by Emma Bull
Of all the things that might legitimately trouble me, one seemed to take precedence, but I couldn’t quite grab hold of it. I yanked off my boots and lay down on the bed, staring at the wall that sloped over it, the part under the roofline that was almost but not quite the ceiling. The wallpaper was full of flowers and leaves, like everything else in the house. Who was the gardener? China Black? It seemed out of character from my first sight of her, vampiric in dark blue chiffon and sunglasses, on the first floor of my building.
Bingo. The tea party, when China Black had told Mick Skinner that they weren’t looking for him, they were looking for his body. But in my apartment, China Black had asked… no, it wasn’t conclusive. She’d asked, more or less, to be allowed to speak to the previous occupant, and there was nothing to tell me for sure who she thought that might be. Then when she failed, and was so furious, she’d said, He wasn’t there.
If there was something about Mick that ought to be passed on, she or Mr. Lyle would do it. If it didn’t need to be passed on, I didn’t want to know it. After all, plenty of people around that tea table knew things about me I was glad they hadn’t said.
I lived on City time, staying up until dawn and sleeping through half the day to avoid fighting with the sun. So I was surprised when I woke to a mild blue morning sky in the window. I hadn’t remembered falling asleep, which I’d done in my clothes on top of the comforter. I really had to stop sleeping in my clothes. The hall was quiet. I thought of that bathtub suddenly, the one big enough to drown in. I dug my clean shirt out of my pack and headed for the bathroom.
If I’d been in Beauty and the Beast, the hot water would have been waiting for me. I found the sight of the empty tub reassuring. But there were towels in the cupboard, soap in the dish, and I didn’t even have to pump the water up by hand. Of course not — the inverter was fixed, the pump was running. There’d been a hand pump in the kitchen, so that even when the electric one was down, no one would have to haul water from outside. One cassette deck and the place would be a pretty supportable prison. I braided my wet hair and went downstairs.
The kitchen was deserted, but there were signs that someone, singular or plural, had already had breakfast. I found some leftover muffins and carried them with me as I wandered.
I wouldn’t explore the house; it would look as if I were hunting for company. I went outside again instead. Hidden in the gardens beyond the garage, I found the chicken yard, the rabbit cages, and the beehives. There was a wooden shed that I knew from the sweet hickory smell was the smokehouse. Past that, down a wooded trail, in the center of a broad ring of old trees, I found a circular one-story building that I couldn’t identify at all.
Half the building didn’t have walls; there were only the roof pillars, peeled trunks maybe six inches thick, to mark where the walls would be. The floor was dirt, packed smooth, and featureless as if swept. On one side, where the wall started, there was an empty raised platform. There was a center post for the roof, rising out of a cement footing. Beyond the center post, at the back of the circular room, it was dark; but I made out another platform, with a squarish bulk on it like a table or a chest, and irregular points of light. There was nothing to indicate that I ought not to go in.
The center post was painted. It reminded me of the stair railings in Sherrea’s apartment building, the colors twining one after another, yellow, red, black, green, and white. The walls were painted, too, with murals. They were simple and stylized, angular and almost abstract — the antithesis of Sherrea’s cards. A muscular young black man, smiling, wore a red cape and carried a curved sword, and seemed to be walking through fire. A naked woman, wide-hipped and heavy-breasted, her curly blue-black hair falling to her ankles, poured water from a jar under her arm. An old, fat black man sat cross-legged and grinning, as if his erect penis were the best joke in the world. Two snakes twined upward, facing each other, as if dancing on their tails. Between the figures, tying them together, explaining and keeping secrets, were the veves.
The square bulk was an altar, draped in scarlet and purple, and the changeable lights were candles. They reflected off the rest of the altar fittings: glass bottles, a mirror, strings of beads, a silver bowl, two tall vases with flowers in them.
I backed away and bumped into the center pole. The whole wide, unwalled space was closing in on me, pressing my skin against my muscles, muscles against protesting bones. I heard my breath entering and leaving in bursts. The back wall wavered under my eyes.
I heard a voice, not loud, but I didn’t see the speaker; I smelled ozone and a thick, watery odor, like the banks of a pond. My tongue was thick in my mouth. A ball of panic swelled in my chest.
A voice — the same one? Come with me. I felt an arm around me, guiding me. Then I was sitting on the grass under the trees, and a glass was pressed against my lips, holding something that gave off fierce fumes. I swallowed, almost prepared for it: rum.
The face above me belonged to China Black, as did the voice that said, “Well, cher, are you sickening for something?”
I took the glass of rum from her and had another sip. “What is that?” I said, nodding at the building.
“It’s the hounfor.” I must have looked blank, because she added, “Where we dance, and call the spirits.”
“I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have gone in.”
I thought, if she could have raised the silver eyebrows, she would have. “Why not? There’s nothing there to harm anyone, or do harm to. Were you afraid?”
“Not until… No.”
She studied me; then she took the glass out of my hand. “Hmh. Come along. Yes, back inside, nothing will happen to you.”
We came to the center pole, and she laid a hand on it. “This is the poteau-mitan. The spirits rise through it to us. The altar looks pretty, and we do our work there, but this is the source.” She stopped at the altar. “Kneel here. On the platform, yes.”
“Why?” I said.
Her dark face radiated tried patience. “Because it will make me happy. You do not believe in this. So what can it do to you?”
I knelt, which put everything on the altar at eye level.
China Black lit a new candle. “Legba,” she said, her voice peremptory, “are you listening to me? Here is one of your children, Papa Legba, a child of the crossroads. Are you watching out for this one, Papa?” She took a rough gray stone off the altar and handed it to me, along with the glass of rum. “Take a little and rinse your mouth with it,” she said. “Then spit it on the stone.” I did. She set the stone back on the altar. Then she handed me the mirror I’d noticed. “Do the same to this.” After I did, she took the mirror from me and set it on the altar to reflect my face. Distorted by the rum, the image reminded me of Frances’s catalog of my features, back in my apartment. I shivered and closed my eyes.
“Legba, you were thirsty, and we gave you rum. Now you see your child, Papa,” China Black said. “You will watch over this one, and play your tricks on the enemies of your servants. And we will make a meal for you, to show you we are glad that you have listened.” She tugged me to my feet, and led me out of the hounfor.
“Nothing’s free,” I said as we walked up the path. But I felt a nagging disappointment.
China Black stopped and stared at me. “Most things are free,” she said. “You have much to make up for, that is all.”
“What is Legba to me, or I to him?” I smiled when I said it, though.
“That is exactly what I mean.”
I made a gesture meant to include the hounfor, the gardens, the house. “Was most of this free?”
The look she gave me had irritation in it, and surprise, and a little of something else that I liked less. She shook her head and continued up the path. I followed her back to the house.
She put me to work. As long as I was there, she said, and knew about these things, I could look over their electrical system. I reminded myself that I was getting free room and board, whether I wanted it or not, and climbed up to the roo
f to look at the solar panels. If I hadn’t known better than to stay out in the sun that long, I would have found an excuse to be there all day. I could see the whole island, green and dotted with rooftops, and the silver-gray brilliance of the river around it. The suspension bridge looked like a fistful of streamers, tying the island to the City, and the City dozed upright, glossy and geometrical. I had locked the doors and covered my tracks; the archives were safe and would wait for me, as they always did.
There was a printing press in the basement. I should have known there would be. It was a hand-operated one; more than that I couldn’t tell, since that wasn’t the medium I specialized in. I recognized type cases, though, and the apparatus for laying out a page. I had to squeeze around it all to get to the circuit box.
I was in the cellar when Sherrea stuck her head around the door (I jumped) and said, “It’s lunch. Are you done?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, you may as well stop to eat it, since it’s there. Theo’s been asking where you are.”
It occurred to me that Theo could have done a lot of what I’d found to do today. He was a friend of Sher’s, and Sher seemed to run tame here. Had Theo been here before? Or had he been, was he still, an unknown quantity, as I’d been before Mr. Lyle — Claudius — surprised things out of me in the library?
The dining room, paneled and bay windowed, was awfully full of people. China Black and Claudius Lyle, Frances, Mick, Etienne, the old woman who’d opened the gates — yesterday? Was that all? — Theo, and now Sher and me. Sher’s hand lifted, as if it wanted to settle on my shoulder, and dropped again. “Don’t worry,” she muttered, “I’ll protect you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re half out of your mind, and hiding it damn well. I’ve never seen you in a group larger than three people.”
She was right, of course. Maybe it had to do with the chameleon nature she’d commented on, or maybe I was afraid that if I talked to more than two people at a sitting, they’d compare notes and find out all my secrets. The tea party in the parlor had been, before this, the largest intimate gathering I’d ever been in.
“What’s the old woman’s name?” I asked.
“Loretta.”
“And the dog’s?”
“What?”
“The dog’s name. If I’m doing this, I may as well do it all the way.”
Sher grinned. “Eustace.”
“You’re not serious.”
“The hell I’m not. It was six months before I could call him with a straight face.”
The food was laid out on the buffet, which meant I’d be spared having to ask anyone to pass the whatever. The whatever consisted of the crown jewels of southern cooking: ham and red-eye gravy, corn bread, hoppin’ john, string beans, and sweet potato pie. If Frances didn’t get on with her murder soon, she wouldn’t fit into Ego’s elevator.
Following Sherrea got me either exactly what I didn’t want, or what I did, depending on which interpretation of my wants I used. I found myself at a corner of the long table, with Sher on my right and Theo, at the end, on my left. He smiled when I sat down and pointed to the sling on his arm. “Temporary lefties get to sit in state, man,” he said. “Makes me want to ask the meeting to come to order.”
I stared at the sling, stupefied. He hadn’t told me anything about himself. I hadn’t told him anything about me. But he’d stood on that landing in the rain and taken a bullet from one of my would-be kidnappers. He — and I — made less sense than ever, but something heavy lay on the scales between us. I had ignored that, yesterday. How could I?
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting and reaching for things.” He pulled a hand-rolled smoke out of his shirt pocket. “But hey, we have the technology.” It was a red-and-orange paisley shirt. I wondered it it was his. Probably.
I would have offered to cut something up for him, but the ham was fork-tender.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the quietest person at the table. Mr. Lyle mentioned that I’d recommended wind power, and engaged me in a pleasant argument about the efficiency of aging PV cells and the availability of good bearings. The woman from the gate, Loretta, was sitting across from me; she scowled and shook her head.
“Everybody ’long the river ought to be runnin’ off communal-owned hydro,” she said sharply. “Doesn’t make efficient sense or economic sense, all this sneakin’ around for power that rightly belongs to everybody or nobody. No point arguin’ over it, either, with that horse’s ass Albrecht sayin’ it’s all his.”
I glanced at Theo, but he seemed to be concentrating on his plate. For all I knew, he thought his father was a horse’s ass. How should I know? I had no idea what family feeling was like.
“Why hydro?” I asked.
“Frees up the rest of the stuff for folks without running water nearby. Though the way you talk, I could run a goddamn dance hall on old bicycle parts and a car battery.” I was about to protest when she smiled at me, and I decided I didn’t need to.
I talked; it was Frances who was quiet. Her face was pale and pinched, and sometimes her fork would pause in midmotion, and her eyes would lock on nothing at all. I was halfway through dessert before I understood. She was afraid.
Did she share Mick’s doubts? Was she wondering if she was fast enough, strong enough? Or was she only worried about getting in and getting out?
I could tell her the number of steps in all the staircases. But she never looked at me. Had Theo told her that I had knowledge she could use? Had he realized, yet, that I did?
Theo was pushing his chair back. “Can I talk to you?” I asked.
Sunlight flashed on the lenses of his glasses. “Sure. C’mon upstairs.”
I caught sight of Sherrea as I rose from the table. She looked pleased.
Theo had a room on the second floor. It was larger than mine, but it had the same character; it was a guest room, not a regular habitation. “Heck of a house,” I said, to see how he’d respond.
“Scared the shit out of me,” he said, dropping lightly on the bed and prying his sneakers off one-handed. “When Sher brought me here, right after that Frances hauled you away, and I saw this big old house with the lightning going off behind it… I thought she was checking me into the Bates Motel, man.”
He knew I’d understand the reference. I would have used it with him, secure in the same knowledge. I looked into his face, the pale face of a confirmed nighthawk or a rich kid, and said, “I’m not a man.”
The light on his glasses interfered with his expression, but there was no great surprise in the lines of his mouth. He was nice-looking, I realized suddenly, by any standards. “It’s just a figure of speech,” he said.
“I’m not a woman, either.”
He sat quiet for a few moments. Then he said, “Oh. That explains some stuff.”
I don’t know what I’d expected. Or wanted. “What stuff?”
“Well, Sher and I once, when we’d had a lot to drink, had this discussion. I said… that I felt, sometimes, like I had a crush on you, and it made me uncomfortable. And she looked at me like I was nuts, and said she didn’t know why it would, because you seemed like someone it would be pretty easy to have a crush on. I was really embarrassed, and I laughed and said maybe for her, but you weren’t, like, my type. Then we both looked at each other funny and changed the subject. But that was when I realized that maybe I didn’t know what sex you were, and maybe Sher didn’t either.”
“She figured it out,” I said thickly.
“She didn’t tell me.” He gazed steadily at me through the tops of his glasses as he said it. He was telling me that Sher had respected my privacy; and that he had, too, by not asking.
I sat down on the edge of an armchair across from the bed. We had the window between us, lighting both our faces. The conditions for perfect vulnerability had been established. So I told him everything I knew about what I was.
“Far out,” he said when I was done. “In fact, ab
out the farthest out I’ve ever heard of. But none of you can figure out if you’ve got a Horseman in your head?”
I shook the body part in question. “I want to say I don’t. I’m sure I don’t. But how would I know? For a while Frances thought I was Tom Worecski, and I can’t even say for certain that I’m not.”
“No,” Theo said softly. “I’m pretty sure where he is. He’s calling himself Frederick Krueger. Some joke, huh? I never got it ’til yesterday.”
Freddy Krueger, with a handful of knives and the ability to turn dreams to his advantage. Who died at the end of every movie and came back again and again. Some joke. “Is he that bad?”
“I’m scared of him. I think my father’s scared of him.”
“And your father’s never even seen Nightmare on Elm Street, unless he bought it from somebody else. You knew I sold videos to your father?”
“Hell, yeah. That’s how you wound up at the Underbridge.”
After a moment I said, “Pardon?” Well, this wasn’t supposed to be painless.
Theo must have understood. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t — look, my dad and I don’t get along. I mean, if he was just a guy I knew, I wouldn’t like him. And contrary to popular belief, being A. A. Albrecht’s kid is not the coolest thing in the world. I make a point of not telling people. So I couldn’t just march up to you outside my dad’s office and tell you about the Underbridge. And I couldn’t ask you to sign on, anyway. It’s Robby’s club.”
“So you asked Robby to ask me?”
“So I told Robby that you might know the stuff we needed, and that he should check you out. I told him where he could leave a message for you.”
“You knew all this about me?”
He flung his free hand out to one side. He would have flung the other one, too; I saw him wince. “You were interesting! All right? D’you know how many other people care about this stuff? Electronics and old video and recorded music?”
