Blood Red Roses

by Russell James

  The Powells screamed. The house slaves bolted in opposite directions down the garden path. The outermost two of the risen dead ran in pursuit. They moved with a loping gait like an antelope from the Great Plains. In three strides, they caught Washington and the other slave, leaped upon them and brought their victims to the ground. The dead each balled a fist and punched through the backs of the living. When they extracted their hands, each clutched a beating heart.

  The other walking dead advanced on the trembling Powells, one slow step at a time, apparently happy to postpone the slaveholders’ executions if it meant the murderous owners lived those extra moments in sheer terror.

  Behind the Powells, Junius snapped to full standing height, wearing the dirt-stained dress uniform his mother had buried him in. He drew his sword from the scabbard at his side and stepped between his parents and the resurrected. The attackers paused.

  Hoofs pounded down the path from the main house. Ramses and Victor charged into the rose garden.

  “Knew I heard the voice of a damn gyp witch!” Ramses shouted.

  Ramses let his whip fly, and it wrapped around the neck bones of one of the more skeletal corpses. Victor reared up on his hind legs and whinnied. Ramses snapped his wrist and decapitated the creature. The skull bounced to the ground. The rest of the skeleton collapsed into a pile of bones.

  “You!” Eleeza yelled from her position above the fray. She let loose another bolt of blue fire at Ramses.

  Victor was still up on two legs, and the blast hit him square between his ribs. The heat boiled the horse’s internal organs in an instant, and the creature’s rib cage exploded. The animal dropped on its side with Ramses’s good leg pinned beneath it.

  “For my daughter and grandson,” Eleeza commanded the corpses, “and to avenge yourselves, kill them all!”

  The risen dead rushed Junius and the living. With one slash of his sword, Junius severed the head of the first assailant, but the next several overwhelmed him. Two gave chase to the finally fleeing Powells.

  One corpse rushed the trapped Ramses. The overseer drew his musket from its holster with one hand and pointed it at the creature. When the barrel was point blank at the corpse’s head, he pulled the trigger. The creature’s skull exploded and it dropped in its tracks.

  Another corpse caught Beulah Powell from behind. It leaped upon her back, reached down and twisted her head completely around with a bone-crunching snap. She dropped to the ground in a billow of black cloth and lay still.

  At the sight of Beulah’s demise, Master Powell stumbled. William’s corpse fell upon him and pinned him on his back. William reached down and tore his former master’s jaw from his skull. Powell’s tongue wagged in the open space in a gagging, stifled scream. William plunged his hand into Powell’s chest, ripped out his beating heart and shoved it down Powell’s throat.

  A third corpse made a beeline for the trapped overseer. Ramses tossed aside his empty musket and pulled a Colt revolver from his saddlebag. He fired three wild shots at the charging corpse. The third hit its mark. The corpse’s head spun from the impact before it dropped to the ground.

  Eleeza watched with glee, enthralled at the Powells’ demise. Ramses swung right and took careful aim at the hovering witch. He fired.

  The bullet hit her chest in a splatter of blood. She staggered in midair and turned, enraged, to face Ramses. She let fly another, enormous bolt of blue flame. The bolt struck Ramses and Victor dead on. They exploded in flames and sprinkled to earth as a cloud of soot.

  The corpses that had swarmed Junius each had hold of one of his extremities. They pulled in unison. With four crunching pops, they dismembered the dead soldier. His head and body hit the ground, his mouth shouting silent curses and commands. William walked over and stomped Junius’s windpipe. Junius fell still.

  William spied at me on the execution table. He snarled and charged. Eleeza had ordered “Kill them all.” I knew no white man was destined to leave this place alive.

  At the table’s edge, William stopped. His face turned calm. He reached down and unbuckled the straps that bound me. I was too drained to move.

  Eleeza drifted back to the ground, clutching the wound in her chest. She landed on the path before of me and went down on one knee.

  “Why did he spare me?” I asked her.

  She looked up at me, her face finally calm. She took a deep, difficult breath. “The hex bag I gave you, your protection from dark magic.”

  The oily little sack she’d given me still rested in my pocket.

  The walking dead stood around us. Immobile.

  “How long will they last?” I asked.

  “Only as long as I do. All spells die with she who cast them.”

  Eleeza sagged to the ground. She spit up a splatter of bright red blood.

  “Leave this place, boy. Take nothing with you. Cleanse this from your memories.”

  Eleeza dropped across the path. She exhaled one last, gravelly time. At that breath’s end, the remaining corpses dissembled and collapsed where they stood.

  I lay upon the table and prayed for my strength to return. Eleeza had given me good advice. I already knew I would not take it.

  Chapter Twenty

  The end of the bloodletting gave my strength the opportunity to recover. My head soon cleared, and I rolled myself off the table that was to have been the instrument of both my death and Junius’s permanent return to life. The air stank of Ramses’s charred flesh and the rotting bodies of the long dead. All about me lay the victims of the Powells’ insanity. I could not stand to be in their presence any longer.

  I passed the charred mass of ash that had been the overseer and his satanic steed. The saddle and saddlebags and the horse’s hooves were all that still had form. Ramses’s metal nose protruded from the flaky pile that remained of his head. At the end of the strip of ash that had been Ramses’s arm lay the blackened pistol that claimed Eleeza’s life. I scooped it off the ground on my way to the gate.

  I staggered down the path between the crops, back to the main house. The eastern sky shifted from black to dark blue, and I realized how long the night had been. This day was about to dawn on a very different Beechwood.

  I exited the garden. One of the plump cooks stood at the cookhouse door, no doubt roused by the commotion amongst the roses. She placed her hands upon her ample hips in preparation to give me a solid dressing-down for being out in the garden at night. As she got a better view of me, an expression of shock swept her face. Indeed, I must have been frightful: skin pale and punctured, clothes shredded, bloody trails dried on my arms and legs, unsteady upon my feet. I held Ramses’s heavy revolver low and loose against my thigh. It was a surprise that she did not run screaming.

  “What you done, boy? Who shoot that gun?”

  There was more explanation here than I had the strength to give, and more than she had the open-mindedness to understand. “They’re all dead,” I answered.

  “Who?”

  “Ramses. The Powells. Washington. All dead.”

  “You kill them all?”

  I leaned against the fence rail for support. “Just go. Everyone. You are free.”

  She backed away from me slowly, the way one would from a rabid dog. Then she twirled and sprinted away toward the slave cabins, rolls of fat undulating under her blousy dress with each stride.

  The sun crested the horizon, a red fireball to finally dispel the hellish night that had preceded it. I tucked the pistol into my waistband and staggered into the cookhouse. A box of matches on the counter caught my eye, and I put them in what remained of one pocket. I felt the hex bag still in there. The magic dies with the one who cast it, she had said. I tossed it into the empty fireplace.

  A smoked ham hung from a hook. Fruit lay in a bowl on the counter. I grabbed a knife and set upon the ham like a wild beast, chopping hunks from it that I greedily wolfed down. When the dried, salted meat threatened to lodge in my throat, I took peaches from the bowl and let their sweet juices revive me w
ith each swallow.

  Perhaps it was just the effect of decent food on my mind rather than my body, but new energy coursed through my veins. I left the cookhouse to fulfill the rest of my plan.

  Outside stood almost a dozen slaves, all looking pensive and bewildered in the low morning light, all staring at me.

  “Dat’s the one,” a slave whispered. “He done killed ’em all.”

  I stepped forward. They all stepped back. They didn’t know the truth, but they knew as much as they needed. Cannons crumped in the distance as soldiers began a dawn assault to the northwest. I was running out of time.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled. “Take your freedom before I water this ground with more blood!”

  The little crowd scattered. I headed to the stable.

  The Beechwood ground had indeed been watered with blood. Not just mine in the grave that I avoided, and not just the blood that fed whatever demon arose in the corpse of Junius Powell. The blood of generations had fed this ground, generations held in bondage and treated worse than domesticated beasts. And ground saturated in sin yielded cotton crops tainted by evil, and people twisted to live for revenge or to delight in the extraction of pain. The malevolence spread its vile influence far enough to touch my uncle and have him sell family into servitude. No rain would ever wash the spiritual stain from this earth. Only one thing could.

  At the stable, I passed the open door of Victor’s stall. Ramses had to have saddled his horse himself. As I thought about it now, he’d been doing that before I got here—mucking out his horse’s stall as well, as it was the only clean one. Only a damaged soul could see value in a black horse and be blind to it in a black man.

  I led the two tired horses out of their stalls and put them in harness. While I might have imagined it, both horses appeared to adopt a look of dismay.

  “One more task, boys,” I said. I stroked their necks. “You don’t want to stay here.”

  I found the low cart I’d used to move hay. I pulled it forward and harnessed the horses to it. It would not carry much, but it would carry enough. Enough for one.

  I scrambled up to the loft and pulled my meager sack down with me to the stable floor. This last set of shirt and pants would do me well when I had time to change later, but the most important item was in the bag’s bottom. I pulled out my father’s pocket watch, though I suppose it was no longer his possession, as it had officially been mine for the last year. I gave the stem a spin. For the first time, the watch began to tick.

  I tossed the bag in the cart and led the horses clear of the barn. I returned, knelt by a stall door and struck a match. The straw lit on contact. Fire raced up the dry stable wall like a mouse for the rafters. As I walked out the stable door, I dropped a thick trail of straw from the stable to the garden’s edge, like Hansel’s breadcrumb trail, so the flames could devour the evidence of the night’s satanic deeds.

  In the distance, a fusillade of cannon fire rippled like low thunder. The initial rounds had found their range, and the full battery had joined the day’s battle.

  I led the horses and their tiny burden away from the stable. Their first, hesitant steps spoke of their trepidation at the task; their low-slung heads faced the ground in bleak despair. But several yards in, their gait gained confidence, as if memories of a useful existence returned to them, a reminiscence of pride in completing productive tasks. With a shake, they raised their heads to the risen sun and snorted with a self-assurance long forgotten.

  We passed the cookhouse and the garden entrance. A swarm of dozens of slaves milled about, stripping anything edible to feed their families. They saw me and froze in position, certain that the wrath of the wronged white man was about to descend upon them. I looked away and continued on. The slaves went back to their task. Several laughed with relief.

  I stopped the horse at the rear portico of the main house. One more duty to complete.

  Cannon fire thumped again, closer to the property. The faint clatter of small arms joined the distant symphony of combat. The Home Guard was no doubt falling back, probably running in retreat. The end of so much was almost here.

  I entered the main house and went straight for the parlor where Lucinda had taken me. I opened the door and cringed with the memory. What I’d thought was a wonderful moment of magic, I now saw as the shameful, embarrassing act it truly was.

  The advancing Yankee soldiers allowed no moments to dwell on such things, at least not now. The room was empty. I had little time to find what I searched for—to find Lucinda.

  She hadn’t left the main house after Washington abducted me, hadn’t been to the grand ceremony of the cadaver’s resuscitation. Given the frame of mind she had been in as they dragged me out the door, she’d have to be here somewhere, somewhere she felt safer.

  As I searched through the lower floor, the elegant trappimgs that had impressed me so just days ago upon my arrival had no such effect now. The morning sun showed the contents in their true state of decay, with chips peeling from paintings and furniture threadbare and drooping. The amazing timepiece on the table had stopped. When still, it was easy to see the rust and tarnish that spotted the components. The banister creaked as I grabbed it to assist my climb up the main stairs.

  I found Lucinda in the third room I inspected. The decor was all in white lace, with pink-striped wallpaper and floor-length brocade draperies. Tinted woodcuts of ponies hung on the walls. A room more in style for a girl than a young woman.

  Lucinda lay on the floor. The seductive finery of last night’s tryst was gone, replaced with a simple, homespun skirt and blouse, like the penitent renouncing silk and satin to atone for sin. Her arms lay out from her sides. A puddle of dried blood spread beneath one slashed wrist.

  My heart fell to my knees. I rushed forward and cradled her head to my ear. Shallow, short breaths tickled my earlobe. I shivered with joy. I inspected her wrist. The cut was not deep. The laudanum, thank the Lord, had impaired her slicing skills. I bound the wound with a handkerchief from the dresser.

  I reached under her knees and shoulders and lifted her up. She was lighter than I expected. I staggered down the steps one at a time, careful not to bump her. In her sleep, her face held a dreamy expression of peace and contentment.

  We reached the ground floor in time to hear another, sharper, closer volley of musketry. The panicked cries of men’s voices followed the firing, muffled by the moss-covered trees between the house and the main road beyond. I took her out the back door, to the horses and the waiting cart. I’d planned on having Lucinda use it for some of her belongings, but the cart would have to instead do duty as an ambulance.

  As I moved to lay her down, her eyes fluttered open. She struggled to focus on my face.

  “Stable boy?” she said in a soft, dreamy voice. “Stable boy! Are we both in heaven then?”

  “Not quite yet,” I answered.

  I laid her in the cart with my sad little bag as a pillow. Just days ago, my head had lain upon it for the first time. Now it cradled one much more lovely.

  I ran back inside the main house. In quick succession, I struck matches and lit drapes, rugs and furniture afire in all corners of the building. I crossed back outside to spy thick black smoke billowing from the direction of the stables. A thinner gray smoke drifted up from the garden’s far end. When the flames had finished their work, there’d be no reason for men to return to this land, no way for the evil that possessed it to again work its black magic.

  I led the horses around to the front and then down the long driveway to the road. I stopped them at the property’s edge.

  Gunpowder’s acrid aroma had settled along the tree-lined road. Scattered Southern soldiers passed by in an easterly retreat, some barely constrained from a run. Those who still bore arms carried them haphazardly, often gripped by the barrels with butts dragging in the dirt. Smoke and saltpeter blackened their faces. A lieutenant on horseback, hat missing and hair on end, rode through the group at a gallop, heedless of those around him as anything
but obstacles. In the woods beyond, muskets fired another volley.

  The last flicker of the Confederate flame had met the enemy and been extinguished.

  The story of Beechwood would die here. Soldiers would shoulder the blame for the plantation’s destruction. Witnesses to the final supernatural events were all dead, save me. The slaves would scatter for a freedom long overdue.

  Prudence dictated I point the horses east and follow the escaping men in gray. The Northern soldiers would end the chase when they outran their supply lines. I’d drop Lucinda in a town to recuperate, and find my own way in the world.

  I looked down at Lucinda’s face, angelic in its slumber. No doubt it would turn tortured when she awakened. She was damaged. I was damaged. As it took two weak horses to pull the tiny cart, so I hoped the two of us might be strong enough together to surmount the scarring experiences we’d both survived.

  I turned the horses west. Toward Union lines. Toward Pelahatchie. Toward home.

  In the bag beneath Lucinda’s sleeping head, the pocket watch chimed the hour.

  Afterword

  I write horror. I spin fictional evil from my imagination for your amusement. Ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night fly from my fingers to give you a chill and a thrill.

  But writing this story reminded me that humanity as a whole can deliver more horror than we find entertaining, more than we want to acknowledge we are capable of. Mankind’s genocidal streak did not end with slavery’s demise in the United States one hundred and fifty years ago. It lives on in recent times in Serbia, in Rwanda. The demonic seed stays dormant, ready to take root anywhere that one man decides that another, by birth, can never be his equal.

  With this tale finished, read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This public-domain work is available free and is a more chilling description of our now-quiescent darker side than I could ever create. In stark, simple prose, Douglass lays bare a world I am so glad is gone, but whose lessons I hope are never forgotten.