by Anna Roberts
He does it again – hoooonk – and Gloria wipes her eyes with the bloody back of her forearm. He looks up, frowning in spite of all the horror he’s just been subjected to; sometimes kids are so resilient they’re flat out scary.
“There’s somebody in my head,” he says.
“I know,” she says. “And I’m sorry, but you’re very sick. He’s gonna help you get well. And stay well.”
West’s frown deepens. Poor kid was probably expecting her to tell him that this was all pretend. Welcome to my world, baby boy. “He says I’m a werewolf.”
“Yeah,” says Gloria, tasting blood. “Yeah, you are.”
The boy nods, even though he’s still frowning, trying to make sense of all this. “Are you a werewolf?”
She could say yes, but that’s not the whole story. “I’m a wolf witch,” she says, and he nods again, even though he didn’t hear her quite right due to all the blood in his ears and the Yael in his head. Or maybe Yael got into his memory and tweaked it for a joke, because some months later when West hands her the bone necklace he’s made it’s one letter off. It says WOLF BITCH.
That Yael’s a laugh riot all right.
7
All her life Ruby had dreamed of being somewhere else. Momma always said she was flighty, that she sang too loud and dreamed too big for a hillbilly girl with eleven toes. And then along came Ro, and Ruby got sucked down into the usual drama of boys and weddings and trying to keep a husband whose most meaningful relationship was with a series of stinky-ass plants that cost a fortune in fertilizer and hydroponics.
So she’d read her romance novels, and dreamed. About bad boy billionaires who fell in love with mousy girls, and diner waitresses who ran off with rock stars who loved them exactly because they were kind of dumpy and boring. There were tear-drenched misunderstandings and reconciliations smoothed over with champagne and roses and luxury cars, even though they totally weren’t in it for the money.
It all seemed so stupid now.
She stood beside the water, her shoes in her hand and her toes sinking into the rich, wet earth. Everyone had always told her not to leave, but maybe even Momma didn’t see this coming, that if you left there was a chance you’d return, and you could never come back the same. Somewhere Ruby had read that you couldn’t step into the same river twice, because fresh water was always flowing past you, and although the swamp water sat slow and brackish, she could feel that her world had tilted on its axis since she’d last been here.
The boatman brought her pirogue. He was maybe all of fifteen and looked at her like she was a terrible warning; they must have told him never to leave, too.
“Y’all know what you’re doin’?” he said, and his nose twitched at the smell of her perfume, a whiff of the brief, heady days she’d had with Charlie before she’d gotten stupid and greedy and fucked it all up.
“I ain’t been away that long,” she said, and stepped into the little rocking shell, carefully shifting her weight as she sat down. He handed her the paddle and looked at her long and sort of anxious, like he was wanting to say something.
“So?” she said. “Spit out what you were gonna say. I ain’t got all day now.”
“You gonna see the King?” said the boy, cupping his bony elbows in his hands.
“Jeez. Word travels fast around these parts, huh? Why’d you want to know?”
The boy hugged himself harder, shuffled from foot to foot on the tiny dock. “They say he’s sick,” he said. “And you’re a witch, so...”
So. She fished a twenty out of her bra and handed it to him. He looked at it like it was a golden ticket, like the muddy river had turned to chocolate and he’d landed on his ass in a magical world of whimsy and hard, ugly lessons. Oompa loompa doopity doo, she thought, and smothered a smile. “Much obliged,” she said, and pushed off from the dock.
If the old man was sick then that was something, although she couldn’t be sure which way it would go. Some people wanted to bury hatchets when they were staring down death. Others just wanted to bury the same hatchets in other people’s spines, like grandma, who had gotten so mean and ornery towards the end that everyone was hoping she’d finally turn her twelve old toes up so they could hurry to the farewell barbecue and get drunk.
She had never seen him, even though Ro had always boasted he was the old man’s favorite nephew. That was obviously bullshit, since he never showed up to the wedding, but by that time Ruby was getting used to disappointment. Back then she’d been a whole lot better at shoving these things to the back of her mind. So what if his second cousin Sheryl said he tried to finger her when she was waiting tables at his bachelor party? And so what if he wasn’t really the King’s favorite nephew? She couldn’t take it back now; her mom had made the cake and everything, and they had a doublewide to move into - nearly new, only one previous owner. What was the alternative? Stay home all crammed in their sardine can of a place, falling all over each other and with her stepfather sniffing around like a dirty old man every time she tried to take a shower?
It was a terrible thing to think, but Jesus H. Christ her life was so much easier without Ro. Her mind was so much clearer without being all muddied up with reasons to forgive him, or even just tolerate him. She was sorry for the horrible way he’d died, but if she was honest she couldn’t bring herself to miss him. And that it hadn’t been the swamp itself that had left her with that sad, grubby, neglected feeling that she’d run away to escape. It couldn’t have been, because right now the swamp felt like Eden must have felt right in that brief moment between Eve taking the first bite and Adam coming along to tell her she’d fucked everything up.
Every bug, frog, snake and gator. She could feel them as she paddled her pirogue through the silty brown water, a kind of low grade electrical hum given off by the hearts of all living things, a background thrum of life itself. She knew where each one belonged in the grand old order of things eating other things, and where she fit, as the woman. As the wolf. One time, before it had all gone south, Charlie had told her that the Vikings used to believe that one day the world would end when a giant wolf opened its jaws and swallowed the sun. She could be that wolf right now, the wolf at the end of the world.
The worst part was that she wasn’t afraid of it.
“Be more scared,” she said out loud. “Remember what happened the last time you weren’t.”
There were bones hanging from the trees, signs that she was getting close. They’d tried so hard back there, hanging up their little decorations and tarot cards, trying to make the place look all occulty. And maybe that sound thing of Grayson’s might even work, but she doubted it. It was – like so many things these days – her fault. If she hadn’t gone off into the haunted wood and come out alive, Ro would never have gone in there to prove his dumbass mettle. She’d started this. It was only right she should end it.
The house was up ahead, a low lying bungalow with a porch over the water. It didn’t look like much of a palace, but Ruby knew that this was where last words were had, which meant a million times more than cathedral windows and mosaic tiles and plush lawns that got sprayed twice a day. Lyle had been king of such a castle, and look where that had got him.
She paddled to the edge of the porch. A screen door creaked and a man stepped out, beer in hand, sloppy jeans hanging low on his hips. His face was wide and grimy, his eyes kind of slanted at the corners in a way that reminded her of Ro; maybe he hadn’t been totally bullshitting after all about being related, although that wasn’t hard. Not around these parts.
He nodded and picked up a boat hook, pulling her in so she could step out. She caught a whiff of his armpit as she disembarked – beer sweat, weed and mud.
“I’m here to see the old man,” she said. “He here?”
“Yeah.”
He looked her up and down in a leery sort of way for a second, then he seemed to remember something, and the smile slid off his face. “Oh shit. You the witch?”
“That’s me,” she said. “Whe
re is he?”
“In there.”
He held open the screen door and she hesitated for a moment before walking forward. The first thing that hit her was a smell that would knock out a possum; whatever virtues this guy had as a bodyguard, he could stand to brush up on the housekeeping.
An aged television set flickered in the corner, loud with the holy barkings of some preacher hungry for money. The color was all off; everything looked green, even the preacher, who was the orange-faced kind. The other corner was a dirty kitchenette, where a man stood stirring something on a filthy stove. He looked up and Ruby double-taked; he looked almost identical to the one who had let her in. Twins.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. A duct-taped recliner held what looked like a pile of dirty throw pillows, and it was only when they coughed that she realized it was a person.
Once she saw his eyes she wondered how she’d ever missed them. They were hard and black, sunk deep into crazed nests of wrinkles. Beady and small, but in the same way a laser sight was small; if one of those things was on you then you knew you were in a world of trouble.
The Swamp King had both eyes on Ruby. He was so still he could have been stuffed, a strange experiment in spooky taxidermy. His face sagged on one side like he’d had a stroke, but as she stepped closer, heart in mouth, she saw that his face was all twisted because on the other side he had a wolf’s tooth, sticking straight up from his lower jaw and over his lip. His feet didn’t even reach the floor; they rested on a footstool, the leather split and ruined from the humidity. He reached for the TV remote and she saw that his hands had too many fingers.
His hand shook wildly as he pointed the remote. He was almost waving it in circles as he turned down the volume. As the sunlight slanted through a gap in the curtains Ruby saw that it wasn’t the picture itself that was green; it was just that the TV screen was mottled with a thin layer of algae. She glanced over at the stove, wondering why the twin over there didn’t take better care of his grandfather or great-grandfather or whoever, but just then the screen door stirred behind her, wafting the smell of cooking under her nose.
She knew the smell, rich and fatty. The best part. The part that you always saved for the old man, as a token of respect. As a means of prolonging his wisdom.
“Y’all one o’ mine?” he said, looking directly at her feet.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t. Funeral offerings weren’t the only things the Okefenokee packs had brought him over the years. There were brides, too. It had a fancy name - French. Dwat de something, she couldn’t remember.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. His head kept moving, like a palsy or something, but somehow his gaze held the same laser beam intensity, his tiny eyes bright and black. “You the witch?”
“Ruby Jones,” she said. “Cicero Jones’s wife....widow. He’s dead now.”
The Swamp King spat. “Know-nothin’ little shit. He went runnin’ after you, my nephew. Guess y’all could say you was the one who got him killed.”
He could say that. And he’d be right, but she hadn’t come here to argue, or to deal with accusations.
“What happened up near White Springs,” she said. “They get a pass. That was nothin’ but self defense. Kaiden, Jared and Ro invaded that house.”
The old man let out a dry laugh, crackly as stepping on old plastic egg boxes. “Listen to the witch,” he says. “Tellin’ the king what to do. Y’all got some nerve, Missus Jones.”
“I watched my husband die,” she said. “I watched blood run out of his nose and his mouth. I watched the light die in his eyes. And God knows I’ve fucked up enough for a dozen people in the last few months, but enough is enough. No more killing; there’s been enough death.”
“And y’all take the part of outsiders?” he said. “Over your own people? Some swamp witch.”
“The wood wasn’t our land in the first place,” said Ruby. “We got the swamp.”
“Yeah, we got the swamp,” said the king. “We got rising damp and the shitty end of the stick the whole time. We got Lyle Raines’ boot on the back of our necks for all your life and then some, but now that sonofabitch is gone we’re takin’ back what was ours. North Florida is swamp wolf country. Always was. Just some people didn’t know it, is all.”
“Fine,” she said. “But there’s no need for killin’.”
The old man started to laugh again. “Oh, there is,” he said, wheezing through a bit of spit that had run down the back of his throat. “That big white bastard, for one. Kaiden Bloom was Cory and Ray’s cousin, my great grandson - ain’t that right, boys?”
He swiveled his head as far as he could, which wasn’t far. That set him off in a storm of twitching, drool running from the wolf fang. The twin at the door came closer to tend to him, and got smacked on the head with the TV controller for his pains. It bounced off his cropped skull with an ugly little thud, and as he straightened up Ruby caught the look of resentment that skittered like a shadow across his blank, grubby face. Not more than a flash, really, but you could move the world if you had a big enough lever.
“So what?” she said, addressing the twin at the stove. “Y’all want revenge or are you as done with this shit as I am?”
The king sputtered and snarled. He was shaking and laughing all at once. The fang had snicked open a scar on his upper lip and blood ran down his chin. The laughing sickness, they called it. It got into your brain and turned it to sponge, until all you could do was laugh and scream and pee in your pants. He kicked out, knocking over the footstool and kicking the slipper from his foot. He had six toes.
“Get her head,” he said, and the twins hesitated for a second, but there was no time to think of how to turn this to her advantage. She knew what that smell was on the stove, and she knew what he meant to do; if she wouldn’t heal him he’d gain her powers another way.
One twin grabbed her from behind. The other picked up a wicked looking knife and came at her, his face as flat and empty as if he was going to start chopping up chicken for dinner. His brother jerked Ruby’s head back, baring her throat, and she stumbled in panic, pushing him against a bookcase. For a moment he lost his grip on her wrists and it was enough for her to knock twice against the side of the bookcase before he recaptured them.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “You know it’s bad luck to spill the blood of a witch.”
The one with the knife stopped. She saw him glance briefly at his brother over her head, but then the hand jerked her hair all the harder, making her cry out in pain.
“You ain’t no witch,” he said, and she thought that was it. That was really it. She’d called on him too late, and he was only a little spirit, not yet versed in the ways of helping.
Only then something knocked outside, a tapping on the wood of the porch. Ruby let out what she thought had been her last breath. “Nox,” she said, and he came clattering into the house, knocking over an end table in his eagerness to get at a body. She should have known better, she knew, but there was no time for that right now. She ordered him to work and he slithered straight up the nose of the twin with the knife. Nothing showy, but he pointed the way to a blood vessel, and looking the twin right in the eyes, Ruby reached out with her mind and broke it.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said, and once again she thought she saw a flicker like the one she’d seen in the face of his twin. Not resentment this time, just tiredness, like he had enough cousins anyway and everyone knew Kaiden was a dirtbag who’d been destined to come to some bad end. And why should he die fighting for him?
But it was gone in a second, and he lunged forward. She closed her eyes, felt the blade touch her skin and then heard him cry out as the blade clattered to the floor. She opened her eyes to see he’d felt the blood touch his lips at just the right moment, and he’d heard enough about how Ro died for a nosebleed to scare the bejesus out of him. The other twin released her, pushed her away hard, so that she almost stumbled into his brother, who reacted
like her touch was fire.
Her neck was bleeding. He’d nicked her with the blade.
And through it all the king kept laughing, a wild, crazy sound like he was in the grip of a curse. Ruby touched her fingers to her stinging throat and went round to the front of his chair. She held her bloody fingers in his face and saw his mean little eyes light up with panic, but he couldn’t stop laughing. His head shook and his arms flailed, but his brain was too full of holes to lend him the strength or coordination to push her away.
Ruby reached out and wiped her blood on his cheek. Bad luck. The worst luck.
“Come if you dare,” she said. “And see where it gets you.”
*
The young ones weren’t there when she got back, which suited her just fine. There was no way to compose your face in front of kids when you were about to tell them they were going to die. As it was, Grayson spotted her first, and he knew right away, just from the look on her face. Ruby dragged her heels across the yard, Nox skittering in the dust behind her. The wind twirled the tarot cards hanging from the trees, and she could have cried at how stupid they looked.
“Not good news, I take it?” said Grayson.
She shook her head, smelling tobacco as she approached the porch. The big one - Joe - stepped out from behind a column, a lit cigarette between his fingers. He handed it back to Grayson. She couldn’t remember seeing him smoke before, a sign that even his nerves were jangled. Which was a worry, because he seemed steadiest of all. Charlie had always spoken well of Joe Lutesinger, but it was easy to speak well of people when you thought they were dead.
Grayson passed the cigarette right on to Ruby. She murmured thanks but after that none of them spoke for a while. She sat listening to the wind ruffling the treetops, the chirping birds and burping frogs. When she breathed in she tasted blood mixed with tobacco, and she wasn’t sure if it was real blood or just a foretaste of what was coming. The air had that sticky stacticky hell-gonna-break-loose texture she recognized all too well, now. It all but crackled in anticipation of energy, making Nox shiver and tap on the porch.
