My Soul to Take

by Tananarive Due

  MOST HIGH, I’M SORRY, she called to him. I MEANT NO OFFENSE.

  He brought Gypsy to her feet. Delicious terror raged within her as her limbs mutinied.

  “I have trivialized the Cleansing ceremony,” Michel announced through Gypsy’s mouth, with her voice. “May I offer myself to the pool and join the others, Most High?”

  He nodded his reluctant agreement and gestured with a sweep. Yes, yes, if she must.

  Gypsy strode quickly from her seat, her heels clacking on the marble as she walked the length of the room. She stopped before Michel, bowed her head. He raised his hand for a kiss.

  MICHEL, PLEASE DON’T. SEND ME AWAY INSTEAD. YOU PROMISED ME—

  “Forgive me, Most High,” he said, giving her Francesca’s dignity as she kissed his ring.

  “You are forgiven, and you shall be Cleansed.”

  Holding her head high with a beatific smile on her face, he walked her to the pool.

  The others shouted and clawed at her, looking for escape the way she had come. Michel abandoned his fight then, or lost it. The fabric of his robe seemed to crackle. His ears popped in the Shadows’ howl. The light in the room vanished to his sight.

  The irresistible chorus of pleas from the Cleansing Pool flooded Michel. He inhaled the sweet scent of the Shadows, the way his father had taught him after he stole Michel from his mother’s breast. The buzzing swallowed all.

  The last part of him that was still Michel remembered those eyes in his painting.

  Forgive me, Fana, for what I will do.

  While music played beyond the doors, the pleas in the Cleansing Pool turned to screams.

  The water in the pool flushed crimson, stained with blood.

  THE CLEANSING

  It’s the end of the world as we know it.

  —R.E.M.

  But then I sigh and, with a piece of Scripture,

  Tell them that God bids us do good for evil.

  And thus I clothe my naked villainy

  With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,

  And seem a saint when most I play the devil. (1.3.323)

  —Richard III

  William Shakespeare

  If I do many godlike things, does that make me God?

  And if I do many devilish things, does that make me the devil?

  —Khaldun (The Witness)

  Twelve

  The white Spanish Mission-style church looks like a palace atop the hill. In the bell tower, two bronze bells toll in cacophony, swinging in opposite directions. Roaring winds devour their sour music. A man and woman lean out of the dome’s window, only their silhouettes visible in the Shadows.

  Below, spread across a vast valley in every direction, rows of worshippers sit on their knees with hands clasped, faces upturned in prayer, as still as tree stumps. Only their clothes move, blowing in the gale. Countless sightless faces are pelted with raindrops.

  The rain is the color of blood.

  Barking woke Phoenix, faint through her window. She had expected rainfall instead.

  Phoenix glanced at her wristphone, which she slept with by habit. It wasn’t quite four a.m., long before dawn. How did Graygirl get outside?

  Phoenix tried not to disturb the mattress when she swung her legs over the side of the bed, but Carlos sat up on one elbow when she stirred. Their bed was a California king, as big as a continent, but Carlos slept lightly since he’d been home.

  She’d been dreaming, she remembered. She couldn’t remember the dream, but her heartbeat was pulsing in her fingertips. Her tongue was parched. She hadn’t felt such a jolt of fright since the visits from Scott Joplin’s ghost, which she knew were behind her. But the dream hadn’t been about Scott. Phoenix vaguely remembered a sea of the dead.

  No more pizza after nine for you, she thought, trying to calm her hammering heart.

  “What’s wrong?” Carlos mumbled, running his fingers through his hair.

  “Graygirl’s barking.”

  “What?” Moonlight captured the confusion on Carlos’s face.

  Phoenix blinked. Only crickets and frogs outside. No barking. Graygirl was dead. The coyotes had killed her, although Phoenix could almost see her dog’s pale shadow floating through the doorway. Graygirl had been dead a month, but Phoenix often heard imaginary barking, most often when she was in the shower. Or half asleep.

  “Gotta use the potty,” she said instead, the word they had inherited from Marcus.

  Carlos grunted and collapsed back to his pillow.

  Their bedroom had its own bathroom, but it was the size of a closet—a third the size of Marcus’s. Phoenix missed the master bathroom at her old Beverly Hills place. Lately, the bathroom was the only place where she sat still long enough to think. She wanted to be able to stretch out her legs and pick up a copy of whatever book she’d been reading a paragraph at a time. The main bathroom and its lacquered wood walls were her library and spa.

  In privacy, Phoenix’s pulse slowed as her mind ventured to the night of the concert. Her scalp tingled with the memory of the singing and swaying of the audience, the radiant faces, and Fana with her arms embracing the sky. And her lump was gone—her office visit tomorrow would only confirm it. She’d never been so certain of anything.

  Glow, she would explain. And then what?

  Fana wanted her to tell her story. That was what she’d said.

  Why was she hoarding her story in her bathroom? Why hadn’t she called a press conference or blasted the internet like so many others who’d been there? A group of six people who had been strangers before the concert were appearing on the newswebs and daytime talk shows as the Glow Messengers. Phoenix’s cousin Gloria, the Best Manager in the World, had said that the Glow Messengers had tried to contact her, but Phoenix had declined to join them. Press conferences and interviews weren’t her style. Not anymore.

  But her name would matter. Her story would matter.

  The lyrics she’d first heard on her way to the concert sprang back to her, fresh: Waking up is easy if you never go to sleep / Have you seen the soul you promised you would keep? The chords were coming, bright and easy. No brooding minors, either. Joyful chords, like the ones her grandmother had played on Sunday mornings. Back in the day, Phoenix would have rushed to her netbook to get to work on her new songs. She would be up working until dawn.

  She could lay down new tracks. Call her old band for a reunion.

  Phoenix’s heart quickened at the thought, excitement about her music she’d forgotten. She’d be back on familiar ground, spreading the message of the otherworld. This time, instead of ghosts, she’d be preaching healing. She’d be preaching Glow.

  Phoenix’s fledgling excitement died.

  Then she’d be touring, away from home. Or Marcus and Carlos would be tied to her for a grueling and monotonous life on the road. She’d be lifted up once again on that dizzying pedestal while haters tried to claw her down. She’d gotten death threats after Joplin’s Ghost, if only because she’d scared as many as she’d inspired. Maybe more.

  And with the government so fiercely opposed to Glow, she would be thrusting her family into a drug war. John Wright had led her and Carlos to websites debunking the government’s false allegations about Glow: fatal overdoses; high addiction rates; ties to bioterror attacks. The feds were desperate to keep people away from Glow, and if she came forward, she would become a target. The life she’d been trying to give Marcus would be gone.

  Phoenix hadn’t retired because of the suicides of those troubled kids in Chicago like the media claimed. She remembered her older sister Serena’s stories about how much she missed having a father while Sarge was consumed with changing the world. Sarge hadn’t known how to be a true parent until much later, when Phoenix was born. She’d promised her newborn son that she would always put him first. No trial runs.

  Phoenix smiled at the collection of Marcus’s bath toys in a plastic crate near the bathtub. Marcus had stopped playing with toys when he bathed, but she hadn’t moved them yet. Gri
nning red Elmo on a scooter and grotesquely disfigured Mutant Men marked Marcus’s journey from toddler to big boy since they’d lived in Paso.

  She’d quit show business to take care of her baby. But she didn’t have a baby anymore.

  “You’ve got to see about the revolution, Phee,” she said aloud in the empty bathroom; her father’s words. Sarge had said that to her in a dream right after he died, the last words she’d heard when his voice was fresh in her ear. The words popped into her mind from nowhere.

  “You’ve got to see about the revolution.”

  Damn you, Sarge. Easy for you to say. You know how I like my peace and quiet.

  Phoenix could almost hear her father laughing at her. Spoiled-ass brat, he used to say.

  When she flushed the toilet, Phoenix thought she heard Graygirl’s bark again.

  In the bathroom doorway, instead of turning back to her bedroom, Phoenix shuffled to the living room, where a night-light shaped like a Victorian gas lamp glowed the color of flame near the arched dining-room doorway. She checked the locks on the front door—all three of them—her lingering habit from Carlos’s long trip to Puerto Rico. The alarm panel assured her with its cool green light. Armed and ready.

  Her last stop before the bedroom was the security system’s master control panel. Phoenix had thought the six-screen panel was a hideous addition to the foyer wall when Carlos first had it built, but nowadays she was glad the tiny screens were there; an illusion of control. Each screen showed a different corner of her property: the front door, the back door, the road, the driveway. She looked for coyotes, but didn’t see any.

  If she’d gotten up only ten minutes earlier the night Graygirl died, she would have seen that Graygirl had drifted from the kitchen bed, squeezing her aging haunches through the doggy door to go outside. Phoenix had come too late, when the coyotes were there.

  The coyotes were gone now.

  Instead, Phoenix saw a white panel truck, hazy in the darkness.

  The truck was driving at a good clip despite the bumpy road, so it whizzed past the first camera. Phoenix blinked. For three seconds, she thought the truck had been an illusion like Graygirl’s barking. Then, the truck appeared within view of the next camera, passing the jacaranda trees near their driveway.

  There weren’t any headlights, she realized. Someone who didn’t want to be seen was driving to their doorstep in the middle of the night.

  The gate was locked at the end of the driveway, but Phoenix ran back into the hall on the balls of her feet. When she got to her bedroom, she closed the door behind her.

  Carlos stirred, always on alert. He sat up this time. “What?” he said.

  “There’s a truck outside. Coming up our driveway.”

  Carlos vaulted out of the bed. He crouched and went across the room to the curtains, where he peeked through with his head low. “What kind of truck?”

  Phoenix hadn’t let herself feel scared until she saw how scared Carlos was.

  “A panel truck. White or gray.”

  “Mierda!” Carlos said.

  “Could it be repairmen?”

  Instead of answering, Carlos threw open the closet. He was only in his boxers, but he didn’t get dressed. He reached up to the top shelf and pulled down an old black touring bag so worn that one of the zippers didn’t work. She hadn’t realized she still had that bag in her closet, much less that it was packed.

  Carlos thrust the duffel bag into the center of her chest, and she hugged it tight. The bag wasn’t heavy, but it was bulky. It wasn’t just clothes. Phoenix couldn’t quite see Carlos’s eyes in the dark, but his face was very close to hers. She smelled his fading cologne.

  “Get Marcus,” he said.

  “What?”

  Suddenly, Carlos sounded angry, although his voice stayed close to her ear. “Out back, like we said. I’ll stay at the front door. Hurry and get Marcus.”

  Phoenix’s thrashing heart wiped away the fog of sleep. They had a plan they’d laid out carefully since his return from Puerto Rico, and again since the concert. If anyone suspicious ever came to the house, they would steal out the back door to the rear of the property, past the broken wires in the horse fence by the tire swing and down to the Kinseys’ house. If necessary, one of them would take Marcus alone.

  If was now. Phoenix was almost sure she could hear the truck’s engine outside.

  No time for pleas, last-minute kisses, or lingering gazes. The bedroom doorknob seemed to fight Carlos, but he flung the door open for her. Phoenix pivoted and ran down the hall, although in her mind it was all for nothing. Just a truck from Pacific Gas and Electric.

  Marcus was asleep in bed with both arms wound around his head as if he were trying to shut out a great racket. She shook his shoulder, not worried about being gentle.

  “Marcus—it’s time. Let’s go!”

  Marcus kicked off his covers and sprang out of bed as if he’d been waiting for her. Children were always prepared to run and hide.

  She saw one of his mud-stained gray sneakers, but not the other. The plan hadn’t bargained on a hunt for shoes. Denial peeled away, and Phoenix realized how frightened she was. It was bad enough to be running in the dark, but she couldn’t let him go barefoot. And he was too heavy to carry, which had a bigger price now than nostalgia.

  “Help me find your other shoe,” she said. “Hurry, Marcus.”

  “What’s taking so long?” Carlos said in the hallway.

  “Marcus, where’s your shoe?” Phoenix hissed, as if he were hiding it.

  Marcus slid under his bed, retrieving a white sneaker, which didn’t match.

  “It’s for the wrong foot,” Marcus said.

  Carlos stuck his head in the doorway, a shadow. “Go right now.”

  Neither of Marcus’s mismatched shoes was tied when Phoenix grabbed his hand and pulled him into the hall. Carlos gestured wildly for them, urging them on.

  “Come with us,” Phoenix said. That wasn’t in the plan, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Carlos shook his head. “No time,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”

  But that might not be true. The truck sounded like it was on the front porch, a loud rumbling purr that made Phoenix’s stomach quiver. It didn’t sound like the electric company.

  Carlos gave her the barest kiss on the forehead before he veered back to the living room.

  We’re too late, she thought, but she didn’t slow down as she pulled Marcus into the kitchen. Her hip crashed into the corner of the kitchen table in the breakfast nook, but the pain only made her more alert. The deadbolt key was waiting in the lock, exactly where it was supposed to be. The back door opened like a dream.

  The cool night air caressed Phoenix’s face. Ahead in the darkness lay the fence.

  Freedom. Phoenix’s relief felt like the flying had the night of the concert again.

  “Don’t move!” a man’s voice said, supernaturally loud, impossibly close.

  Phoenix’s knees tried to buckle. Her gasp shook her like a blow.

  Something tall and pale moved just outside her vision. Marcus wrapped his arms around her waist and let out a scream of raw fright that stabbed her. She didn’t want to look at the pale thing, but she had to.

  Sleek, shiny skin the color of the moon. More than six feet tall. A misshapen head.

  Phoenix almost joined her son’s scream, until her eyes focused: it was only a man wearing a contamination suit like someone at a nuclear accident. A large plastic mask hid his face. In his hand, at waist level, he held a shiny gun that was much too big.

  Marcus felt weightless when Phoenix swung him behind her with one arm.

  “Mrs. Harris, I said don’t move,” the man said. “Nobody will hurt you or your son.”

  Phoenix heard noises from the front of the house. Men were yelling orders to Carlos, and Carlos was arguing. He had his problems, and she had hers. Only two rooms separated them, but they were a million miles apart.

  “Then why do you have a gun?” Phoenix sai
d. Her voice surprised her, clear and strong.

  “Just a trank gun,” he said. “It’s a precaution.”

  A tranquilizer gun. Like they were animals being captured in the wild.

  “Point that at my son again, and I’m gonna shove it down your throat.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man said, full of respect. But he didn’t lower his gun. “I need you to slowly put that bag down and put your hands on the counter.”

  Do you know who I am? Phoenix wanted to say. She’d vowed never to utter those diva’s words, but this time the answer was obvious: yes, they knew.

  Outside, Phoenix saw the swarm of others wearing identical clothing trampling her squash and tomatoes in the vegetable garden, advancing. Four, five, six. There must have been more than one truck. Someone shone a flashlight into her eyes. Her vision went white.

  “Are we under arrest?” Phoenix said. “For what?”

  “Mrs. Harris?” the man said again, as if he had not spoken. “I know this is a shock at this hour—but put the bag down.”

  If she was under arrest, the law said someone had to tell her. Was this worse than arrest?

  Phoenix dropped the bag. She didn’t know what Carlos had packed, but she felt naked as it thumped to her feet. Despite the politeness of courtesy titles and surnames, or her empty threats, these men could do anything they chose to her and her son. Phoenix hadn’t known it was possible to feel so powerless. Pleading words tried to spill from her mouth, but she couldn’t pull her lips apart. She heard herself whimper instead.

  “There’s no reason to be afraid, Mrs. Harris,” the man said. “We’re not here to hurt you. We work for the Department of Homeland Security. We want to be sure you’re not sick.”

  In the living room, Carlos’s shouts were frantic. He was arguing. Phoenix remembered her father’s stories about black men arguing with armed intruders. They always led to shooting.

  “Baby, we’re okay!” Phoenix called out to Carlos. “Don’t worry about us—we’re fine!”