by Alex Bledsoe
He crawled to the door as the banshee continued to wail, and managed to get it open. Outside, snow trickled lazily down from the darkness like the cold, dry tears of antiquity. He had no time to grab a coat, gloves, or his electrolarynx. He got his feet under him and fled down the trail as fast as his aged, damaged body would allow.
In his former home, the specter of Radella was gone. But the cry continued to echo, merging with the wind to travel great distances and follow Rockhouse long after it should have faded.
* * *
Luke Somerville looked across the dinner table at Mandalay. Her face was still splotchy from the cold, and her black hair frizzy from static. Since her own were soaked with melted snow, she wore clothes borrowed from his older sister that were big on her and made her appear weak and helpless. She caught him looking, and her cheeks turned extra red. He quickly looked away.
“I called your mama,” Luke’s mother, Claudia, said. She was a big woman, the kind who put on ten permanent pounds with each of her four children. She had Tufa-black hair, but her skin was pale and almost shone in the kitchen’s light. She put a big bowl of mashed potatoes down on the table with a loud slam. “She said your daddy’ll be along to fetch you in about an hour. That’ll give you time to eat, at least.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mandalay said. She tried to ignore the wonderful aroma rising from the food before her, reminding her with every whiff that she hadn’t eaten in seven hours. But the Tufa rules about food and drink made it impossible for her to accept it, and they knew that, too. “But if I don’t eat at home, Leshell gets real mad at me.”
“You call your mama Leshell?” asked Luke’s baby sister Ida Mae. She sat beside Mandalay, on a homemade booster seat of three Knoxville phone books duct-taped together.
“She’s my stepmother,” Mandalay said. “My real mama died.”
“Wow,” the girl said. “I ain’t never met nobody whose mama died.”
“Behave,” their father, Elgin, said from the head of the table as he wrote “Insurance Payment” over and over in tiny print on a piece of stationery. “That ain’t no way to talk to somebody.”
“But it’s the truth,” Ida Mae said.
“It’s the truth that you’re gonna get an ass-whoopin’ if you don’t button that lip,” Elgin said. He finished his writing, then folded the paper into smaller and smaller squares. He said to Mandalay, “Luke says he found you wandering in the woods. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir. I was bored and went for a walk, but I got kind of turned around.”
“Went for a walk in a snowstorm? That ain’t too bright, is it?” He chuckled as he tied a red string around the folded paper.
“Elgin,” Claudia said warningly. “That ain’t polite.”
Mandalay said nothing. When the Tufa had arrived here, they’d been one group, united under the leadership of the one who’d gotten them into this mess in the first place. It didn’t take long for that to change, though, and their society quickly became a mirror of the one they’d left: two groups, diametrically opposed in almost every way, with their own leaders.
Luke’s family was part of the group that stayed under the Feller. And now they had the leader of the other group, Rockhouse’s opposite number, seated at their table. If she ate or drank anything they offered, it might affect the extremely tenuous balance of power even more.
“Well, it’s a good thing Luke found you,” Elgin said. He got up and took the string-tied note to the counter, where a pile of medical bills waited. He tucked it beneath them, returned to his seat, then spooned mashed potatoes onto his plate.
Mandalay looked at Luke. “Yeah, it sure was. If I ain’t said it yet—thank you.”
“No problem,” Luke said.
One of his sisters, older and with glasses, sat down with an accordion and began to play. The music was infectious, and it took all of Mandalay’s self-control not to tap her foot along with it. The sound filled the kitchen, and Luke’s older brother patted out a rhythm on the table edge.
Mandalay gripped the edges of her seat as tightly as she could. If there was danger in sharing food or drink, then there was a possible apocalypse for her if she joined in their music. The problem was, music was insidious—you could find yourself humming, or swaying, or head-bobbing along with it before you were aware.
Claudia sang in a high, keening way that blended seamlessly with the accordion:
Well, you look so fine
In that borrowed suede jacket of mine
Now, cozy up behind the wheel
Of an aquamarine automobile
We’ll just take it slow
Listening to songs on the AM radio
No particular place to go
Valiant and Fury girls.…
Mandalay felt the music swelling in her, connecting her with the years—millennia—of songs of the Tufa. The song ached with loss, with friendship and love that once flourished and danced among the flowers in the rain, but was now old, and tender, and reaching out for comfort. She wanted to cry, and fought mightily as her vision blurred. To admit this intense an emotional response to their music was to give them a level of power over her that could easily spell her doom.
The family, except for Luke, harmonized on the next verse.
Well, the Valiant finally died
And I sat and said my last good-byes
I saved a hubcap for my walls
Called the garage to make that haul
Well, the tow truck guys were drunk
And they complained it was a piece of junk
Yeah, that junk was my life
Valiant and Fury girls.
Mandalay bit the sides of her cheeks until she tasted blood. The song draped over her like a cerecloth shroud, the weight of its ache as heavy and final as the pressure of that wax-dipped funeral cloth.
Then Luke said, “Mama, y’all stop it.”
Claudia stopped singing, and the accordion choked off with a melodic wheeze.
“Luke, you apologize to your mama or you’ll get the whippin’ of your life,” his father said.
Luke stood up. His face was red, and his eyes shone with tears of anger. “You can whip me if you want, Daddy, but it still ain’t right, what you’re doing. Mandalay don’t want to sing with us, and that’s fine. She’s a guest in our house.”
Elgin stood, grabbed the back of Luke’s shirt with one hand, and began to unbuckle his belt with the other. “Boy, I’ll teach you to disrespect—”
“You will not,” Mandalay said quietly.
Everyone froze and stared at her.
She stood, her fingertips resting on the table. Her voice took on a quality of ancient, unyielding power. “You will not lay a hand on this boy. You will not punish him for standing up for what he thinks is right.” She said these things as simple statements, not orders. It was as if they were an already accomplished fact.
For a long moment, the only sound was the refrigerator’s compressor kicking on. Then they all jumped at the sudden knock on the door. It was one lone pounding, and they sat immobile, waiting for more. But it didn’t come.
Mandalay saw Claudia and Elgin exchange a look. It wasn’t hard to read: Whoever or whatever was out there, it wasn’t a guest expected for dinner. And it was far too soon for it to be Mandalay’s father.
Elgin picked up a shotgun from the corner and walked to the door. “Who’s out there?” he called.
They all listened. Over the wind, they heard what sounded like fingers scraping on the other side of the wood.
“Mommy,” whispered Luke’s other sister, Deetzy.
“Hush,” Claudia said softly but emphatically. Still, she took the little girl’s hand.
Mandalay moved slowly around the table. There were things, she well knew, that lived near the Tufa, unseen and unseeable except in rare instances. Most of them were harmless, but not all. Some were both terrifying and incredibly dangerous. Given who she was, Mandalay should have been able to sense what was out there, and thus know ho
w to respond to it. But nothing came to her.
And of course, none of that would matter if, on the other side of the door, waited a fully human maniac who had randomly chosen to slaughter everyone in this particular house.
More scraping sounded through the wood. It couldn’t be an animal; the sound was unmistakably fingerlike. And as she approached, Mandalay could tell the sound came from low on the door, from a small child’s height. If a child were lost in this weather, as she had been—
“Open the door,” she said.
Elgin looked back at her. The fear and weakness in his face almost made her angry. “No fucking way.”
“Open … the door,” she said, using the same tone she’d used to stop him before.
“Barton,” Elgin said to Luke’s older brother. “Hold this gun. If it’s anything that looks dangerous, shoot it in the goddamn head.”
“You think it’s a zombie?” the boy asked. The gun barrel waved in his unsteady grip.
Elgin looked at Mandalay with mixed contempt and fear. “It could be. It could be anything.”
He slid back the dead bolt, took a deep breath, and threw open the door.
It slammed into the wall. That startled Barton, who yelped and fired the shotgun. The noise was like standing right next to a thunderclap. The two younger girls screamed.
The blast went through the open door, harmlessly over the old man sprawled on the porch.
Elgin snatched the gun from Barton and slapped him so hard, it knocked him to the floor. “You goddamned retard!” he shouted, his voice cracking.
“Stop it,” Mandalay said. She knelt by the old man and turned him onto his side.
They all gasped when they saw the face of Rockhouse Hicks.
None of them spoke. Only the wind made any sound, whistling through the door and moaning in the cold sky outside. It tousled the old man’s disheveled white hair and sent ripples along his clothing.
“Is he dead?” Deetzy asked.
No one moved to check. At last Elgin said, “My daddy told me this story once. These three fellas were coming across the mountain going to Kingsport, and one of ’em got tired. He told ’em he was gonna sit down on this here stump for a while, but he’d catch up to ’em. They went on into Kingsport, and on their way back they found him still sitting on that stump, froze solid.” He nodded at Rockhouse. “Just like that.”
Then Barton said, “Y’all, look at his hands.”
Mandalay lifted the hand that must have clawed at the door. The wound where his extra finger had been sliced away was scabbed and swollen.
He was too big for her to move on her own. “He’s not dead,” she said. “Get him out of the snow.”
“No,” Elgin said contemptuously. “He ain’t nothin’ to us now.”
“He can’t sing,” Claudia agreed, “and now he can’t play. We don’t have to bow down to him no more.” She pulled Deetzy close and grabbed Ida Mae’s hand. “We don’t have to keep our girls away from him.”
“We can’t leave him there,” Mandalay said.
Elgin put his foot on Rockhouse’s shoulder and pushed him outside enough to close the door. “The hell we can’t.”
Mandalay turned to Luke. She didn’t have to say anything; the boy said, “Get out of the way, Dad,” and took one of Rockhouse’s arms. Mandalay took the other, and they dragged him into the living room. Mandalay shut the door.
Rockhouse rolled onto his back. Spittle frosted the corners of his lips. He wore no coat, and his clothes were stiff with frozen sweat and snow.
“How the hell did he get here?” Elgin mumbled. “And what’s wrong with him?”
“He walked,” Mandalay said.
“Down from the mountain?” Luke asked in disbelief.
“There’s no night wind for him anymore,” she said. “No riding it where he wants to go.”
“Jesus,” Claudia whispered. The climb down was treacherous on a good day, and in this snowstorm, with no coat or other protection, it would be a nightmare. He was luckier than he knew to reach this house alive.
Mandalay looked around at the Somervilles. “I know how you feel about him, but look at him. He’s nothing now but an old man who can’t talk, and who’s seriously hurt. Claudia, can you get me a cloth soaked in warm water? And Ida Mae, fetch me a blanket or a comforter.”
As they went to their tasks, Elgin said, “He ain’t stayin’ here. You can take him with you when your ride gets here.”
“I will,” Mandalay said.
Elgin spit, not directly on Rockhouse but definitely in his general direction.
Luke asked quietly, “Who do you think cut off his fingers?”
Mandalay shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”
Headlights raked across the front curtains, and the squeak of brakes came over the wind. Then a shadow passed in front of the light, and someone knocked firmly on the door.
Elgin opened it. Darnell Harris stood there, dressed in insulated coveralls, his bearded face guarded and wary. “I’m here for my daughter, Elgin.”
“Right here, Daddy,” Mandalay said from the floor.
Darnell stared down at her, at Rockhouse, and then around at the gathered Somervilles. “Looks like I missed the party,” he said at last.
“Ain’t no party,” Elgin said. “Take your damn daughter, and take this sack of shit with you.”
Darnell saw by the look in her eyes that Mandalay had already decided. He nodded and said, “All right. Hold on, I need to go get something.” He turned and walked away.
“And hurry up!” Elgin called after him. “We’re gonna have more snow in the damn house than we do in the yard!”
A moment later he returned with Bliss Overbay. Mandalay immediately stood and let the other woman, a professional EMT, kneel beside Rockhouse. She checked his pulse, examined the wounds on his hands, and brushed the hair back from his forehead. “We need to get him out of this cold,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling you,” Elgin said.
Mandalay took her coat from the wall hook and stepped back into her still-damp tennis shoes. “Thank you, Mrs. Somerville. I appreciate y’all taking me in out of the storm. I’ll get these clothes washed and give them back to Luke at school.” At the door, she stopped in front of Luke and looked right into his eyes. This time he looked back. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He nod-shrugged, and shyly smiled.
Then she stepped aside while her father lifted Rockhouse from the floor. The old man protested weakly, but he’d shrunken so much in recent months that it was no effort at all for Darnell to overpower him.
* * *
In the cab of the truck, Mandalay sat between Bliss and Darnell. Rockhouse was stretched out in the back, under the camper shell, wrapped in a heavy blanket. Falling snow spiked through the truck’s headlight beams as they drove.
“Reckon we need to take him to the hospital?” Darnell said.
“No, just take us up to the fire station,” Bliss said. “I can tend him there.”
“He might need more than tending,” Darnell said.
Bliss looked at Mandalay. She said, “It’ll be all right, Daddy. Bliss knows what to do.”
Darnell sighed, but nodded. As an afterthought, he pulled a tiny semiautomatic pistol from his pocket and handed it to Bliss. She put it back in the glove compartment.
“You brought a gun?” Mandalay said.
“Honey, when I found out where you were, you’re lucky I didn’t bring a tank.”
“They were good to me,” Mandalay said.
“That’s because they were afraid of you.” They drove in silence; then he said, “Bliss, if I drop all of you at the fire station, can you give Mandalay a ride home? I got to be somewhere in a little bit.”
“Sure,” Bliss agreed after seeing Mandalay’s faint nod. They both knew where he was going. Darnell was a pure-blooded Tufa, just as they were, and thus he was a member of the Silent Sons.
8
Because the ol
d Norfolk Southern Railway locomotive, parked on a long-abandoned side track, had white whiskerlike stripes painted on it, it was known as the “Catfish.” A single boxcar was still coupled to it, emitting a faint glow through cracks in its sides.
A half dozen trucks and cars were parked along the track. By the time Deacon and Marshall arrived, music echoed down the pass cut through the mountain by the railroad gangs over a century earlier.
Along came the F15 the swiftest on the line
Running o’er the C&O road just twenty minutes behind
Running into Cevile head porters on the line
Receiving their strict orders from a station just behind.…
They left their vehicle and walked down the tracks toward the train. Deacon glanced at Marshall, who had to stop and catch his breath. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Cold air messes with my asthma.”
“Didn’t know you had asthma.”
“Didn’t know it myself until this year. One of the perks of getting old, I reckon.”
Deacon continued to look at his friend. “Does Peggy know about this?”
“Does your wife know whenever you get sick?”
“Hell, she usually knows about it before the germs do.”
“There you go.” He pushed on past Deacon toward the train, stepping on the cross-ties between the old rails. In truth, it was more than asthma, as a tingling in his left arm always accompanied the shortness of breath, but Marshall wasn’t worried, because Peggy wasn’t worried.
Deacon watched his friend for a moment, until an owl hooted from the nearby trees. It broke him from his reverie.
Inside the boxcar a dozen men waited. The youngest appeared barely old enough to shave, while the oldest sat shrouded in blankets, puffing on a homemade corncob pipe. One, a thin man with a beard almost to the middle of his chest, continued playing “Engine 143,” although no one was singing. A kerosene heater sat glowing in the middle of the floor.
“Damn, y’all, you’d think your mothers died, and your dogs ain’t doin’ too well, either,” Deacon said as he climbed into the car. He helped Marshall up, and the two of them slid the door shut. Someone closed the opposite one, and the men all gathered at the heater like old-time hoboes around a fire.
