A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  He gave her a sideways look. “All right. We’ll stay here.”

  They both frowned at the cemetery. You think that mooncalf have any idea what a hard life is like? Zenon had said. Madeleine wished she could shake the words out of her head. Zenon was wrong. Zenon was an animal. Zenon had said he was evolving. He’d said . . .

  Ethan looked at her. “You ready to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  She turned her back to the headstones and eyed the crooked shotguns across the street, old, hurricane-worn, and yet still hanging on.

  She said, “Yes. But first, what about . . . what about things like telepathy. Or even . . .”

  “Or even what?”

  She cleared her throat. “Implanted suggestion.”

  He looked at her. She kept her gaze on the leaning porch of the house ahead.

  He said, “I gotta say, Maddy, your level of interest is a little surprising.”

  She said nothing.

  He sighed. “All right. You know I’m approaching this from a position of neuroscience, and parapsychology is new to me. But yeah, the general opinion of telepathy is that it’s just an extension of intuition.” He waved at his head. “The same highways in the brain, only more of them. Same is true with implanted suggestion. If telepathy is two-way, then implanted suggestion is a one-way version of that, where the subject isn’t necessarily aware.”

  “Not necessarily?”

  Ethan shrugged. “No. Awareness tends to weaken the effect. But you’re getting a little beyond me here. I study patterns in fMRIs for a living. What you’re talking about, I mean, implanted suggestion, that’s pretty much mind control. My team’s not looking at that. There’ve been experiments along those lines in the past, but we’re talking grim wartime stuff. Or underground. Usually involving narcotics and electroconvulsive therapy.”

  She said, “What about legitimate experimentation?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “What about generally accepted means of manipulating the brain? We can use brain implants to block or stimulate certain sectors of the brain, right?”

  “Come on Maddy, this isn’t—”

  “We can target single neurons or groups of them. We can even assist patients who are unable to move or speak by using brain implants to communicate with us through computers.”

  He sighed. That tolerant patience he’d shown was still there, but it was wearing thin. “True. And? . . .”

  “So if it’s possible to do that, and if telepathy does exist, we could make certain leaps. On one end of the spectrum, you have telepathic abilities like the feeling of being watched. Something just about everyone’s experienced. And on the other end, the ability to reliably, reliably, transmute thoughts.”

  “Madeleine.”

  “So if the basic fact of telepathy is scientifically proven, the question is, to what extent are we truly capable?”

  She stopped and turned to him, daring to look him full in the face, her hands open. “And if we can implant mechanisms into the human brain that can communicate with a computer, isn’t it possible for a telepathic impulse to accomplish the same sort of thing? And by the way, what other sorts of things are we capable of?”

  “Madeleine?”

  “What?”

  “Please tell me what’s really on your mind.”

  THEY RETRACED THEIR STEPS, walking back toward where their cars waited in the so-called “Jurassic parking lot” on campus. Madeleine told Ethan what had happened in the flower shop. She told him everything. He listened with a grim expression. When she finished, she waited for him to say something, but he just walked alongside her in silence, the only sound coming from his limping footfalls on the battered sidewalk.

  Finally, he said, “Tell me this. Did you kiss him?”

  “No. He kissed me and I turned away. I didn’t want him to.”

  “But you didn’t tell him not to.”

  She opened her hands. “It’s hard to explain. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t until I stopped fighting inside. It was weird, I just—I just thought about the wind. The wind was blowing. I heard it in the leaves of the potted ficus and . . . and then I told him to leave.”

  “Are you attracted to him?”

  “No.”

  “Were you ever attracted to him?”

  “Never.”

  He stopped walking and turned to her, hands in his jacket pockets, face tense. “So how is it that at the time, you’d let me believe we were gonna take those collection baskets to the flower shop in the morning? Together. And yet you wind up going there in the middle of the night with Zenon?”

  “I didn’t go with him. He just . . . Chloe . . .” She sighed.

  “Tell me why you didn’t let me help you to carry them to the shop. Let’s start with that!”

  She swallowed, her gaze at her feet. “I honestly don’t know why I did that.”

  “You’ve never once let me help you. With anything. You tense up if I so much as open a door for you.”

  “I guess with the flowers, I didn’t want to put you out. It seems so stupid now.”

  He gestured back toward the cemetery. “And all this talk about belonging in the rough neighborhoods. You wear it like a badge of honor. I wonder if it’s another way to alienate me.”

  Her mouth opened.

  He said, “This thing with Zenon, I don’t even know what to make of that. In fact you and I should take a step back. And you should figure out what you really want. Me, I’ve laid out exactly what I want. I’m done with casual dating. I want someone who’s gonna be part of my future. Someone who wants to create some creatures, and I don’t mean splicing genes in a damn Petri dish. I’m talking about rug rats and Little League and pigtails and snotty noses. Do you even want any of that?”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know, it’s just . . . I’ve always had my mind on my family and career. . . . Never really thought—”

  “Well maybe it’s time to think. I’m gonna do a little thinking of my own.”

  twenty-one

  HAHNVILLE, 1912

  RÉMI COULD STILL HEAR Laramie’s mother sobbing and whispering from within the chapel, even though the plantationers were still singing. Their voices, which Rémi had found soothing at first, now buzzed sideways in his head. He backed away from them, putting his hands to his ears, feeling a sudden need to get away. He turned from the cottages and made for the brush, and the voices weaved and entangled with the dissonance of night creatures.

  Daylight was fading, the chatter from the bayou reaching crescendo. All about were sounds to bewilder and frustrate him. He came upon the eastern well and sat down on packed dirt, leaning against the hard, cool stones.

  In a clump of grass by the base of the well lay an assemblage of pebbles. He recognized them as a slingshot collection. A burning in his throat. It occurred to him that he was thirsty and he thought about what Tatie Bernadette had said, that Laramie might have drunk water from this well. He looked, and saw the drawing pail hanging from a nail in the railroad tie beam, and wondered if the water was indeed tainted. He pulled back the wooden lid and peered into it. The well reflected his silhouette, framed on the glassy surface by pastels of late sunset.

  He sensed that he was not alone.

  Rémi scanned the thicket but saw no one. The sensation persisted, and with it, a hatch of dread. He conjured the day the stranger had come to the garden, whispering to Helen and Laramie. He’d had this same feeling then. He closed his eyes, imagined a light switching on, and then opened them.

  Slowly, he became aware of movement nearby, and heard a groan from the thicket.

  He spun about. The sound seemed to be coming from an expanse of rotting wood. It had been a main branch of an oak tree that was hundreds of years old, wide as three men side by side. The intonation rose once more, deep and inhuman, like the sound of a hurricane tearing the roof from a house.

  Rémi pushed the palms of his hands into his temples and squeezed. The outline of the log wa
s a crooked ramp in the fading light. He sensed movement on it.

  Cold dread cleaved Rémi’s chest, but he stepped toward the log, straining his eyes and ears.

  Something was moving. The log was swarming with termites. One of the insects fluttered onto his knuckles, and he jumped back and shook it. He wiped his hand repeatedly and pressed it under his armpit, a tremor pulsing his spine. The log crackled as a smaller branch fell under the fervor of the insects. He had never before known an infestation to work so ravenously.

  Then the entire log creaked, and as Rémi stood transfixed, it split and fell open. He stumbled backward in horror, gasping. A black man’s hand protruded from the hollow center. The stench of carrion was overwhelming. Rémi gagged and reached for his hunting knife, thinking he must hack away the crumbling log to expose the body, and release the poor devil who had become entombed there.

  But the hand moved. Fingers flexed and closed around a branch.

  Rémi backed away from the thing, his knees failing him when his feet touched the well, and he slid to the ground, eyes rooted to the log. Another hand emerged from the wood and pulled, and then the log crumbled open.

  A hulking form climbed from the rotting wood and rose to his full height over Rémi. He had ebony skin that flurried with the occasional panicking termite, wings flashing indigo mirrors of sunset. His overalls were dusted with moss and rotting wood. He stood, heaving, eyes trained on Rémi. He was the same man that Rémi had seen whispering to Helen and Laramie.

  Rémi grappled to find his voice. It came strained and croaking.

  “Who are you?”

  The stranger stared, the whites of his eyes the only discernible feature in the growing darkness.

  He answered, “Ulysses.”

  Rémi found his strength and struggled to his feet. He searched for words to challenge this man and demand an explanation, but his voice failed him. He could not think how a living person could emerge from that log.

  Instead, Rémi managed to say, “What do you want?”

  Ulysses pulled back his lips, revealing black gaps between his teeth. He stretched forth his massive hand and before Rémi could stop him, forced his fingers inside Rémi’s mouth. He wrenched one of Rémi’s teeth free from its socket.

  Rémi sank to the ground, bleating in surprise. Ulysses rolled the tooth between thumb and forefinger and then tasted it as one might sample the freshness of milk. He turned and thrust it back inside the log, burying it under crumbling wood and insects. Rémi coughed, lurched, and gagged, spitting mesocarpic blood like pomegranate pulp.

  Ulysses laughed, a deep runble. Teeth flashed in the evening light, the canine points tapering at the ends. Rémi could smell the rot of his breath.

  Ulysses turned and faced the well. His back muscles flexed visibly through the thin, filthy shirt as he moved. Rémi heard the sound of water meeting water, and realized that the brute was urinating into the well.

  “Merde!” Rémi cried and jumped to his feet.

  Ulysses emptied himself and turned back.

  “What . . . what are you?” Rémi whispered.

  The brute leaned toward him so that his face was inches from Rémi’s, the stench of decay nearly overwhelming. “Je suis votre damnation.”

  Then he turned, striding toward the woods, and disappeared.

  Rémi stared after him. He dared not move nor even breathe. His mouth tasted bitter with blood, the defiled tooth lying somewhere within the rotten log.

  RÉMI APPROACHED THE GARDEN in a daze. Francois was standing outside the kitchen house tapping tobacco into a paper wedge, and he called out to him. Rémi kept pace. His mind was tumbling over the taste in his mouth, and the strangeness and dread. Not a thing he could fluidly describe. He was barely aware as Francois strode over, cigarette still unrolled in his hands.

  “Rémi, what’s ailing?”

  Rémi continued toward the house.

  He stopped and turned around. “Francois. Condemn the eastern well. The water is foul.”

  twenty-two

  NEW ORLEANS, 2009

  A HEADACHE CLUNG LIKE a crab behind her eyes. Jasmine fussed to be let outside and so Madeleine heaved herself out of bed and slumped down the stairs in her cotton sleeping shorts and tee. She felt nauseated, even wondered if she was going to throw up. She had barely slept at all.

  She turned the handle to the French doors and stepped barefoot onto the pavers, and almost immediately, the fresh air lifted her spirits. The sunlight turned to gold in the fine hairs on her thighs. Jasmine bounded over to the ivy and watered them. The courtyard was small, a hidden garden, and the focal points were the climbers—honeysuckle, ivy, Carolina jasmine. Madeleine’s favorite was the honeysuckle. She and Marc used to play hide-and-seek among them in Houma, tasting the nectar. She stepped over and plucked a flower, pulling the stamen through the petals, and touched her tongue to the sweet jewel at the base.

  A pinprick on her forearm. She slapped, and pulled her hand away to a bloodied ink blot. Jasmine trotted over at the sound of the slap.

  “That’s the problem with honeysuckle, Jazz. You gotta be ready for mosquitoes if you want a little sweetness.”

  She ushered the little dog back inside and up the stairs, and then tapped on her father’s door.

  “Go away.”

  “Come on, Daddy, get up.”

  “Nobody home.”

  She turned the handle and poked her head through. “Rise and shine.”

  “Come on, baby girl, I got a headache.”

  “I have a headache too. All the more reason to get up and shake it out.”

  Jasmine vaulted onto the bed and tongued Daddy’s face.

  “Gyadh!” he cried, and dove for cover.

  “Come on Daddy. We’re going back to Bayou Black today.”

  He sat up and blinked at her, face puffy. “What? We was just there coupla days ago.”

  “We need to deal with that house. We can’t put it off any longer. Anyway, I’m ending my sabbatical and won’t have the time later.”

  “I can’t do it today. I have to . . .”

  She waited. Daddy frowned as if searching for words.

  Madeleine said, “Well?”

  “Good God, baby, you know it’s too early for me to think up a good excuse. Why don’t you be an angel and leave your poor papa alone?”

  “Breakfast in ten minutes. We’re having sandwiches. Wear your grubbies.”

  She patted her leg twice. Jasmine released Daddy and bounded through the door.

  Daddy whimpered with saintly resignation. “You’re a hard woman, Maddy.”

  BY THE TIME THEY reached Bayou Black, the pain in her temples had lifted. Ironic, because the task at hand would itself be one giant headache.

  They stood armed with every possible weapon of cleaning artillery Madeleine could round up, along with boxes, tools, and industrial strength trash bags. But the moment they opened the door, the cleaning arsenal seemed paltry. The old Creole house reflected how Marc’s state of mind had turned. And the place had only festered since he was gone, succumbing to mold, rodents, and bugs. At the sight of it, Daddy Blank looked like he was about to swing his right foot behind his left, snap an about-face, and march back to the truck. Madeleine grabbed his arm.

  Jasmine galloped inside and dove for the moldering laundry, then took off like a remote-control race car, zooming through the house, eyes wild and tongue streaming. Her glee induced Madeleine and her father to take those first shaky steps across the threshold.

  Daddy said, “We oughtta pay somebody to come do this.”

  Maddy shook her head. “Wouldn’t do us much good. We have to sort through everything anyway. Look at this.” She picked up a stack of papers. “Here’s a farm ledger from sixty years ago, and here’s a flyer for a fais do-do.” She lifted her shoulders. “And this one’s an old tax lien. What do we keep and what do we throw away? It’s not really something we can hire out.”

  Daddy looked at the ledger in her hand, then stared pas
t it toward a stack on the coffee table below. “Terrefleurs. My God, look.”

  He picked up a folded, yellowing document from the coffee table. She scanned it over his shoulder.

  The heading, PLAT MAP AND TERREFLEURS PLANTATION stretched across the top in scripted block letters. Beneath that, LEBLANC. The delicate paper had worn through at the folds. It showed a single oblong plot of land bordered by the Mississippi River at one end and a stretch of bayou at the other. Though Madeleine could not discern the size of the plot, from the scale she guessed it covered hundreds of acres, if not a thousand.

  Madeleine said, “Wow. That was our family’s plantation? Who owns it now?”

  He eyed her and set the paper back down on the coffee table.

  “We ought to go see it,” she said. “After we’ve cleaned everything up.”

  He frowned. “It’s a long ways away. Probably all boarded up and fenced off.”

  “But it looks like it’s near Hahnville. Two hours, tops. It’d be fun, even just to drive by.”

  He grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. “Where did Marc get all this stuff, anyway?”

  Daddy unearthed Marc’s old radio and switched it on, and they both jumped at the booming volume. Madeleine remembered how it had been blaring when she arrived the day Marc died. She and her father glanced at each other, and he turned it down.

  She opened the curtains. Roaches and silverfish of all shapes and sizes, having taken over like a pack of squatters, darted for cover as light flooded the room. Absolutely every article of clothing Marc owned was strewn about the floor.

  “I wonder how long he was like this,” Daddy said.

  Madeleine shook her head. She had been so caught up in research and preparation for the House Ways and Means Committee that she had failed to visit her brother in the weeks before he died.

  She checked her father’s face, thinking about the battles he had fought with his own mental state. As hard as she tried, she just couldn’t rule out the correlation with Marc.