by John Hart
“I’ll try to think nice thoughts.”
“Just get out.” He watched her go, then faced Verdine. “It would be helpful if I knew exactly what I was getting into.”
The old woman straightened above the cane, but seemed smaller, somehow. “Foreknowledge might affect the vision.”
“I don’t care.”
“All that matters is the location of Aina’s grave.”
“Why?”
“Need you ask? Really? You know what she feels.”
“You mean felt. Past tense.” She stared blankly, and Johnny frowned. “What makes you so certain I can find her?”
“John Merrimon shot Aina twice, and buried her in the swamp. No one else was with him. The memories are his alone.”
“Say you’re right and I find this grave. What’s in it for me?”
“I’ll answer any questions that remain about the place you call home. I’ll make Hush Arbor yours alone in every way that matters, all its secrets and history. You do this for me, boy, and I’ll give you everything you ever wanted.”
She was selling hard, but Johnny still didn’t trust her. “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said to Cree. “Maybe John Merrimon did, but it wasn’t me.”
“Just find her.”
“You want the same thing?” he asked. “Same as her?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep your thoughts to yourself,” he said. “Don’t put me in some damn grave.”
* * *
After that, it took a long time.
He heard their whispers beyond the door.
He closed his eyes and tasted dirt.
When sleep arrived, it came as softly as a blush. It wasn’t there, and then it was. The dream came next, and it began with Isaac.
* * *
His face glistened, and it was night outside, torches beyond the glass.
“They’ve come,” he said.
The mob was moving down the drive beyond the great porch. Fifty people. Maybe more.
“How many do we have on the front door?”
“Four.”
Some of John’s men remained loyal, in spite of everything. They guarded the door, rifles in hand. “How about the back?” he asked.
“Two more.”
“It’ll be enough.”
“I hanged a white man.”
“On my orders.”
“It won’t matter,” Isaac said. “They want me to hang next.”
“Yeah, well…”
John checked the loads in the heavy revolver he wore at the waist. They were in his study, John and Isaac and the lawyer. Aina stood at a different window, watching the crowd. The lawyer sat at the desk. “Finished,” he said.
“The slaves?” John asked.
“Freed.”
“And the land?”
The lawyer glanced at the girl by the window. She was ignoring them, but he lowered his voice nonetheless. “In Isaac’s name alone, as you requested.”
John opened the safe and drew out a stack of notes. “You should go out the back,” he said. “It’s safest.”
The lawyer took the money and donned his hat. “I’m not sure you’ll survive this. I’m not sure you should.”
John thought maybe the lawyer was right. He didn’t care. “Back door, Isaac. Show him out.” When Isaac returned, John pushed the deed into his hands. “Six thousand acres, my friend. For you and your family. For your sacrifice.”
“That’s not what she wanted.”
“She won’t know the difference until it’s too late.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Maybe it will give you some leverage in the days that follow. Maybe it will make this bearable, somehow.” John lifted a rifle from the rack and laid a hand on the sheaf of pages left by the lawyer. “These are documents of manumission, one for each of our people. If I don’t come back—”
“You will.”
John nodded, but shouts rang outside. He spoke above the din. “Not everyone will wish to stay with her. For those who do not, I’ve arranged transportation north—” A window shattered as a rock sailed through, struck the fire tools, and scattered them. “Whatever happens, you stay inside.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“You saved my life.” John smiled. “Freedom. Land. My love and respect. How else could I ever repay you?”
John left him with the girl, and at his bedroom door, he stopped.
His wife was smiling up.
The child was at her breast.
* * *
Even in his sleep, Johnny choked at the sight.
She was alive.
She’d named the boy Spencer, after her father.
The dream almost broke then, but it moved instead. He was staring down the mob, the rifle in one hand. Stars paled above, but the dream was moving again.
He was in the swamp.
His heart was broken.
* * *
“Where is she, Isaac?”
“John, my God. What are you doing here? How long has it been?”
“Since last we spoke, three months.”
Another eight had passed since the night of the mob, but Isaac had aged a dozen years. A beard covered his throat, and much of it was white. John was hardscrabble, too. His boots were worn through, his own beard ragged and long. He’d cut new holes in his belt just to keep his pants from sliding off his narrow waist. How long since he’d slept? He didn’t know. All he had was the rage, the need to move and do and kill.
“Where do I find her?” he asked.
“She’ll know you’re coming a mile before you get there.”
John stared out at the black and starless night. Beyond the water and through the trees, lights glinted where the small cabins stood. “She’s truly so powerful?” he asked.
“Life. Death. The unthinkable.” Isaac’s large head moved. “There is no god in heaven to explain the things I’ve seen.”
John swallowed his disappointment and fear. “How many people remain?”
“Seven children have been born. Nineteen adults remain.”
“Will they help me?”
“They fear her,” Isaac said. “They fear and love and worship her.”
“Then I must ask a final favor.”
“Name it.”
“I need your help if she’s to die.”
Isaac bowed under the weight of John’s words. “Is your life so terrible, you would risk it?”
“The house is burned, the livestock either slaughtered or stolen. People have been unforgiving. We live in fear.”
“And your son?”
“He grows strong.”
“And Marion…?”
“Unchanged since last we spoke.”
“I’m so sorry.”
John looked away. He could not speak further of his wife, could not think of her, as she’d become. “Aina must die, my friend.”
“And if it’s you, instead. What of your son?”
“I’ve found a woman who will provide.”
“John, please—”
“Aina or me, Isaac. One of us dies tonight.”
* * *
For an instant, Johnny rose above the dream. He did not know what was wrong with Marion, only that they lived now in squalor, and that the boy liked to play in the morning light: a rosy child on a narrow bed, one hand wrapped around his mother’s finger.
Why was the image so sad?
The dream was moving fast, just bits and pieces now: the gurgling boy, the mother at his side. Johnny felt that note again—sadness—then understood as the dream took him down.
Her hand was lifeless on the bed.
It was lifeless and warm and unfeeling.
* * *
Night changed to dawn before John found the place Isaac had described: a cypress far from the water’s edge, a forgotten giant with a hollow space between its roots that was large enough to hide a man. “A quiet place,” Isaac had said. “A gentle place for making children. Dawn is a favorite time,
and she thinks of little else. My presence will distract her.”
John was folded between the roots when first light came. His view was of mist and moss and trees across a narrow glade. Licking his thumb, he cleaned dirt from the sights. Would she know his heart, as Isaac feared? Would she feel it? In secret, John had met Isaac twice before, so he knew something of Aina. She was kind to those who’d stayed, but intemperate; and the rage, once upon her, was fearsome. She demanded loyalty and love and, from Isaac, all the children in the world. Their first daughter was two months old. She wanted a second.
“She says the time between night and day is blessed, so the light will be gray when we come. If the sun rises above the trees, then I have failed, and you should leave. She owns this swamp, John. She owns it in ways you could never understand.”
John had no reason to doubt. She was a giver of life, and a taker.…
He shied from thoughts of what she’d taken, thought instead of muzzle control and trigger discipline.
Let her come, he thought.
Dear Lord, if you love me …
And the Lord, it seemed, loved him. John saw movement in the trees, and heard a girlish laugh that ill fit his memories of Aina. She held Isaac’s hand, and walked with her head up and a sway in her hips. She stopped once to draw him down and kiss him full on the mouth. It was a long kiss, and full of promise. John laid his cheek to the stock and sighted down the barrel. He, too, had promises to keep.
For Spencer, he thought.
For Marion.
Aina stepped onto the moss, and Isaac was a half pace to her side when John drew the hammer to full cock. She heard or sensed it, her small head snapping around, the jawline tight as her eyes moved unerringly to the place John hid. She opened her mouth to speak, but John squeezed the trigger without hesitation. She dodged at the same moment, moving fast enough to cost him the heart shot he wanted. The bullet, instead, struck her arm and shattered it. It spun her sideways, and onto moss so soft, John didn’t feel his feet as he ran from the cypress and stopped above her, his revolver out and pointed. In spite of the ruined arm, she rolled onto her back, the black eyes flashing.
“For God’s sake, John. Do it!”
Isaac was desperately afraid. John felt it, but his own glee was stronger. She’d lied. She’d stolen.
“John!”
She’d taken so much.…
“Do it now or die yourself!”
Isaac was right. There was no joy here, only justice and need and hate. Isaac opened his mouth again, but John didn’t want to hear it. He crossed himself for the sake of his soul, then shot her in the chest instead.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Luana took the car without asking. Her neighbor was passed out drunk, and things were bad between them, anyway. She’d accused Luana of stealing the pistol from her glove compartment. Luana had denied it, but both of them knew the truth. The end of their friendship wasn’t about the stolen pistol or borrowed money or any of the little things they squabbled about. Luana wouldn’t go to the bars anymore. She wouldn’t wear the short skirts or fishnets or the red lipstick. She’d given that up. She was done.
“You won’t last a day,” the neighbor had said, and Luana feared she might have been right. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the keys. She tried to steady herself. The backseat was stuffed with boxes and bags—everything from the apartment that had any kind of value: clothing and pots, a toaster, and Cree’s extra shoes. She didn’t really know what else. The packing had been a blur of sweat and tears and the fear she’d get caught; but no one stopped her. A couple of boys eyed her lazily. An old woman watched from a window on the third floor.
Luana looked once at her own windows, then rattled out of the city and onto the back roads leading north and east. The route took her through small towns with liquor stores and open bars, but she kept driving. Once across the Raven County line, she felt the prickling of childhood fears. Verdine was the story told to frighten children. She was the taker, the untrusted, the one they’d driven out.
Do as you’re told, child, or she’ll come for you, too.…
Now she had Cree.
Skirting the edge of town, Luana steered for Hush Arbor, and two miles out, she felt the difference. Cars passed where there had never been cars before. Police cars. News vans. The roadblock was set up twenty yards after the last turn off the state road. A dozen vehicles waited to be let through or turned away. Luana pulled onto the verge and studied all the official men with their badges and vinyl belts and hard-edged guns. The radio said state police had come, at last, and that the FBI was en route from the field office in Raleigh. For a while, she watched a cop she knew. He was Johnny Merrimon’s father—she’d seen him in court. He stood at the tree line, speaking to an older man in a uniform. Luana closed her eyes, trying to process all the energy and movement. Hush Arbor had never been about engine noise and radios and crowds from the city, and it surprised her how much that sense of wrongness bothered her. Didn’t she hate the swamp? Hadn’t she left? Digging in a kitchen box, she found a small, sharp knife, and tested its blade against her skin.
For her daughter’s sake, she planned to challenge Verdine.
She’d need to make an offering first.
* * *
Clyde Hunt had been a cop for decades, and had connections everywhere. The media. State police. Especially the sheriff’s department. Yes, Tom Lee had frozen him out, but the captain couldn’t be everywhere at once. He sure as hell wasn’t on the roadside.
“Talk to me, Clint.”
Hunt guided an older deputy into the shade. They’d worked cases together back when Hunt was green. They went to the same church, shared a few friends.
“No one’s found him yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And?”
The deputy looked uncomfortable. His boots were muddy. He’d been on his feet a long time, in and out of the swamp. “You know about the helicopter?”
“It went down, I heard.”
“It crashed into Johnny’s cabin—”
“Jesus.”
“People are scared, Clyde. I mean truly afraid.”
“Of what?”
“The way the helicopter went down. Some other things.”
“I need you to be more specific.” Clint frowned, and it cut deep lines at the eyes and mouth. Clyde realized, with a shock, that he was frightened, too. “Clint?”
“That helicopter should not have crashed.”
“Accidents happen.”
“Charlie Ravenwood has been flying for forty years. Desert Shield. Desert Storm. He was decorated twice. You knew that, right?”
“I did, yeah.”
“He flew into a tree.”
Clyde tried to picture it. “I don’t understand.”
“He hit it sixty feet up and spun off into the cabin. There’s not a cloud in the sky. There’s no fog, no wind. There’re other things, too. Communications are breaking down. Radios work and then they don’t. Men are getting bogged down and lost.”
“Operational mishaps—”
“No, Clyde! You’re not listening!”
Hunt was listening now. In thirty years, he’d never seen Clint raise his voice outside of an arrest or some kind of violent disturbance. “All right, then. Talk to me.”
“When I say people are lost, I mean that literally. Two men from two different search parties. They’re just gone, vanished.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Clyde. They were there and then they weren’t. People are shaken. They’re spooked. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What?”
“We still have teams out there. We still have people missing.”
* * *
Colson Hightower knew very little about what was going on in the swamp or, for that matter, in the world beyond Raven County. He’d become a sheriff’s deputy to make his mom proud, and because he’d thought the uniform might make him more handsome, somehow. He’d
been right about both things. His mother forgot about his lack of will, his failures, his years as a middling student. She thought he looked snappy and fine in the brown polyester uniform; and so did Jenny Clayburn. She’d married him, after all, and they’d been together for twelve good years. They had a dog and a small house with a garden where Jenny liked to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots. Watching her do that work gave Colson no small amount of pleasure: her hands in the earth, her soft, round figure in cutoff jeans and one of his old shirts. She’d put him in the shade, bring him a beer, and say, Relax, enjoy, you’ve had a hard day making the world safe. She always smiled when she said it; she smiled and smelled of warm earth and growing things, and her lips were soft on his cheek.
Colson thought of Jenny’s garden as he trudged through the swamp, the last man in a line of exhausted men. This part of the job was not so fun. He liked riding in the car and doing paperwork and cleaning his gun once a week, even though he never fired it. He liked making safety presentations to kids at school, and working the football games on Friday nights, and having a beer with the other deputy once the stands were empty and everyone safely off school grounds. He liked the clean parts of the job, the safe, predictable parts, and didn’t mind when the higher-ups got angry with him, or frustrated with his lack of ambition. He had the uniform and he had Jenny, and that was enough.
He held on to those thoughts as the swamp tried to break him. It was the mud and the heat, the loss of radio communication, and the fact that no one knew where the hell they were, even though the old man guiding them fought in a war and trained soldiers and was supposed to be infallible in the woods.
He wasn’t.
He got turned around and lost, and led them off dry ground so many times that they twice used rope to haul out one of their party who got so bogged down in the mud, he couldn’t move.
So, Colson thought of his wife as he walked. He tripped on brambles and went down in the mud; and when he rose, dripping, he was still thinking of Jenny. Her neck was red from the sun, but she smelled of that garden, and of the lotion she liked.
Lilac …
That was the smell. Lilac and bruised stems and soft, warm dirt.
“Jenny.”
He said her name, and it did not seem strange to speak it aloud. They were crossing shallow water, and no one heard him over the splashing and the cursing. Colson slowed his pace, and when he heard Jenny singing, her voice was so clear and sweet, he stopped walking entirely. It was a song she sang in the garden, and for a long minute, Colson stood with his head tilted, trying to catch the notes that hung in the air like the last, faint peal of a distant church bell. The other men were moving away, but he wasn’t worried. Softness welled in the air, a fog he couldn’t quite see. Colson smiled because the sense of his wife grew, as well.
