Revelator: A Novel

by Daryl Gregory

  She said, “You ought to wear gloves.” His hands were pink and raw from the bleach.

  He nodded. Still waiting for her to do what she came to do.

  “Tell me about the girl and Hendrick,” she said. “She likes him?”

  He glanced back at the cabin door. “You know how he is.”

  Charismatic, she thought. Charming in the way a little girl couldn’t see through. But that wasn’t the question.

  “Does he love her?”

  Abby reached into the water, came up with a handful of tiny bones.

  “Abby?”

  “He dotes on her a bit.”

  Stella sighed. “You mind if I talk to Sunny?”

  He stood, and she said, “By myself.”

  He said, “I suppose I could check on that deer.”

  * * *

  —

  sunny sat on the hearth of the fireplace with her arms around her knees, staring at Stella with a hawklike intensity. She was all angles: bare skinny arms and shins, a narrow face, long fingers and toes. That strong Birch nose. The tips of her ears poked from her long black hair.

  Stella suddenly remembered holding this child when she was hours old, the heat of her against Stella’s skin. A decade vanished, and just as suddenly opened again like a chasm.

  The girl said nothing. Studied her.

  Stella tried not to stare at her bare skin. Sunny was more scarlet than white, and that red was unnaturally vibrant—nobody’d take her for Cherokee. Stella’s own blemishes were a ragged pink rash, but the patches of ruby swirling across Sunny’s legs and arms and face seemed almost poreless, like painted glass.

  Finally Stella said, “You know who I am?”

  “You’re the apostate Stella Wallace.” Her accent was as thick as Uncle Dan’s. “Abby says I got to talk to you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Don’t see why.”

  “I’m the eldest Birch woman,” Stella said. “That means I have say over what happens to you.”

  Stella looked around for a chair, pulled one over to the girl. She was alarmed at how empty the cabin felt. There was indeed a couch—good for you, Abby—but most of his trophies were missing. A single bear head remained on the wall, next to a buck. The raccoon no longer begged in the corner. Saddest of all, the Russian boar was gone. Had he sold them off, or was he robbed while he was in prison? She hoped a few of them were in the back room. As always, that door was shut.

  “But actually,” Stella said, “I’m here to ask you what you want to happen next.”

  The girl tilted her head, skeptical. The red of her cheek seemed to flow like wine in a glass.

  “When I was little, nobody asked me what I wanted,” Stella said. “They thought I was too stupid to decide for myself.”

  “Maybe you were,” Sunny said.

  Stella laughed, and it sent a twinge into her hangover-abused skull. “Maybe so.”

  “Since you’re asking,” Sunny said. “I’ll be staying with Uncle Hendrick.”

  So she did know why Stella was here. Stella said, “Abby said Motty wanted me to take you in.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve got to figure out if you’re smarter than I was at your age. I need to know what Motty’s told you, what Hendrick’s told you.”

  “He’s told me he’ll have a big house for me, and I won’t have to go to school.”

  “I see the attraction.” The girl scowled and Stella said, “School wasn’t a great place for me. Too many children. They aren’t nice to people who look different.”

  “So you got the same stains I do,” Sunny said. “Don’t mean nothing.”

  “It runs in the family,” Stella said. She didn’t add, And your skin’s even stranger than mine is. “People ’round here treat it like the mark of Cain, but in Georgia, well, you’d have it easier.”

  “I don’t care what people think.”

  “Good for you,” Stella said—not believing it for a second. “So what else has Hendrick told you?”

  “About what?”

  “Why don’t you start with that necklace?”

  Sunny looked down at herself. On a cheap metal chain hung a thin gold ring. The prongs held a speck of a diamond. The girl put a fist around it.

  “It’s mine,” she said. “Motty gave it to me.”

  “And where’d she get it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  So. She swears already. Motty and Abby remained excellent influences.

  “Well, Aunt Ruth’s heard about it,” Stella said. “If you want to hold on to it, I suggest you keep it hid.”

  Sunny dropped the ring back into the neck of her dress. One question answered, but it was still a mystery where Motty got the money for a diamond ring, even one with such a tiny stone. It was possible the old woman had hidden it from Stella all the time she lived there, but not likely. The house was too small, and Stella too much a snoop. So, something the old woman had picked up in the last ten years.

  “My turn,” Sunny said.

  “You don’t get a turn.”

  “Why’d you run away?”

  “None of your business. Show me your hands.”

  Sunny folded her arms.

  “Have you gone in the cave?” Stella asked.

  “No. But you have. Show me yours.”

  Stella hesitated. She showed no one her hands.

  “Fair’s fair,” Sunny said.

  Stella stretched out her right arm, loosened her fist.

  Sunny leaned forward. Her eyes narrowed. Her face was almost all red except for a swirl of pale skin from her left eye to her chin.

  She pressed a finger into Stella’s palm. Traced the scars.

  “Does it hurt?” Sunny asked.

  “Not anymore. Now you.” The girl frowned. “I have to know, Sunny. You don’t get to run off to Georgia until I see.”

  Sunny thrust out her arm. Stella opened the girl’s fingers. Her skin was warm, and wine dark, except for a pale bulge at the center of her palm, as if the skin covered a tiny egg. Stella ran her finger over it. Her skin was smooth, unbroken.

  “Now the other.”

  The girl sighed, but did it. There were no scars. No scars. The Ghostdaddy hadn’t touched her. Motty had kept to the age of accountability. And Sunny was innocent.

  “Why, you look like you’re gonna cry,” Sunny said.

  “I’m fine. I just thought—” Stopping herself before she said: I thought you’d done something terrible.

  “You miss it, don’t you,” Sunny said.

  Stella took a breath. Pushed away the start of tears with the back of her hand. “What?”

  Sunny leaned forward. “What was it like for you? Touching him.”

  “It was…”

  Like standing in the sun and being the sun at the same time, Stella thought.

  “I’ll admit it felt pretty good,” she said. “At first.”

  “Pretty good?” Sunny said. “I read the books, Stella Wallace. I read your book.”

  “You…?”

  The girl looked smug.

  “I thought that was against the rules,” Stella said. “He shouldn’t have given it to you—I’m still here. I wasn’t allowed to read The Book of Mathilda.”

  “But you ain’t been here,” Sunny said.

  “Motty would never have allowed that.”

  “Motty didn’t have to know every little thing.”

  “Hendrick gave the books, without telling Motty?”

  Sunny was enjoying Stella’s shock. “He thought I should know what you done. All your conversations with the God are in there.”

  “They’re not conversations, they’re—” Stella shook her head. “You shouldn’t read that. And you should know, it ain’t my book. It’
s something Hendrick wrote about me. You need to know the difference.”

  “But it ain’t lies! You loved the God, that’s in there. And it loved you. I know you felt it.”

  “It ain’t love. I thought it was.”

  Sunny wasn’t buying it.

  “The thing in there wants what it wants,” Stella said. “It takes what it wants. There’s a reason we wait until we’re of age. Why we don’t go in alone. You got to be strong enough, strong enough to hold on to yourself, and you got to go bit by bit or the Ghostdaddy will just—never mind.”

  “Say it.” Sunny’s voice was eager. “I ain’t never gonna know unless you tell me.”

  That’s right, Stella thought. I ain’t never going to tell you. They’ve already fed you on too many stories about the glory of the God in the Mountain.

  “Here’s all you need to know,” Stella said. “It doesn’t care about little people, like you and me. Not like a person cares for a person.”

  “That ain’t true! Uncle Hendrick said that—”

  “Uncle Hendrick don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s got this big story he’s selling, and he’s leading you on. That thing in there will hurt you. It hurt me, and Lena before me.” She made sure the girl was looking her in the eye. “It hurt Motty, too.”

  The girl shook her head. “No. Uncle Hendrick told me—she died of a heart attack.”

  Stella took a breath. She couldn’t tell the girl what happened, not yet. She’d run to Hendrick. And Stella had a lot to do before the shit hit that particular fan. If it all worked out, Sunny would never have to go through what Stella did. She’d grow up normal—or nearer to it than Stella had been allowed.

  “That’s their best guess,” Stella allowed. “We can talk about it later.”

  Sunny said, “So now do I get to go to Georgia?”

  “You really want to live on some ranch down there?” Stella asked.

  The girl’s face lit up. She’d thought she’d won. Then she added, “Of course I’d rather stay in the cove, if—”

  “You can’t.”

  “I know! The park the park the park. I ain’t stupid.”

  The girl wasn’t. And that gave Stella hope that she was smart enough to see through Hendrick’s bullshit—eventually, if not right now.

  Stella got to her feet. “For now, you can stay here with Abby.”

  At the door a wrenching feeling stopped her. She looked back at the floor around Sunny’s feet. “I shouldn’t have stayed away from the cove. I shouldn’t have left you alone with Motty. That way you wouldn’t have had to learn about me from a book.”

  Stella looked her in the eye. Sunny hadn’t moved. She was holding on to herself, her jaw tight, burning. Stella remembered being that angry.

  “If we do this, if, I’m going to come visit you,” Stella said. “Check on you, regular, you understand?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “I’ll talk to Hendrick when the funeral’s over.”

  Sunny blinked hard, holding back some emotion. Abby was right. No matter what Sunny was, she was a little girl.

  Abby wasn’t in the yard. Stella hiked back uphill to her car, and was thankful she didn’t run into him along the way.

  The deer was gone.

  9

  1936

  One saturday morning in early May, a few weeks after Motty killed the sow, the old woman announced that Decoration Day was tomorrow, so they’d better get started. Stella didn’t know what she was talking about and was in no mood for newly invented chores. She had a book to read.

  Motty marched her up into the woods past Abby’s shack to a hillside covered with wildflowers. She started pointing out ones to collect in the basket: purple irises, pale yellow bloodroot flowers, three different kinds of trilliums with their white leaves and mouths of different colors like candy with secret centers. She sent Stella into the brush to find fire pink (which wasn’t pink but was indeed fiery), lone trout-lilies with their drooping yellow heads, violets and azaleas and blue phlox. Motty fussed at her for picking the wrong ones, or the older ones, or the insect-damaged ones, and sent her back for replacements.

  “What are we doing with all these?” Stella asked.

  “They’re for the dead.”

  “Why’re they so picky?”

  “Show some respect. You can afford to think about more than yourself once a year.”

  Stella wondered if Motty cared so much, why hadn’t they decorated in the three years she’d been here?

  After lunch they walked for almost four miles, Stella carrying the basket while Motty arranged bouquets and tied them with string. They arrived at the Primitive Baptist Church, an austere white frame building alone in a clearing on uneven ground; it rested on stacks of rock like gray ankles to keep it level. A horse, still attached to its buggy, nibbled grass outside. That was the Rayburn horse, Miss Jane. The face of the church was practically a blank wall, with no windows and one narrow door, which hung ajar. A figure moved inside.

  Motty didn’t go through the door, but headed for the graveyard behind the church. The yard was empty—of living people, anyway.

  “These are your kin,” Stella said. And there was the tombstone for Russell Birch, 1795–1878, defender of the cove. Stella wished it mentioned bushwhackers. Clara lay beside him, with no words on her marker to note she was the first person to meet the God in the Mountain.

  Motty chose the right bouquet for each resident, then had Stella pin it to the ground with a nail and string. “Not that it’ll do any good,” Motty said. “People steal the nice ones and put them on their own graves.”

  It seemed they were related to everyone in the row. Stella worked her way down to the end, Motty fussing at her the whole time. At the next tombstone Motty handed her the largest bunch of flowers yet. Stella looked at the stone and saw her mother’s name: Selena Birch Wallace. The date was August 5, 1926—ten years before this year. And just two years after Stella was born.

  Stella said, “Pa told me she got sick when I was a baby. That’s why she came back here, for you to take care of her.”

  Motty was staring at the tombstone.

  “So she was sick a long time?” Stella asked.

  “Did your pa tell you what she died of?”

  “Tuberculosis.” She’d studied the word.

  “Well. That’s a lingering disease.”

  Stella thought, Do I have tuberculosis? Is that why Pa dropped me off? How long does it take to know you’re just…lingering?

  Stella asked, “Do I get to be buried next to her?”

  “Nope. That’s my spot there.” Meaning the empty patch next to Lena.

  “But I want to be next to Ma!”

  “Not much room. Guess they can turn you sideways and bury you at our feet.”

  Stella marched away, and Motty didn’t call her back. Maybe she was as tired of Stella as Stella was of her.

  She looked at a few gravestones, and most of the last names were familiar. Then she circled around the other side of the church and there was Lunk, hoeing out weeds that had sprouted under the church.

  “Saw you over there,” Lunk said.

  “But you didn’t come over?”

  He shook his head. “Afraid to. I never met a woman as mean as your grandmother.”

  “You should live with her.”

  “Ha! No thanks.”

  “So your daddy makes you do chores around the church?”

  “He says it beats whipping me.”

  “Oh! So you’ve been misbehaving? What’d you do?”

  He flushed—red as cranberry!

  “Come on, you can tell me,” she said.

  “I’d worry about your own soul. You read that Bible all the way through yet?”

  “I read a fair piece.” She’d read all of Genesis, Exodus
, and Leviticus, and had lately run aground in Deuteronomy. “I like that serpent in the garden. He’s ‘subtil.’ Never knew that word.”

  “You would like the serpent.” He shook his head, smiling. “Daddy’s worried about you. Though he says it’s not your fault, you just got put into the hands of…never mind.”

  “Come on. Say it.”

  “A heathen.”

  “Motty ain’t a heathen.” Was she?

  “He thinks she’s going to lead you off the straight and narrow path.”

  “And your daddy, how does he know what path that is? I thought only God knows if I’m one of the Elect.”

  “God speaks to him.”

  Stella blew out her lips.

  “He does!”

  “About me?”

  “About all kinds of things. All the time.”

  “How about you?” Stella asked. “Does God speak to you?”

  “Sure He does. Well, sometimes.” Then: “He does, but—” His face cinched up.

  Stella waited.

  “It’s not like he does with Daddy. It’s not…clear.”

  “What do you want Him to tell you?”

  “Whether I’m good or not.”

  Her surprise showed. Suddenly he got embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No,” Stella said. “I think that all the time.”

  “You do?”

  “Good” and “bad” were the wrong words. More like “damaged” and “undamaged.” There was a flaw in her. Her mother had seen it early, and then her father sussed it out, something nearly invisible, like a pinhole leak in a copper kettle. The only thing was, she didn’t know what her flaw was yet. She knew it was there, and she knew it would come out at some point, and then everybody would see her for what she was.

  “If God hasn’t answered,” Stella said, “maybe we should make a sacrifice. Get His attention.”

  Motty came around the corner, mad. “Don’t you walk off from me.” She grabbed Stella by the elbow. At the road Stella glanced behind her. Lunk had stepped out to the front of the church, watching her. You big lunk, she thought.