Scared of the Dark

by Easton Vaughn

  “I’d do my best to get it done today,” Deborah suggested. “Otherwise you might have the start of a mutiny on your hands. Haywood’s riled up. He’ll incite the others. You know how he can be.”

  Merritt searched her face. There were no lines in her forehead. No tightness around the edges of her mouth. She was actually attempting to be pleasant and helpful, the ally she had told him she would always be; unless, of course, he mistreated her in some way—then she’d be his worst nightmare. He nodded at her advice. “Duly noted. I’ll try.”

  “I’ll let them know.”

  He smiled and touched her shoulder. “Appreciate it.”

  “However,” she said, matching his smile, “I won’t tell them that you’re over here desperately working to build a raft because all of our boats are missing. I’m thinking that wouldn’t go over very well.”

  Merritt eyed her, but said nothing. His tongue had abandoned him. His mind swirled.

  “You misunderstood me before when I asked about buoyancy,” Deborah explained. “I know what the damn word means. I was wondering what you meant by it in that particular instance.”

  He still said nothing.

  “I pay close attention to just about everything,” she continued. “I noticed the boats were missing when I visited you at the beach earlier. I waited to see if you’d say anything about that. Thought maybe you’d moved them or something. But now I get a feeling that isn’t the case.”

  Merritt nodded and found his voice again. “Lemon and Aiden must’ve set them adrift.”

  Deborah smirked. “Touché.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what are you gonna do?”

  “Like you said, build a raft.”

  “It’ll be stable enough for these waters?”

  Merritt shrugged. “Only one way to find out. Speaking of which, I need to get back to work.”

  He bent and picked up the STIHL chainsaw, tried to start it up. It let out a weak cough and fell quiet. He tried again. And got the same result. Third try. Not even a cough. “Shit. Guess she’s thirsty.”

  Deborah shook her head and let out a long, mournful breath.

  Merritt said, “What?”

  “One other thing I meant to tell you that we needed.”

  His stomach dropped before she even said it.

  Deborah nodded. “Gas.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Ivy crawled up the double-shoulder chimney at the side of the two-story cottage house. The house itself was buried in a field of waist-high grass and ravenous weeds, and had vines, the ivy and more, attacking its two-tier front porch and weatherboard siding. Both the balustrade and the clapboard had been painted white a long time ago. And both were flaking badly now. Lemon stood staring in the small clearing leading up to the house, a hand pressed to her chest to calm her galloping heart. She’d seen the cottage before. In fact, she’d seen it many, many times.

  “It can’t be,” she whispered.

  Just beyond the cottage house she spotted a weather-beaten outbuilding. It was erected between several bare trees, trapped in a spider web of their thin branches. Whoever built it had done so simply. It had a sloped triangular roof, wood slat siding, and a wide yawn of a doorway but no door. She’d seen this outbuilding many, many times as well.

  “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head and gasping.

  She started moving again, driven by some relentless impulse. Despite a competing voice demanding that she turn around, she found herself quickly approaching the white house. It didn’t appear as though anyone was inside, which was perfect. She wanted to explore it without being disturbed. She didn’t want anyone to see her legs go weak if the interior was as she imagined it would be. As it had been when she’d encountered this house the many, many times before. Heart pine flooring, several mantels placed strategically throughout, Prussian blue and mustard walls, a large, formal parlor—all of it vivid in her mind’s eye.

  She exhaled with each step. The sky above was lit with a bloated pineapple sun that dropped its rays like a waterfall. A few clouds hovered low as well, their edges soft and white and cottony. They didn’t, however, offer even the tease of a coming rain. The air was too thick, it was too suffocating. Beads of sweat stood out on Lemon’s forehead. Her dress clung to her like Scotch-tape. The heat was close to unbearable. And so was her present tract in life. No, rain wouldn’t be forthcoming.

  Within a few yards of the white house, Lemon started to regret the crumb of freedom she’d been given. Dmitri’s men were letting her roam free for some reason. They were visible, at a close enough distance always, rifles slung over their shoulders, but seemingly unconcerned by her movements. She’d stepped out of the barn expecting to be roughly ushered back to the hen house. But no one had come near her. So she’d seized upon the opportunity to wander the property. It had a natural though decayed beauty, she’d decided at once. She absolutely loved it.

  Loved it, that is, until she’d come upon this white house and the dilapidated outbuilding.

  Still, she couldn’t turn back. She couldn’t un-see it.

  The floorboards on the porch groaned as she took several tentative steps across them. She paused in the doorway and called out, “Is anyone in here?”

  Not even the echo of her voice.

  She took a deep breath, stepped across the threshold, and called out again. “Hello? Is anyone in here?”

  Once more, nothing.

  She tried to relax and take it all in.

  The flooring in the entry hallway was wood but not pine. But she spotted a mantel in the large room off to her left. In the dark it was difficult to say what color the walls were painted. She could tell it was a shade somewhere between a light and dark. “Jesus,” she said softly.

  “Resplendent isn’t she?” a voice called from over Lemon’s shoulder, startling her.

  She turned, touching a hand to her chest for the second time in a matter of minutes. “Dmitri.”

  “From the cradle to the grave,” he said, smiling.

  Lemon quickly recovered. “I wouldn’t say resplendent. It has its charms, I would suppose.”

  “I’m terrible with my dusting,” he said. “You have to envision the beauty beneath the grime.”

  Lemon frowned. “This place has been thoroughly neglected. I’m not interested in working that hard.”

  “You’re a Debbie Downer, aren’t you?”

  “Please don’t use that name.”

  “You’d prefer redbone?”

  “You’re a hateful man.”

  “I keep a room upstairs,” Dmitri said, changing course. “Just to get a few winks once in a while. I don’t require much. Would you like to see it?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “That a no?”

  Lemon looked into his eyes. He appeared to be serious. Deathly so. “Your men let me walk around wherever I wanted,” she said. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “What’s the harm? You aren’t going anywhere.”

  She nodded and turned back to face the house again.

  Dmitri came alongside her. “You hesitated before you came in. There some problem?”

  “I’m done speaking with you.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll just go and have a conversation with your boyfriend then.”

  Lemon sighed. “I hesitated because of the ghosts. Lots of ghosts are being stirred up today.”

  “Ghosts?”

  Shepherd. This house. She said, “Stories too long and boring to tell.”

  “Try me.”

  She looked at him, narrowed her eyes. “You’ve sucked me right back into a conversation.”

  “I’m easy to talk to,” he said, smiling.

  Oddly, Lemon couldn’t disagree. “Please let us go.”

  “What if I offered only you a ticket out? Would you take it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a quick answer.”

  “It is,” she agreed.

  “You think your boyfriend would answer the same,
and without any hesitation?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Fuck if I ain’t jealous of what you two got going.”

  “Please let us go,” she said again.

  “I’d like to hear about your ghosts.”

  “Then you’ll consider letting us go?”

  Dmitri shrugged. “I’m not inflexible.”

  Lemon sighed and turned to take in the house again. “I used to watch Little House on the Prairie with my father, when I was younger. For some odd reason he related to Charles Ingalls. And I was his perfect daughter, Laura.”

  “I’d figure you more for Nellie Oleson,” Dmitri said.

  Lemon nodded. “You’re about right.”

  “You were close to your father?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Handsome gent?”

  “Very,” she said.

  “I imagine your mother was stunning.”

  “They were an attractive couple,” Lemon admitted.

  “Still together?”

  “My father died,” she said.

  “And Mama Lemon?”

  “We started having issues once I started to develop.”

  “You started getting attention your mother wanted for herself?”

  “I’m not talking about this anymore,” Lemon snapped.

  “I’ve hit a nerve.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  Dmitri chuckled. “Probably better you hadn’t admitted that. You don’t even have a little bit of Sun Tzu in you.”

  Lemon turned to wordlessly soak in the house again. It was startling in its resemblance to the one in her dreams. That was deeply troubling, but perhaps she was looking at this from the wrong perspective. Perhaps its real existence wasn’t something dark and heinous. Maybe it was a sign that better days were ahead for her. Some sort of augury.

  Dmitri said, “I might let you go if…”

  Lemon was so caught up in the ghosts of her past she didn’t realize the threat until after Dmitri had gently nudged her further into the house. “What are you doing?” she barked. He didn’t respond, simply guided her into what could only be described as a parlor. There was a mantel along one side of the room. He boxed her in and pressed her up against it. “Don’t,” she begged, but Dmitri ignored her plea.

  Abusers see some weakness, some flaw in those they victimize.

  Dmitri roughly lifted her dress and yanked down her panties, as she considered the words she’d spoken to Aiden, felt like a lifetime ago. There was no doubt in her mind now that she had somehow brought this upon herself. After all, she’d entertained Dmitri’s conversation. In doing so, she’d spurred him on. She’d either completely missed the look that was in his eyes now, or misinterpreted it. Either way, this was her fault.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as Dmitri forced her to the floor and entered her. She gritted her teeth. Tears started to lick at her cheeks.

  A three-time loser.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “The Shepherd? You’re white.”

  “It appears as though I’m at a disadvantage,” the old man said, flashing a disarming smile. “You know me. But I couldn’t name you if a gun was put to my head. Which is entirely possible considering the people we’re dealing with here.”

  Aiden frowned, totally thrown. Lemon’s husband. The God-like being that nearly everyone back at the island spoke of in hushed reverence. Merritt’s nemesis. A half-blind old man with hair as white as cotton and skin the color of khaki. “My name is Aiden,” he told the old man. And he couldn’t help but to mention it again. “You’re white.”

  From the other side of the wooden picnic table the man who called himself Shepherd shook his head. “Assumptions are slippery animals, Aiden. I’m at least a quarter black, though I could certainly pass for white. Passe blanc, as they used to call it over in Louisiana.”

  Now Aiden was shaking his head as well, skeptical still. “African-American?”

  “Guilty as charged,” Shepherd said. “I fail the one-drop test.”

  “What?”

  The old man, already humped in his back, leaned forward and placed his hands on the table. They trembled terribly and yet there was something aristocratic about his movements and the manner in which he spoke, right now barely above a whisper. “Walter Francis White was fair-skinned, with blond hair and blue eyes. Mixed race, admittedly most of the mix being European. He grew up in Atlanta, though, and identified with blacks. The only times he chose to pass were when he was conducting investigations in the South. He found that he could gather information more freely about lynching and other hate crimes if he pretended he was white.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Aiden admitted.

  Shepherd nodded. “Mr. White was chief executive of the NAACP for twenty-six years. You have heard of the NAACP?”

  “The National Association...”

  Shepherd raised an unsteady hand. “Don’t strain. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  Aiden opened his mouth, then closed it just as quickly.

  Shepherd smiled and moved on. “I don’t judge those who chose to pass. Nor those who still choose to do so. Anatole Broyard, the writer and critic. George Herriman, the cartoonist. The list goes on. I’m sure they all had their reasons for assimilating. I, myself, have simply chosen not to.”

  “Why?” Aiden asked and immediately regretted the question. It shamed him that asking had been so reflexive.

  Shepherd said, “I could just as easily ask why I should look to pass. Are Caucasians inherently that much better than non-Caucasians?”

  “I just meant—”

  “We both know what you meant,” Shepherd interrupted. “I have no truck with you about it. You’ve been conditioned.”

  One of the things that had drawn Aiden to Saina was the mystery surrounding her and the bronze skin that cloaked her. Lemon was a stunning light-skinned black woman on an island of those with much darker skins and hearts. How could he have fallen for both women despite being “conditioned,” as Shepherd put it? Was there something sinister about his attractions? He felt naked under Shepherd’s half-blind gaze. Exposed. If it weren’t so awkward to do so, he’d have gotten up and taken his leave now.

  Shepherd’s brown eye blinked; the unseeing gray eye never seemed to close. “Do I make you uncomfortable, Aiden?”

  “Not at all,” Aiden lied.

  Shepherd’s mouth turned up in a half smile, an infuriating gesture, evidence of his ability to parse a person’s innermost thoughts. “I overheard you speaking about the island, Aiden. I’m curious as to how you ended up there.”

  “Long story.”

  “In spite of my age,” the old man said, “I believe I have time to listen.”

  Aiden sighed and told it without pausing. Riding down the dark country road in his BMW, a clearly frightened woman darting out into the road, his medical training and futile efforts to save her, Merritt. “I thought Candace dying in my arms would be a low. Then Merritt stepped out of the woods.”

  “Candace,” the old man said softly. “I rather liked that young lady.”

  Aiden nodded. “She was frightened out of her wits, Merritt hunting her down like an animal.”

  “He’s gifted in that regard.”

  “You don’t know how scary that man is.”

  Shepherd sighed. “I believe I do.”

  “And Dmitri, the man here?”

  “What of him?”

  “Is he as bad as he seems?”

  “I’d say a great deal worse,” Shepherd replied.

  They both fell silent for a long stretch. Aiden imagining the man called Ruck—terrified out of his mind, thrashing the moment Dmitri’s machete came out, then completely still in a fresh death. A few of the other prisoners finished eating and moved from the table to the barn’s breezeway door. They slipped out quietly. Aiden was aware of movement around him, but when Shepherd’s voice pulled him from his dark thoughts he was surprised to discover it was just the two of them remaining at the table. “Where
did everyone go?”

  “Wherever they could retire to find comfort,” Shepherd said. “False as that comfort may be.”

  Their table had cleared out but a few stragglers were still seated at the other tables. No one looked in Aiden’s direction, even as he stared at them. “Zombies,” he whispered.

  “Near about,” Shepherd replied. “Dmitri and his men prefer us docile. They do whatever it takes to make us so.”

  The old man didn’t project any outward signs of hostility. He wasn’t threatening in any way. In fact, if he projected anything at all it was a pervasive aura of kindness and wisdom. Hard to reconcile that with what he’d created on the island just across the sound. “The island is a horrible place,” Aiden told him.

  Shepherd nodded. “It would appear so from what you’ve told me.”

  “Your idea,” Aiden reminded him.

  The corners of the old man’s eyes crinkled, the pain evident on his face. “In conception.”

  “Conception? You’re giving yourself a pass on what the island has become?”

  “I intended something pure and pulchritudinous, Aiden. I won’t excoriate myself because it shifted in a different and unfortunate direction.”

  Aiden chuckled at the notion. “Use all of the big words you can muster. But surely you didn’t believe an island of black fugitives from the law would work? You had to have anticipated the possibility of anarchy.”

  “I envisioned it as a place for redemption.”

  “Lofty.”

  “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

  “You’re a lousy god,” Aiden replied.

  “I’m no God.”

  “They speak of you as if you are. I have a feeling you never discouraged it, either.”

  “I won’t accuse you of being pharisaic,” the old man said.

  “I don’t know that word.”