Servants of the Storm

by Delilah S. Dawson

“Fair ’nough, girl. Can he see?”

  “He’s starting to. I gave him red stuff. And I want to go to Riverfest tonight.”

  “Good. You won’t like what you’ll see there, but you’ll learn something, sure ’nough.”

  We’re silent for a few minutes. Gigi’s thinking, her eyes squinched almost shut and her tongue poking her cheek.

  “What you need,” Gigi says slowly, “is a hex.”

  I just stare at her.

  “They can smell it on you, sugar. Once they take your bone, they can’t feed on you anymore. Can’t taste you. They’ll know you’re up to something at Riverfest. But Gigi knows how to hide, yes she does. Y’all wait here. Gigi’s gonna fix you up.”

  She stands, popping in about twenty places. As she shuffles off into the kitchen in her slippers, she mumbles to herself. With a ragged yowl the old gray cat hobbles after her.

  “This is seriously weird,” Baker whispers. “But the cake was good.”

  “The cake was great,” I say. “And she’s one of the good guys. What I saw last night was . . . a lot worse.”

  I hold up my right hand and unwind the Batman Band-Aid. Baker gasps and grabs my wrist.

  “Jesus, Dovey. Where’s the rest of your finger?”

  “It’s . . . in a demon’s stomach.”

  I spend the next twenty minutes telling him everything while Gigi sings Motown songs on the other side of the closed kitchen door. Baker nods and grumbles and gasps at all the right places, but I don’t see doubt on his face. Fear and amazement, but not doubt. He takes it a lot better than I did. That red stuff must be pretty potent.

  Finally he pushes the hair back off his forehead with both hands and leans back.

  “So you think we can find your bone thingy and Carly’s bone thingy and the box that . . .”

  “Contains her soul. Yeah. I think she wants me to.”

  “Even though this Isaac guy says it’s impossible?”

  “I have to try.”

  He nods once and says, “I’m in.”

  Gigi hobbles back in through the door, holding a mason jar full of sludge.

  “This don’t taste as good as my chocolate cake,” she says, “but it’ll get you what you need, keep them demons from seeing what you are.”

  She hands me the mason jar, and I take a sniff and gag.

  “Are you sure this will work?” I say.

  Gigi straightens up and pins me with her glare. She only comes up to about my armpits, but right now it feels like she’s towering over me.

  “You doubtin’ me, girl?”

  “No, ma’am. I just don’t want to drink that mud,” I say, knowing honesty is the only option.

  She nods once and settles back down. “You drink it down now anyway. Y’all go to Riverfest tonight and see if you can find my Carly. See if she knows anything about where Kitty’s got that box hid. She probably don’t, probably couldn’t tell you even if she did. But you never know. All them demons gather round Riverfest at night, especially near holidays, have their own little buffet. Maybe you’ll hear something. Maybe not. I don’t think we got long to find out. There’s something big going on. Gonna happen soon.”

  “What if we can’t find her?” I say.

  “Then I guess we gonna talk to a ghost,” she says with a sly smile.

  “Ghosts are real too?” Baker says.

  “You got a lot to learn, boy.” Gigi pats his arm. “This is Josephine’s Savannah. If it’s bad, it’s real.”

  18

  AS I PULL OUT OF Gigi’s driveway, baker exhales shakily.

  “You could have warned me,” he says, and I laugh.

  “I told you. She’s scary, but she’s on our side,” I reply.

  “What did the hex taste like?”

  “Exactly what it looked like.” I swallow, still tasting it in the back of my mouth. “Mud and dog shit.”

  “At least she gave you another piece of cake afterward.”

  He stares out the window for a few minutes, watching the empty houses go by.

  “It’s so weird to think that people used to live here,” he says. “There were swing sets in the yards and people mowing the grass and dogs running around. And then one day they were just gone. And everybody in the city just sort of forgot about it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “People manage to forget all the bad parts and only remember the pretty things. I guess I just never realized it until now.”

  “And next up is Riverfest, huh?” He slumps down in his seat. “I’ve seen that place—it’s totally trashed. What’s the plan?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Well, you have to decide if you’re going with me. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to fight. When the red drink wears off, you’ll go back to seeing what they want you to see, doing what they want you to do. You might forget what just happened. Which is really creepy, but I think it’s safer. When you’re not a threat to the demons, they mostly just let you be.”

  He scoffs, shakes his head. “If you’re going, I’m going too. So I ask you again, what’s the plan?”

  “We go to Riverfest and act dumb.”

  “I don’t see how that’s remotely possible for me.”

  I swallow a laugh. “Do your best. The hex should protect me, and your amazing acting skills will hopefully protect you.”

  His eyebrows scrunch up, and he stares at me, a crafty gleam in his eyes. “That red stuff is making me see what’s really there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So if I don’t drink any more, I’ll go back to normal? Whatever normal is when you’re surrounded by hungry demons?”

  “Supposedly.”

  “Then no more red drink. If I see what they want me to see, then you’ll know what to pretend too.”

  “You are freaking crazy, boy,” I say. He just grins. “Flat-out crazy. But are you sure? You’ll be a sitting duck. Who knows what the demons will do to you?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know. You’ll never give up. And I told you I wouldn’t either.”

  His hand sneaks across the seat to hold mine. I’m more scared than I’d like to admit about what’s to come, so I let him. He’s careful of my pinkie, and I look down briefly. His pale hand, dusted with a little dark hair, over mine. My last finger too short, the stitches bristling, unnaturally black. I can still remember Carly’s hand in mine just before the curtain went up on our first play. My hand the soft brown of bread crust, hers so dark, it was almost purple, both of them shaking against the ratty red velvet. “We’re going to kick this play’s ass,” Carly told me then. And we did. My heart twists, and I start to pull my hand away.

  “I can hold thy hand or lick feet. Your call,” he says in Caliban’s voice, waggling his tongue and making me giggle, bringing me back to the present.

  “Don’t make me brain you with a book, valiant monster,” I say with a grin.

  But I don’t pull my hand away. I let him hold it the whole way back to his house.

  He invites me inside, and part of me yearns to go, to be welcomed back into that small part of what I’ve always thought of as my family. I miss his sisters begging to play with my hair and then getting frustrated when they can’t bend it to their tiny little wills. But I need to go home and check in with my parents and brush my teeth, because Gigi’s hex was like drinking swamp mud.

  “I’ve got to get home,” I say. “Pick you up in a couple of hours?”

  “I can’t wait,” he says with a grin.

  I narrow my eyes at him and snort.

  “You can’t wait to go to the abandoned amusement park crawling with demons to look for our dead best friend?” I say.

  “I can’t wait to go with you.”

  I roll my eyes at him. I might be crazy, but he’s off the charts.

  When I get home around dusk, my mom is still crashed out in front of the TV, her eyes unfocused.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m going out tonight.”


  “Hmm,” she mumbles.

  “I’m going to go drag racing without a seat belt and then pick a fight with a cop.”

  “Hmm.”

  I look closely. Her pupils are huge and black. She looks totally stoned. And I bet I know why.

  “Mom, did you start any new medicine recently?”

  “For my ulcer.”

  I find the brown bottle lined up neatly with her vitamins in the kitchen cabinet, the snowy-white pills all too familiar. I almost dump them down the disposal, but I’m starting to understand that for most people it’s safer to do what the demons want. People are like cattle to them, and docile cattle are less likely to get in trouble, right? Plus, if she’s zonked, I can come and go as I please. But guilt twists in my stomach at the thought of leaving her, alone and as stupid as a cow grazing outside a slaughterhouse.

  “Mom?”

  “Hmm?”

  I pause, squat in front of her. Her smile softens, and she runs a hand over my head.

  “Are you happy?” I ask.

  “Feeling pretty relaxed,” she answers. “Stomach doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s nice. And you look pretty, honey.”

  “Stay in the house, okay? I need to go out and do something. For the play.”

  She just nods dreamily and refocuses on the TV.

  With a heavy heart I change my clothes and fix my hair and putter around, waiting to see if my dad’s going to show up. His schedule is weird, and I want to see if maybe he’s more alert than he was the other morning. But there’s no sign of him, and the food on the dining room table is untouched. At noon it smelled sweet and warm. Now it’s heavy and oppressive with just a hint of rot, a scent that will forever remind me of Josephine. My house is too empty, and I have to get out.

  I pick Baker back up after dark.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask him for the tenth time.

  He grins at me like I’m an idiot. “Look, Dovey. There’s some seriously messed-up stuff going on. I saw Mr. Hathaway today and almost lost my shit. If I can help you, I will. You don’t have to ask anymore.”

  “Baker. Seriously. We’re going to Riverfest. There are going to be demons everywhere.”

  “I know. I thought that red stuff would wear off and I’d be an idiot again, but I still remember everything. Do you think they’ll notice?”

  I pull over and put the car in park. “You have to stay home. If they know you can see them, they’ll take your finger too.”

  He shakes his head, buckles his seat belt. “Screw that. I’m not letting you go alone. There has to be some way to make me dumb. Do you have any of the pills? Or could we go to that restaurant?”

  I look down, scratch at a black stain on the steering wheel. I don’t want to say what I’m about to say. But I say it anyway. “I . . . might have some of the clear stuff from Charnel House in the car. But we don’t know what it’ll do to you.”

  “Being ignorant will protect me. You said so yourself. Hand it over.”

  I reach into the backseat for the Chinese take-out bag and put it in his lap. Anything he does from here on out is his choice. The determination on his face makes him look five years older as he pulls out the bottle of clear liquid.

  “So I’ve technically already had this stuff, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty much the opposite of the red stuff. Makes you kind of dreamy, kind of stupid. Isaac gave it to you at the bar. You acted drunk and fell off your stool.”

  Before I can tell him more, he’s uncorked the bottle and taken several long gulps. I fumble to pull it away, and he splutters shimmery liquid onto his scarf.

  “Jesus Christ, Baker! How much are you going to drink?”

  He turns to me, intent and deadly serious.

  “You have a hex to keep you safe, Dovey. I don’t. I need to be exactly what the demons want me to be. I need to be stupid and dreamy and . . . I don’t know. Drunk. And if I’d given you half a chance, you would’ve talked me out of it, because you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” He puts the half-empty bottle back in the bag and leans back, his mouth a grim line. “And now it’s too late for you to stop me.”

  I shake my head, half-scared and half-impressed. “You are one crazy mofo.”

  “Correction: I’m a good friend. You’ll take care of me. I’m not worried.”

  “Then it must be working already.”

  I start the car and pull onto the road, and Baker turns on the radio. We’re silent as I take the parkway and speed up, anxious to get there. It’s kind of scary, how many people are counting on me. My parents and Baker are drugged, Gigi’s in hiding, Carly’s . . . well, she needs my help. I’m terrified we won’t find her at Riverfest. But I’m also terrified of seeing her as she is now.

  “Where are we going again?” Baker’s voice is dreamy, unconcerned. He slumps down in his seat, his fingers tapping idly on the car door.

  Yeah, the clear stuff works fast.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  After a while on the highway, his face lights up.

  “We’re going to Riverfest? That’s awesome! I thought it was closed. But the lights are so bright.”

  I scan the horizon where he’s looking, and bright lights are nowhere to be seen. There’s a break in the clouds, just ahead, and I can see the skeletal outline of a roller coaster dusted by moonlight. I remember passing by Riverfest as a kid and getting all excited and begging my parents to take me. Now it just looks like abandoned Tinkertoys. The biggest roller coaster, the Frog Strangler, used to be covered with neon-green lights. Now it’s blacked out except for two lights that shine malevolently, like cat eyes. Like Mr. Hathaway’s eyes. The whole park is pitch dark, but here and there things move subtly. Wrongly.

  But nothing should be moving. Riverfest was under eight feet of water for weeks and never opened again. I remember hearing at school that some kids went there to skateboard and leave graffiti and have huge parties, but I was too out of it with the numb fuzz to care.

  “Oh, cool! The Free Fall,” Baker says. He pauses expectantly as if watching the machine go up and down. “I used to love that one.”

  I shake my head. Part of me wishes I could see what he’s seeing, the lights and magic and excitement. But all I see is an accident waiting to happen, a carefully arranged trap. As I turn into the parking lot, I notice dozens of cars parked crookedly. A few kids are walking toward a tram that’s waiting, lights off, in the dark. I can tell by the tilt of his head and his odd stillness that the guy driving the tram is . . . wrong. Probably a distal servant. A corpse.

  “If we hurry, we can catch the tram,” Baker says. “Just park, Dovey. Let’s go. I haven’t been here in forever.”

  I pull into a space and grab the knit hat I brought. I trust Gigi’s hex, but I want as much protection as possible. My hair is in fat pigtails under the hat, and I’ve got on a scarf and my cargoes and my dad’s old winter jacket. And, since it’s a cold night, mittens that also hide my missing pinkie finger.

  Baker’s hand slips as he gets out of the car, and he almost slams the door on his fingers. We walk to the waiting tram and duck into the last seat just as the car takes off on silent wheels. Baker drapes himself over the seat, his hip almost touching mine.

  “I always wanted to come here with you,” he says, voice dreamy.

  “You did. A couple of times.”

  He waves a hand. “With you and Carly. Or the whole group. Never with just you.” His hand lands on my shoulder, soft and tentative. “Those other times didn’t count.”

  Warmth surges through me at the naked tenderness in his gaze. I can’t believe he drank so much of the clear stuff, not knowing what it would do to him. He all but sacrificed himself for me, and for Carly. I lean my head against shoulder.

  “Thanks, Baker,” I say. He tips his head against mine and sighs contentedly. And even if he’s half-drunk, and even if I’m not sure how I feel about how he feels about me, I feel better.

  The clouds have skidded off, and ever
ything is sharp and crisp in the moonlight. The tram moves more smoothly than seems possible, and everything as far as I can see is still and silent, except for us. I look at the matted hair on the back of the driver’s head; it’s all gooey. His hands turn the wheel with a jerky, unnatural motion that I recognize from the girl I chased out the back door of the Paper Moon. She was fast, but now, with my mind clear, I remember the odd, shambling lurch of her gait. They can be quick, I guess, but the distal servants can never be graceful. I turn away to watch my Buick disappear in the darkness as we roll toward the park’s back entrance. I do not share Baker’s confidence and excitement.

  The tram rolls right through the open gate and stops in front of a turnstile. A shiver rolls over me when I see the corpse standing there, waiting for us. It’s not Carly, and it’s not the girl I chased to Charnel House.

  But I know who it is. My heart plummets into my feet. I dash away tears before they can make shining tracks down my cheeks. My childhood friend, the hugger, the sweet girl who always turned on the lights when a movie scared me, who stood up for me just last week. Her eyes are black and empty, her toga torn and stained.

  “Dude, I didn’t know Tamika worked here,” Baker says. “Maybe she’ll get us some free stuff.”

  I guess he doesn’t see the roughly stitched line around her neck. Or her dead black eyes. Or the missing part of her pinkie finger. Just like Carly. She must have been easy to catch, running out the back door of the Liberty, upset and crying. Or maybe Old Murph grabbed her before she even got outside. But she belongs to them now, and probably forever.

  Baker hops out of the tram before it stops moving and walks to the turnstile.

  “Hey, Tamika!” he says.

  I follow at the same pace as the other kids. A sleepwalker’s pace. Tamika beckons Baker forward wordlessly and gives him a pill. He tosses it back before I can elbow around the other kids and stop him, enters through the turnstile, and thanks her, like she just did him a big favor and slipped him a free pass. When it’s my turn, she gives me the same pill, and I drop it down my shirt and wave a hand in front of her eyes.

  Nothing. There’s nothing there.

  “Good-bye, Tamika,” I whisper, choking on the words.