* * *
Ned put his pack on the floor of Yula Rider’s bedroom and shut the door. He removed the expensive diver’s watch Grant had insisted on giving him, and laid it on the nightstand; although its crystal was water-spotted, he assumed its waterproof case had protected it from the downpour. He then stripped off his sodden clothes and pulled a second pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of his pack. After getting dressed and draping his wet clothes over a chair, he flopped down across the bed and let his muscles go slack. God, he was tired. For two cents, he could drop off to sleep right now, but there was something he wanted to do before he could go to bed.
He got up again and went to the dresser. There was the group photo he’d carried around in his mind for a dozen years. He looked long and hard before pulling himself away. Once again, there could be no doubt that Lacy Rider was his father. Ned stood barefoot, staring at the floor, thinking. Then he pulled out the top drawer of the dresser.
It contained female things like slips, bras, stockings, panties, nightgowns, and an ancient rose-petal sachet bag. He poked around, feeling under them, but found nothing of interest. He pulled open the second drawer. More of the same. Pushing it shut, he opened the third drawer. This one was filled with moth-chewed knitted scarves and sweaters, and at least a dozen carefully folded pairs of men’s white socks. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Ned was beginning to feel a little guilty, snooping like this among an old black lady’s personal things and possibly those of her long-dead son. Maybe he was wrong in thinking there might be stuff belonging to Lacy still stowed away in the house.
He pulled out the bottom drawer, and a shiver passed over his skin. Pay dirt! Ned sat down on the floor and pulled the drawer all the way out. Instead of clothing, it was filled with a row of neatly stacked bank envelopes that stretched side-by-side from one end of the drawer to the other, more old photos, and most promising, a small metal strongbox. Ned pulled out one of the envelopes, which had been slit open across the top, and saw that it held a deposit receipt. The date on it was from 1940. A quick thumb through the others revealed a span of time roughly covering five years, ending in 1945, shortly before the Second World War was brought to an end. They were all just deposit and withdrawal receipts from a bank in Magnolia, so he turned his attention to the photos.
Most of the pictures were black and white snapshots, wartime photos of black soldiers, some with injuries. A yellowed envelope held over a dozen photos documenting the construction of a large brick and stone church, plus a few showing a newly built wood-frame house he recognized as the one he was in now, although the hedge and surrounding fence were missing. In several of these shots he saw the matriarch of the family, Yula Rider, surrounded by her menfolk: her son Antoine the preacher, a young boy of about twelve that Ned guessed must be Cecil, and a comely young man with long black hair tied in a braid that he knew was his own father. He was tempted to pocket one of those photos, but decided against it. Instead, he put them all back in the drawer and took out the strongbox. As soon as he touched it, a distant murmuring crept into his head, voices arguing, water rushing.
Holding the box up, he saw that it had a hasp but no accompanying padlock. It was pretty old, judging by its scuffed and discolored surface, and surprisingly heavy for its small size. It occurred to him that it might be lined with lead, for fireproofing. Lifting the lid, Ned saw two things. On top, a large wad of money, which did not surprise him much. That was typically what people hid in strongboxes. Under the bills was a small notebook.
He put the box down and picked up the notebook. He judged it to be a little larger than a five-by-seven photograph, with flexible leather covers cracked with age. He flipped through the yellowed pages, noting that a lot of it was unused. Ned turned it over in his hands, trying to guess whose book it was or why it was in the strongbox with a small fortune in hundred-dollar bills. It was then that Ned realized his fingers were growing numb. Clumsily, he turned pages until he reached the back, and what he saw nearly caused him to drop the book. Serpents! The images were crudely drawn in coiled and undulating lines, but he knew that’s what they were because he’d created similar icons when he was drawing the “magic” for his mother. Some had stripes along their bodies and others were outlined in dots. One formed a sweeping arch over the smaller images.
He couldn’t imagine godly and harmless old Cecil Rider scribbling those symbols, but he sure as hell wanted to know who had done them. As he stared at the page, he began to hear a high whistling sound, faint yet unmistakable, scratching at his eardrums. With a shock, Ned saw one of the images ripple over the page, as if it lay underwater and a pebble or a raindrop had disturbed the surface above it. Blinking, he looked again. The other images closest to it had begun to slide across the page toward it, slowly but inexorably being sucked into its vortex. Mesmerized, Ned reached out with trembling fingers and touched the undulating serpent shape.
The instant he did so, a thin line of light pulsed in front of his face like the frayed end of a fishing line. He fell back, dropping the book. Still the filament of light floated and pulsed in the air in front of him, almost winking out and then glowing brightly again for a few seconds. The room around him dimmed, but Ned scrambled to his feet away from the tiny rope of light that spiraled and dipped as the shadows closed in. The frayed end of the line seemed to be tasting the air, like a serpent’s tongue, seeking the heat of its prey.
“Shit!” Ned backed out of its way and fell over his pack on the floor. The swaying filament of light became still, and Ned saw with terror that tiny globes were traveling down the line, glistening like drops of resin, red as blood. The floor heaved like a leviathan breaching, and as Ned fell across the phantom rope, all the lights winked out.
* * *
Ned found himself on his hands and knees, face down in cold water. It was too dark to make out his surroundings, but not far off the thread of light pulsed ruddy bronze. It stretched in a quivering horizontal line as far away as Ned’s eyes could make out.
Staggering to his feet, Ned slogged toward it through knee-high water. Without thinking, he reached out and took hold of the shining cord; it had substance in his fist. His flesh began to throb, his forearms to burn, and he was glad he couldn’t see the scale pattern in the gloom. The stinging flowed up his arms and over his chest, and at the same moment a chorus of murmurs flooded into his mind.
Who’s there? Who disturbs the billabong? Who touches the black shaman’s thread? Who? Ned shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the voices filling it. Who comes seeking the Rai? What skin group? Who follows the black one’s cord? Ned let go of the line and the voices immediately ceased. Something bumped against his leg in the dark water and he shimmied away, grabbing the line again. It’s a man, see? Snake clan, but not initiated. How does he see the cord? Who? More whispers flowed into his brain.
Controlling his terror, Ned walked forward, following the thread hand over hand in the dark, pulling himself along through the resisting water. The voices continued to murmur in his ear, but presented no corporeal form. Then he felt a shock along the line, an energy wave that touched his fingers and curled around his wrists. Breathing hard, Ned held onto the line and waited. Another pulse came down the line; something was connecting to him, holding him.
Gray light trickled into his field of vision, barely revealing a lagoon surrounded by willows trailing their long hair in the stream that fed it. The cord led him out of the water and onto a gray mudbank. Ned slipped and fell in the muck, but did not let go of the line. In fact, he realized, he couldn’t let go if he’d wanted to—the coils of energy glued him to the rope of light.
It led him over the bank and into a thicket of trees. Even though it was now light enough to see where he stepped, he realized there were no colors. The cord in his hands pulsed red-gold, but everything else in this silent world was painted in shades of gray.
The thread pulsed again, with an electric shock that clacked Ned’s teeth together. Directly ahead stood a conical hut of ba
rk or grass, with a dark entrance about three feet high. The cord disappeared into it. A guttural voice from inside the hut broke the silence.
“Who’s there? Lacy?”
Ned shivered at the sound of that dead voice. He tried with all his strength to free his hands from the cord, but he was held fast.
“Don’t struggle,” croaked the voice. “Come where I can see you.”
Against his will, Ned followed the cord to the dark mouth of the hut and stooped to enter. Inside it was almost as dark as the billabong had been when he’d first been pulled in. Ned’s mind was reeling, flashing back to his hotel acid trip, and yet knowing this was far worse than any magic carpet ride he might take.
“Are you my son?” the voice repeated.
“I’m Ned.” Shivering, he saw that the quivering thread of light he’d been following terminated in the solar plexus of a shriveled, blackened humanoid creature squatting on its haunches. “Just Ned,” he breathed, as if saying those words could somehow retain him his humanity in this dead world.
“You’re not my son. What are you?” The voice cracked. “Are you one of them?”
Ned could barely speak. His will to live, if in fact he had ever been alive, faded into a gray fog of despair. “I don’t know who you mean. Where is this place?”
“You found my cord. How did you do that if you’re not my son? I commanded my son to find me, but you came instead. How?” The burned creature hopped toward Ned.
Ned was shaking from head to foot, his breath frozen. He was vaguely aware of a rustling outside the hut, and then suddenly his hands snapped free of the line. The blackened figure screeched and lunged at him, howling in hoarse yelps. Ned scrambled backward, digging his hands and feet into the gray dirt floor of the hut. He kicked at its face and connected, sending it flopping backward. On his hands and knees, Ned thrashed his way out of the hut and scrambled a good ten feet from the entrance, where he collapsed, gasping in shallow, panicked gulps like a fish stranded on a riverbank. He struggled to breathe, this gray world barely holding enough oxygen to inflate his human lungs.
More rustlings behind him. Ned turned and saw dozens of silvery ovoid shapes, some the height of children and others tall as trees, emerging from the thicket, forming a wide ring around the hut. They extruded limbs of light toward each other, touching and withdrawing, as if passing information all around the ring. The murmuring of soft voices invaded Ned’s head again. He followed the black one’s cord. See? Snake clan markings. Is he a karadji? Ned took a step toward them, and the ring retreated. His sight is dim but he touched the Great One and rode on her back. How? We are the Rai. Who comes to us, with shaman’s markings but with no knowledge?
“Come back here!”
Ned whirled around and saw the owner of the umbilicus emerge from the hut on spindly legs. It was nearly as tall as himself and might have been a man once, but now it was just a scorched, blackened shell of a body.
See? The black shaman comes out. He sends his spirit-cord out, seeking, but the Wandjina cuts him off. The orbs touched one another and hummed with their spectral voices. Namarrkun lays him low. He’s cursed, that one. The Rai can’t help him.
The burned creature tottered toward Ned. “You’re not my son, but you found my spirit-cord. How did you do that?” it growled. “Have you got my book? Answer me!”
“That notebook is yours?” Ned’s mind was blown. No acid trip could ever compare to what was happening to him here in this shadow world. His only thought now was to get out of this place and back to his waking life, assuming it still existed somewhere and that he would be sane when he found it. He was going to warn Cecil about the notebook and force him to get rid of it. It contained a portal that Ned had no intention of leaving open if he could ever get back.
“Where is it? Who has it?” The creature was screaming now and seemed to Ned more pitiful than terrifying.
It stamped its ruined feet and hopped about in front of the hut in a rage, but came no further than a few feet away from the hut. Then Ned understood—the hut was its prison. He turned toward the silvery orbs of the Rai.
“Why is he here? Is he trapped here for some reason?”
Not properly initiated. Tried to make the spirit-journey, but his eye sees only darkness, came the voices into Ned’s mind. The Rai can’t help him.
Ned pressed his hands to his chest, and saw the scale pattern pulsing dark against his gray skin. “I’m a human, I don’t belong in this world. How can I get out?”
The ovoids rustled against each other. Look there. Taipan’s skin group, that one. Snake clan mob. That one been marked, but doesn’t understand. Sees, but doesn’t see. The Rai can’t help him until he sees.
Ned walked toward the ring, and it opened to let him pass.
“Curse you, come back!” shouted the prisoner.
Ned stretched his fingers toward the closest of the Rai, but it shimmered away just out of reach. “Why can’t you help me? I want to go back the way I came, just show me how.”
Can’t go back that way. The black one’s spirit-cord only leads to him.
The orbs followed Ned down to the lagoon’s edge. He stared at the still, metallic surface of the dark water, chewing his lip. There had to be a way, because he was damned if he was going to stay trapped here for rest of his life, or death.
“I didn’t get into this world by hanging onto that guy’s cord or whatever. Something came up under me and threw me in. What was it?”
The Rai flared in agitated ripples, their voices flooding Ned’s head with a cacophony of sound. He thought in a panic that his brain was about to split, but then, slowly, the murmurings resolved into a chant, rising and falling with his own breath. Ned opened his mouth and the words flowed out of him as they flashed in his mind like sparks popping in a bonfire:
Great Snake, Jarapiri, Sky Home mob, make the bridge
Taipan mother, dig the pond, plow the gorge
Great Snake, Jarapiri, bring the rain, flood the land
Taipan mother, blood of life, bring the sun
Ned knelt down, his knees in the water. The Rai clustered close around him, pulsing bright silver in the gloom. He felt in his jeans pockets and found his pocketknife. Opening it, he pressed the point into his wrist and let the ruby drops fall into the water. Shivering in body and soul, he waited for the Ancestor to appear.
She came in great heaving swells of river water rushing up the canyon, flooding the billabong and sweeping Ned away like a twig on the tide. Scales the size of boulders rippled past his face, tossing him on the flood, a pebble scoured up from the river bottom. Swept along the crest of the torrent, Ned gulped air and clutched a scale of the Rainbow Serpent’s hide as she dove.
Lungs bursting, Ned opened his mouth and breathed water and, surprisingly, did not die. He pondered the fact, found it meaningless, and let it shed away. He let go of the Ancestor, and perceived her undulating body to be two serpents instead of one, twined and wrapped tightly around each other in an endless rippling coil, the spiral of life.
A roaring of mammoth waterfalls filled his ears and deafened his mind as the identity known as Ned ceased to be. He was a speck of sand deposited on an ancient beach, left to bleach in the unrelenting sun.
Ned opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of an old woman’s bedroom with the night stand lamp knocked over, hanging just inches from his face, shining in his eyes. He rolled over onto his stomach and lay still, waiting for the rolling, coasting sensation underneath him to subside. He felt vaguely seasick.
Lifting his head, he saw with relief that all was as it should be. The floor of Yula’s bedroom was firm under his hands, his clothing was dry, no voices in his head. Ned rolled onto his butt and sat staring at the floor. He considered the possibility that he’d just had the worst acid flashback of all time or that perhaps he had finally gone completely mad. Either way, he was not opening that notebook again for any amount of money. He picked it up by the corner and dropped it into the strongbox, which he closed
with the tips of his fingers and put back in the drawer.
He pushed the drawer closed with his foot and went to sit on the edge of the bed, filled with despair. Maybe he should just end it all right here. His fingers strayed to the knife in his pocket, fondling the top of its sheathed blade. As he let his breath out, an infinite sadness swept over him, and he would have wept like Gloria, mourning for her lost place in the world, if he could have summoned the tears. But all he could do was sit on the bed with an ache in his throat and a constriction in his chest. Without thinking, Ned placed both palms over the spot and pressed them tightly against his body, just above the navel.
“Snake mother, protect me,” he whispered and closed his eyes. He lay back on the coverlet, listening to his breath, ragged at first, then smoothing out. At last, he slept.
Chapter 12
April 1965
Ned woke to timid knocking on the bedroom door. He sat up, realizing he’d slept in his clothes and then gradually remembering why. His body felt like it had been run over several times by a manure truck.
“Ned? Would you like to have breakfast?”
Ned dragged himself to the door and opened it a crack. Cecil, dressed in his uniform of a white shirt and black trousers, waited with hands clasped in front of his chest. He looked at Ned with some alarm, but didn’t ask whatever he was thinking. Ned knew he must have looked like all hell, but that was nothing compared to his current mental state.
“Are you hungry? I have to go check on some church property that got damaged in last night’s storm, and Estell has gone to walk Pearl to school, but there’s red-eye gravy and biscuits and coffee on the stove in the kitchen. Please go help yourself.”
Ned cleared his throat. “Thanks, I will. But how long are you gonna be gone? I got some new questions for you, and I can’t leave till I get answers.” Ned thought he saw a look of panic flash in Cecil Rider’s liquid brown eyes.
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