"He's got the evil eye, that's what."
Ceese whirled on her. "Don't say that," he said. "It's a lie."
She flashed with anger. "You calling your mama a liar?"
"Don't you ever speak against Mack Street," he said. "It's Mack saving all these people's lives. If we get there in time to save them."
Grand Harrison had the flashlight because he knew the way, more or less. Mack and Yo Yo followed close behind. Mack had been in cemeteries before but never at night with shadows looming and something ugly waiting for them when they got to Ophelia McCallister's husband's grave. He did have the queen of the fairies with him, but apparently she didn't have all her powers, since her soul was locked up in a glass jar hanging in midair in a clearing in Fairyland.
Then again, maybe she was lying. Puck always did, and he was the only other fairy Mack knew personally, so maybe lying was just something fairies did. He didn't intend to get himself killed just to prove she was wrong.
"Here it is," said Grand. "But look, the ground is completely undisturbed. Nobody's done anything here."
"Dig," said Yo Yo.
"No! That's just—"
Yo Yo put a hand on his cheek. "For me."
Mack was amazed. The man's whole face and posture and everything changed. He was in love with her, right on the spot. Completely out of his mind crazy for her. Like a puppy dog.
"You want me to dig?" he said. "How deep?"
"Let's find Mr. McCallister's coffin," said Yo Yo.
And so they dug. That is, Mack and Grand dug, Grand wielding the pick to loosen things up, and Mack shoveling and then Grand joining in with the other shovel, working fast—Mack because he knew there wouldn't be much air in that coffin, and Grand because he was showing off for his new lady love.
"Yo Yo," said Mack, "you going to kill this man if he don't slow down."
"Grand," she said lazily, "take it a little slower. Don't want you getting a heart attack on me."
Grand Harrison grinned like a jack-o'-lantern and slowed down just a little.
And after a while they hit wood. They couldn't lift the lid until they cleared away the dirt the whole length and breadth of the coffin, and even when they'd done that, it took serious work with the crowbar to get the thing open. It wasn't a cheap coffin.
Yo Yo stood over the hole, looking down. "Open it," she said.
Mack lifted up and sure enough, inside the box was the rotted, desiccated corpse of Mr.
McCallister, its raggedy-sleeved arms wrapped around a wide-eyed Ophelia.
She looked dead.
"We too late," said Grand.
"No," said Yo Yo. "She's just terrified. Help her out. Lift her out. Get her breathing."
"Carry her to the SUV," said Yo Yo. "I can only keep the security guy away from here for so long before I wear out."
"Shouldn't we fill in the hole?" asked Mack.
"All that matters," said Yo Yo, "is that when they look into the coffin, they don't find an extra body."
Mack carried Ophelia McCallister to the SUV She was light as a pillow. He didn't know old people were so... empty. She clung to his neck and wept into his chest, but her sobs felt like the trembling of a tiny bird's wings and her arms around his neck were like a baby's hands, her grip was so weak.
"I couldn't breathe," she whispered between sobs. "I couldn't breathe. Thank you. Thank God."
Saved one, thought Mack. I actually saved one. So maybe I was shown those dreams for a reason. Maybe I'm not just Oberon's tool in this world.
Nadine Williams opened the door. A police officer was standing there. She knew immediately that something terrible had happened to Word. She had warned him about becoming a minister in such a godforsaken part of the city. They'll kill you. They have no respect for religion. And God won't protect you, you can count on that! When you trust in God, you're on your own.
And now a policeman was here to tell them that Word was dead.
She sucked in her breath and refused to cry. "Can I help you, Officer?"
"Mrs. Williams," said the policeman. "I'm Ceese Tucker. Is your husband here?"
"My husband? He's asleep. Or he was, till you rang the doorbell."
"I need to see him," said Ceese.
"You can tell me," said Nadine.
"Tell you what?" He looked genuinely puzzled.
"I thought... aren't you here about Word?"
"What about Word?" asked Ceese.
"He was preaching his first sermon tonight in that little church in that awful neighborhood and I thought... he's all right?"
Nadine would have continued arguing, but she felt Byron's hand on her shoulder.
"What is it, Ceese?" asked Byron.
"Professor Williams," said Ceese. "You remember Bag Man?"
"I want nothing further to do with him."
"I know that, sir," said Ceese. "I'm just telling you that the kind of thing that happens around that man, it's happening tonight to a lot of folks, and we have reason to think it might have happened to you."
Nadine looked at Byron, puzzled. Did he know what this young man was talking about?
"Nothing like that," said Byron.
"Did you have a dream tonight, sir?" asked Ceese.
"A dream?" said Nadine. "Are you the dream police?"
But Byron answered him. "I did."
"A powerful dream. About your poetry, sir."
Nadine peered at her husband's face and could see that yes, he had dreamed such a dream.
"But Byron, I didn't know you wrote poetry."
"Sir," said Ceese, "I think there's reason to be afraid that your dream has come true. In an unpleasant way."
"I've dreamed it before and it never..."
"Tonight is different," said Ceese. "For several other people that we know of."
Ceese's cellphone rang. "Excuse me for a moment, sir," said Ceese.
Byron stood there for a moment in the doorway, watching Ceese as he started talking on the phone. Nadine looked back and forth between them.
"So you got there in time," said Ceese into the phone. "She's okay?" He looked relieved.
Byron suddenly swung away from the door and trotted toward the "office"—the spare bedroom where the computer was always on.
When Ceese put away his cellphone he stepped into the house. "Do you know where your husband went?"
Ceese didn't ask if he could go back there, he just went, and Nadine didn't even protest. This was a very strange evening, and what she'd heard of the cellphone conversation led her to think that something very bad had almost happened to a girl named Sherita, and that would probably be Sherita Banks, that girl who had inherited her mother's hippopotamus thighs and buttocks at a tragically young age. Her parents had tried and tried to have a baby before they finally got Sherita. It just showed you that even the blessings in your life come with their own burdens. Like Word, with his sudden conversion to Christianity three years ago, and two failed attempts at divinity school, and now this dangerous, foolish attempt to become a preacher at a storefront church in a hellish neighborhood. All the hopes and dreams they both had for that beautiful boy, and this is what he was doing with his life.
But at least he hadn't become a policeman, like Ceese Tucker. How did his mother ever sleep nights? No matter how bad things were, somebody always had it worse.
Byron was sitting at the computer, his face buried in his hands.
Ceese walked around behind him and looked at the screen. Nadine followed him.
Byron had googled "Byron Williams poems" and the screen was showing the first seven of more than three thousand entries.
How could there be three thousand entries about Byron's poetry on the web, and she had never even known he wrote any?
Ceese leaned over and used the mouse to click on the first entry. A moment later, a website came up.
It was a review. "Now that the poems of Pepperdine Professor Byron Williams have been spread through the web like a virus, can anyone tell us whether this was the ul
timate in vanity publication, or a cruel joke? Either way, we can all agree that Professor Williams deserves our deepest sympathy. Because it's doubtful any of his students can ever take him seriously again after reading these things."
"Oh my Lord," said Nadine. "Did you really write poetry and publish it on the web?"
"I didn't publish anything," whispered Byron Williams. "It was some hacker."
"No," said Ceese, and his voice was full of pity. "It was the deepest wish of your heart."
Chapter 18
WITCH
They gathered in Ophelia's house, where Mack and Grand helped her calm down.
"Somebody kidnapped me and put me down there." She shivered and sipped a little more tea.
"No," said Mack. "They didn't. It was your wish. To be with your husband."
"What you're talking about is magic. You should be old enough to know better."
"Mrs. McCallister," said Grand, "I don't know how, but you got down in there without the ground being disturbed. Nobody dug to put you down there. We only dug to get you out."
"Why would I wish to be with my husband's dead body?"
"You dreamed," said Mack, "of dancing with him when he was a soldier in that fine uniform. He was heading out for Germany, stationed there, same time as Elvis. You called him 'my own Elvis' and you kept saying, I want to be with you forever and he said, You can always be with me, Feely."
Ophelia McCallister leaned across the table and tried to slap him, but Mack backed away in time. "That's private!" she said. The teacup trembled in her hand so that Grand took it away from her before it tipped and spilled or broke.
"Ma'am," said Mack, "I saw your dreams. I know how these dreams come true. In an ugly way.
A way you'll hate. A way that makes you wish you had never wished. Like—"
"Like Tamika Brown," Ophelia said impatiently. "But what her father did to her is nothing like—"
"Her father pulled her out of that waterbed and saved her life, just like Mr. Harrison and me saved your life tonight. We didn't put you in there, and Mr. Brown didn't put Tamika in there either.
You want to believe there's no such thing as magic, fine. But I know there is, and it nearly killed you tonight."
Ophelia tried for one more long moment to hold on to a rational world. Then she gave up and burst into tears. "I want to lie down."
"We tried to get you to lie down before," said Grand.
"Nothing makes sense!"
"You love your husband," said Mack. "That was the center of your world, missing him. But there's an evil force loose in the world, making wishes come true."
"It's that witch!" cried Ophelia.
"What witch?" asked Mack.
"That motorcycle-riding witch! She did it!"
Grand helped her sit down on the sofa in her living room. "Mrs. McCallister, Yolanda White was helping us. She held the flashlight while we dug. She kept the security guard from coming over and finding out what we was doing."
Mack and Grand looked at each other. Why would she believe such a ridiculous thing? Where did the idea come from?
"She hates me," said Ophelia, lying down on the sofa. Mr. Harrison pulled off her shoes. "Get rid of that witch...," mumbled the woman. She was nearly asleep, even if she wasn't quite there yet.
"I've got to go," said Mack. "I'm worried about Yolanda. If people start thinking she's a witch..."
"Nobody's going to believe that."
"Ophelia McCallister does," said Mack.
"Well," said Grand, "I guess you got to believe something, strange things like this going on."
"Mr. Harrison, I—"
"After what we just did, Mack Street, I think we definitely on a first-name basis."
"Sir," said Mack, who couldn't call a man older than Miz Smitcher by his first name no matter what he said, "what's going on here is magic, and Yolanda White is a magical person, but she did not cause these things tonight. It was her worst enemy caused it, and she's trying to fight him, and if she gets blamed for it, well it's just what that enemy wants."
"I'll stay with her," said Grand Harrison. "I won't let her go calling Yolanda White a witch." He thought for a moment. "I'll call my wife to come over with me."
Mack thanked him and headed out the door.
He jogged down the steep hill and as he rounded the hairpin turn he saw two things.
First, the standpipe was glowing. No longer the color of rust, it was a deep red, and it glowed as if it were being heated by lava under the earth.
And second, there was a crowd outside Yolanda's house, shouting, and some of them were beating on the door with their fists.
Was Yolanda even in there? When she left them at Ophelia's house, she said she was going to find Ceese.
But even if she wasn't in there, she could arrive at any time, and in the mood they were in, even she might not be able to keep them from dragging her off her bike. Could she change them all so they loved her? Maybe there was a reason witches in the past were mobbed—if they were really malevolent fairies, it would take a mob to overwhelm them.
Was it all true? Fairies that might be tiny or regular size. Giants. Possession by devils. Witches that flew and cursed people. All distorted memories of real encounters with beings like Puck and Yo Yo, or real trips into Fairyland.
But the reason people believed in witches in the first place—they didn't just make them up.
Maybe they met Yolanda. Or Puck. Or Oberon. Saw their power. Felt their own helplessness. Hated them, feared them. And remembered.
Did that mean there were werewolves and vampires, too? What about Superman and Spider-Man and why not Underdog, too?
It couldn't all be true. But some of it was. There was real power in the world, and it was dark and cruel, and Mack didn't know if he was right to trust Yo Yo; he knew he was right not to trust Puck.
Maybe the human race had reason to fear little creatures lurking in the woods, or people who walked the earth in human form but were really controlled by cruel entities who could make you love them, or beings of light that could be captured in bottles or jars, and if you turned them loose they'd grant your wishes and then laugh at the agony your own wishes brought to you.
Maybe the mob outside Yolanda White's house had the right response. Maybe powers like this needed to be destroyed whenever they surfaced.
Then again, he liked Yo Yo.
But how could he trust that feeling, when he knew she could make him like her, make anybody like her?
The people gathered outside her house, pounding on her doors and getting ready to break her windows, they were his neighbors. She was the stranger.
Hadn't Ceese said she tried to kill Mack himself when he was a baby? He owed her nothing.
But when he tried to imagine himself joining his neighbors in attacking Yolanda, he knew he couldn't do it. She wasn't the one who put Tamika Brown in a wheelchair. There was evil in this world, but right now, at this moment, it wasn't her.
It was the hatred he saw in the faces of his neighbors. It was the wolflike howling of their voices.
So he kept jogging down the hill until he was among them, pushing his way through them. Then he stood on the porch, shoving aside the men who were kicking at the door.
"Where's your burning cross!" he shouted. "You can't have a lynching without a burning cross!
Where are your white hoods? Come on, do this right! You gonna kill somebody without a trial, just because you're scared, then get the gear, wear the outfit, follow the recipe!"
"Why are you doing this?"
"She's a witch!" shouted a man. The others murmured their assent.
"So when LAPD shows up and wonders why there's a riot in Baldwin Hills and maybe even a lynching, you'll all explain that you had to burn a witch, is that your plan? That's what we'll see when they show your pictures on the evening news. Niggahs riot again but this time it's cause they all 'fraid of witches." He poured all the scorn he could muster into his words.
"Mack," said Ebby DeVrie
s, "I'm scared."
"Of course you're scared," said Mack. "Ugly things happened here tonight. And it doesn't make sense, because what happened, it was magic. Evil. Just like you think. Just like poor old Curtis Brown tried to tell us all those years ago. He woke up and Tamika was swimming around inside his waterbed and he only just saved her life. Impossible! Couldn't happen! Like Deacon Landry. He never did nothing to Juanettia Post. He wished for it! That's all he did! Any of you men ever wish for a woman wasn't your wife? That was all it was, wishing. Then all of a sudden, just like Tamika in the waterbed, he's in the middle of church naked with Juanettia Post right when people start arriving for church."
"Choir practice," somebody corrected him.
"Tonight Grand Harrison and me, we dug up old Mr. McCallister's grave and opened his coffin and saved the life of Ophelia McCallister because she wished she could be with him and that same evil magic granted her damn wish."
There was a murmur through the crowd.
"And what about you? Why were you suddenly so sure you had to come attack Yolanda White? Who told you she was a witch?"
"Nobody had to tell us," said Lamar Weeks.
"That's right," said Mack. "You just knew. You woke up and you knew she was a witch and you had to go... do what? What were you going to do?"
"Get her," somebody said.
"Get her and do what?" demanded Mack.
They had no answer.
"Burn her alive? Was that the plan? Like they used to do when they lynched uppity niggahs in the South? String her up and light a fire under her? Don't you see? That same evil magic got into you and made you act like the most evil people you ever knew of. And you didn't even try to stop yourselves." He looked at Ebby. "Ebony DeVries, what you doing here?"
"Watching you save your loverbaby's life," she said bitterly.
"How do you know so much, Mack Street!" called out Ebony's father.
"Because that evil magic been doing ugly things to me my whole life. I been seeing your dreams—the deep dreams, the wishes of your heart. This whole neighborhood, I been seeing your darkest secrets in my dreams my whole life."
"And you telling us there's no such thing as witches?" said Lamar.
"I'm telling you that there is such a thing as evil, and tonight you are his slaves! Unless you stand up and say no to the devil."
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