and the gunman stumbled backwards. “Run,” Braithwhite said.

  The man turned and fled. Holding the gun at his side, Braithwhite raised his other hand, balled into a fist, and made a throwing motion with his arm. Halfway down the block already, the running man pitched forward, slamming facedown into the sidewalk and sliding on the icy pavement. He scrambled up again and dashed off howling into the night.

  Ruby, who’d been holding her breath since the thug went flying, now let out a ragged gasp. Braithwhite turned to face her. “It’s all right,” he said, tossing the pistol in the gutter. “It’s over.” He smiled and took a step towards her, but she shied back, brandishing the knife from her purse, the gesture feeling even more futile than if she’d done it while the gunman was still there.

  “What just happened?” Ruby said, in the car.

  “Nothing remarkable,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “Those men underestimated us. Nature took its course.”

  “Us? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You kept your head. I know you wanted to run, but if you had, that man might have shot you before I could stop him.”

  She sensed he was trying to flatter her and got annoyed, which was better than being scared. “What are you?”

  “I think you know what I am. Though we probab
ly have different names for it.”

  They were cruising down Lake Shore Drive. Ruby looked out the window at the passing lights of downtown. “I want to go home now,” she said.

  “Let me ask you something, first. Are you happy with the way your life is going?”

  Turning back to stare at him: “What?”

  “I wasn’t just pretending to be interested in you, tonight. I like you, Ruby. I think we’re very similar, in some ways.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ruby said. “Two peas in a pod.”

  “I know how it feels to always have your own desires come in second to someone else’s,” Braithwhite said. “Believe me, I know.”

  “So what if you do? What’s that to me?”

  “You asked about my dream job,” he said. “I told you I was working on it. I am. But I’m at a point right now where I could really use some help. A very particular sort of help, from a very particular sort of person.”

  “You want to hire me?”

  “You are looking for work, right?”

  Ruby eyed him suspiciously. “What kind of job?”

  “An interesting one,” Braithwhite said. “I can’t promise you mountain views, but it shouldn’t be too hard on the ankles.”

  Her expression turned cross. “That’s not an answer.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to be coy. But it’s an odd job, and there’s secrecy involved, so before I get into details, I’d like to show you what I’d be offering in exchange.”

  “Which is what?”

  “The freedom to choose your own destiny.”

  “Freedom?” Ruby snorted. “You’re going to pay me in freedom?”

  “There’s a cash salary, too, but yes.”

  “How?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. But I can show you. You’ll need to trust me and take a small leap of faith, but I think you’ll be very glad you did—and if you don’t like it, or if you decide the job’s not for you, you can still say no afterwards.”

  They’d left the lake shore and were passing through the Hyde Park neighborhood now. Braithwhite turned down an alley into a courtyard ringed by townhouses.

  “What’s this?” Ruby said.

  “Another of my father’s properties,” said Braithwhite. He parked behind one of the townhouses but left the motor running. “What I want to show you is inside. Or,” he added, one hand on the gearshift, “I could just take you home.”

  Home: the sane choice. Saner still, perhaps: Get out of the car right now, run screaming into the night as the gunman had. But with that thought came the thought of what she’d be running back to.

  “I can walk away if I don’t like it?” Ruby heard herself say.

  “You can walk away anytime,” Braithwhite promised.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just say yes.”

  “OK,” Ruby said. “Show me.”

  She woke, head pounding, on blood-slick sheets.

  The late morning sun roused her, creeping up the side of the bed to stab her in the eyes. Ruby pressed her eyelids shut and tried to retreat back into unconsciousness, but the sun kept at her, hot rays burning the skin of her face and neck made sensitive by a monster hangover.

  With a groan she rolled onto her back and tried to sit up. She had difficulty getting traction, the bedsheets warm and slippery beneath her. At first this was merely irritating, but as she woke up a little more, a scary thought struck her. She opened her eyes; the sun’s glare snapped them closed again, but not before she glimpsed the arterial red of the bedclothes.

  Oh Lord Jesus. Ruby rolled off the side of the bed in a panic, landing facedown and thrashing, kicking away the bloody top sheet that had trailed her to the floor. She pushed herself up, felt her heart beating fast but strong in her chest. Not my blood, she thought, praying it was so. Not my blood. Whose, then? Had she killed someone?

  Her attempt to recall the previous night’s events yielded up a single clear memory, of sitting at a table across from Caleb Braithwhite, watching as he set a small glass vial filled with red liquid in front of her. She sensed that this offering was part of a larger bargain and that it had everything to do with her current situation, but when she tried to dredge up more details she got nothing, only an echo of her mother’s injunction to never let a man you’d just met mix your drinks for you.

  She stood up, eyes still shut tight. Groping blindly forward she found an open doorway and stepped through into cool darkness, cold tile beneath her feet. She bumped up against a sink, spun the taps, and splashed water on her face and chest. The water cleared her head, but the panic came surging back. “Please God, please God,” Ruby said, head bowed over the sink. Then she opened her eyes and looked up and saw a crazed white woman’s face hovering in the dark just inches from her own.

  Ruby screamed.

  Her mind must have gone blank for a few seconds, because the next thing she knew, she was back in the bedroom, fallen on her backside. There was no respite from the madness, though: She’d struck the bathroom door in passing, and rebounding from the wall it swung shut, revealing another, full-length mirror, the glass reflecting the same wild-eyed white woman, now sprawled on the hardwood floor.

  Ruby screamed again; the white woman in the mirror screamed with her. Ruby clapped her hands over her mouth; the white woman aped the gesture. The white woman: her.

  There wasn’t any blood. Just bright red hair, long and gently waved, and freckles, dense on her shoulders and upper arms, more sparse on her breasts and her flat white belly. Between her legs was another thatch of red: Viewed in the mirror from this undignified angle, it looked like some weird ginger-furred animal had crawled up in her lap. When Ruby looked down and saw that it was her lap, right there, she let out a yelp and went scooting backwards, as if by moving fast enough she could leave it behind.

  She banged her head against the radiator on the wall behind her. Wincing, she pressed one hand to her scalp and slapped herself with the other, saying, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” But it was no use: When she checked the mirror again, her cheek had reddened, but she was still a white girl.

  Ruby saw then she had a choice to make: She could give up and go completely mad, or she could just deal with the situation. Being Eloise Dandridge’s daughter, she decided to deal.

  With an effort she turned her attention from the mirror. She lifted a hand to the bed, touched the shiny crimson sheets. Satin. Ruby had never slept on satin sheets before, though she’d once cleaned the house of a woman who did. She scanned the rest of the room. To the right of the bathroom door was a dresser, and laid out on top of it were a pair of red shoes and a set of undergarments. A green dress hung from the back of another door in the far corner.

  She rose to a crouch and peeked out the window. She was on an upper floor, overlooking a courtyard ringed by two-and three-story townhouses. A silver sedan with dark tinted windows was parked directly below; the sight of it triggered a flood of additional memories from the night before, coupled with an overwhelming desire to escape.

  She stood up and went to the dresser. In her haste, she decided to skip the stockings and the flimsy lace garter belt and just put on the panties, averting her eyes as she did so. She wrestled with the bra, the unfamiliar breasts smaller and differently shaped than her own. The dress went on smoothly. Finally, she grabbed the red shoes, which were shiny like the bedsheets but had sensible flat heels; she tried them to make sure they fit but then carried them in her hand, not wanting to make any more noise than she already had.

  The door opened on a dim hallway with stairs immediately to her left. She listened a moment and then started down, holding tight to the banister, not trusting the balance of this body. She made it safely to the bottom of the stairs. There, directly in front of her, she saw a door with a mail slot. Hanging on a rack just inside the door was her very own coat. Her purse was on the floor.

  Ruby had put on the coat and was bending to pick up the purse when she heard footsteps coming up from below. S
he looked over her shoulder. At the end of a corridor beside the stairs she’d just descended was a sunlit kitchen that seemed familiar. Was that wooden table the one at which Caleb Braithwhite had offered her a drink?

  No time to check; the footsteps had reached the top of the basement stairs and now a door creaked open just out of view. Ruby tucked the purse under her arm and slipped out the front door, taking care not to slam it behind her. She danced a moment on the frozen stoop, getting the shoes on, then dashed down the walk and out the low iron gate. From the sidewalk she glanced back; the townhouse, rough gray stone half-smothered in ivy, suggested a wizard’s castle squeezed to fit onto a city lot.

  Down the block, a cab had stopped in front of another house to let out a passenger. “Taxi!” Ruby shouted, but the driver had already seen her and was waiting by the open back door with a smile on his face. “Cab, miss?”

  She banged her head again sliding into the backseat—even without heels, she was taller than she was used to. The driver shut the door for her and walked with agonizing slowness around to the other side. When he got behind the wheel, Ruby was twisted around, watching for signs of pursuit.

  “Where to, miss?” the cabbie said. Ruby blurted out her home address. After a moment, when the taxi hadn’t moved, she faced forward and saw the driver staring at her quizzically over the seat rest. “Are you sure about that address, miss?”

  “Of course I’m—” But then she stopped and thought about it.

  “Miss?”

  “Downtown,” Ruby said. “Take me downtown.”

  “Somewhere in particular, or—”

  “Just drive.”

  Twenty minutes later she was standing outside Marshall Field’s on State Street, taking stock. After paying her cab fare, Ruby had enough cash left in her purse to get by for a couple of days, if she were frugal. Add in her Oh Jesus money—the emergency fund stashed in the lining of her coat—and she might last a week. Her identification was useless now, though, which meant bank withdrawals were going to be a problem.