Whispers in the Night

by Brandon Massey

  Danielle glanced at the Winnie the Pooh clock on the dresser. Only two o’clock. The whole day stretched to fill with just her and the baby. Danielle wanted to cry, too.

  Kyle told her maybe she had postpartum depression like the celebrity women she read about. But her family had picked cotton and tobacco until two generations ago, and if they could tolerate that heat and work and deprivation without pills and therapy, Danielle doubted her constitution was as fragile as people who pretended to be someone else for a living.

  Lola could be hateful, that was all. That was the truth nobody wanted to hear.

  Danielle had tried to conceive for two years, and she would always love her daughter—but she didn’t like Lola much in summer. Lola had always been a fussy baby, but she was worse when Kyle was gone. Kyle’s baritone voice could snap Lola back to her sweeter nature. Nothing Danielle did could.

  “She still a handful, huh, Danny?”

  “That’s one word.”

  Odetta Mayfield was the only cousin Danielle got along with. She was ten years older, so they hadn’t started talking until Grandmother’s funeral, and they’d become friends the past two years. The funeral had been a reunion, helping Danielle sew together pieces of her family. Odetta’s husband had been in the army during the first Iraq war and come back with a girlfriend. They had divorced long ago and her son was a freshman at Florida State, so Odetta came by the house three or four times a week. Odetta had no one else to talk to, and neither did she. If not for her cousin and her mother, Danielle might be a hermit in summer.

  Odetta bounced Lola on her knee while the baby drank placidly from a bottle filled with apple juice. Seeing them together in the white wicker rocker, their features so similar, Danielle wanted to beg her cousin to take the baby home with her. Just for a night or two.

  “Did she leave a mark on my face?”

  “Can’t see nothing from here,” Odetta said. But Danielle could feel two small welts rising alongside her right cheekbone. She dabbed her face with the damp kitchen towel beside the pitcher of sugar-free lemonade they had decided to try for a while. The drink tasted like chemicals.

  “People talk about boys, but sometimes girls are just as bad, or worse,” Odetta said. “We went through the same mess with Rashan. It passes.”

  Danielle only grunted. She didn’t want to talk about Lola anymore. “Anything new from McCormack’s place?” she asked, a sure way to change the subject. Odetta worked as a clerk at City Hall, so she had a reason to be in everybody’s business.

  “Girl, it’s seven bodies. Seven.”

  Seven bodies left unaccounted for, rotting in swampland? The idea made Danielle’s skin feel cold. Mass graves always reminded her of the Holocaust, a lesson that had shocked her in seventh grade. She’d never looked at the world the same way after that, just like when Grandmother first told her about slavery.

  “My mother still talks about the civil rights days, the summer those college kids tried to register sharecroppers on McCormack’s land. He set those dogs loose on them,” Danielle said.

  “Unnnnnhhhhh-hnnnnhhhhh . . .” Odetta said, drawing out the indictment. “Sure did. That’s the first thing everybody thought. But the experts from Tallahassee say the bones are older than forty-odd years. More like a hundred.”

  “Even so, how are seven people gonna be buried out on that family’s land? There weren’t any Indians living there. Shoot, that land’s been McCormack Farm since slavery. I bet those bones are from slave times and they just don’t wanna say. Or something like Rosewood, with a bunch of folks killed and people kept it quiet.”

  “Unnnhhhh-hhnnnnnhhh,” Odetta said. She had thought of that, too. “We may never know what happened to those people, but one thing we do know—keep off that land.”

  “That’s what Grandmother said, from way back. When I was a kid.”

  “I know. Mama, too. Only a fool would buy one of those plots.”

  The McCormack Farm was less than a mile from Danielle’s grandmother’s house, along the unpaved red clay road the city called State Route 191, but which everyone else called Tobacco Road. Tobacco had been the McCormacks’ business until the 1970s. Another curse to boot, Danielle thought. She drove past the McCormacks’ faded wooden gate every time she went into town, and the gaudy billboard advertising LOTS FOR SALE–AS LOW AS $150,000. The mammoth, ramshackle tobacco barn stood beside the roadway for no other reason than to remind everyone of where the McCormack money had come from. Danielle’s grandfather had sharecropped for the McCormacks, and family lore said her relatives had once been their slaves.

  “How old’s this baby?” Odetta said suddenly. “A year?”

  “Thirteen months.”

  Lola had only been a month old last summer, when Kyle went off to training. But Danielle didn’t want to talk about Lola now. She had enjoyed forgetting all about her.

  “Your grandmama never told you nothing about summer and babies?”

  Danielle stared at her cousin, whose eyes were slightly small for her face. “You lost me.”

  “Just be careful, is all. Especially in July. Summer solstice. Lola may seem strong to you, but you gotta pay special attention to any baby under two. It’s always the young ones. And now that those bones have been unburied, you need to keep an eye out.”

  “What are you talking about, girl?”

  “I’m surprised your grandmama would let you raise a baby in her house. When your mama was young, she moved in with her cousin Geraldine. She never told you that? Lived in their basement until your mama was two.”

  The story sounded vaguely familiar, but Grandmother had died soon after Danielle married Kyle, when Danielle had still been convinced she’d be moving to Atlanta within six months. She hadn’t even been pregnant then. Not yet. She and Kyle hadn’t planned on a baby until they had more money put together. If not for Lola, they might be living in Atlanta right now.

  “What do you mean? Is the water bad?” Now Danielle felt alarmed.

  Odetta shook her head. “Leeches.”

  Danielle remembered the flies. Now she could expect leeches, too? “You mean those nasty things people put on their skin to suck out poison?” A whole army of leeches could crawl under the back door, with that half-inch gap that always let the breezes through. “Those worms?”

  “Not that kind,” Odetta said. “Swamp leeches are different. It’s just a name Mama used to call them by. You could call them lots of things. Mostly people call them demons, I guess.”

  Danielle would have thought she’d heard wrong, except that Odetta had a sense of humor. She had Danielle cracking up at Grandmother’s funeral, of all places, when Odetta whispered to point out how everyone who gave remembrances called Grandmother by a different surname. Grandmother had been married four times. When I knew Mrs. Jenkins . . . When I knew Mrs. Roberts . . . And on down the line. Once Odetta pointed it out, Danielle had to pretend to be sobbing to stifle her giggles. That laughter was the only light that day.

  “What did you put in that lemonade after I fixed it? I know you’re not sitting there talkin’ ’bout demons in the swamp like some old voodoo lady,” Danielle said.

  Odetta looked embarrassed, rubbing the back of her neck. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no voodoo, but just ask folks. Nobody has young children near the swamp in summer, or there’s trouble to follow. Cece’s baby got crib death. But usually it just lasts the summer. The babies change, but by fall they change back.”

  “Change into what?” Danielle said, still trying to decide if Odetta was playing.

  Odetta shrugged. “I don’t know. Something else. Somebody else. You watch this baby real close, hear? Anything happens, ask me to take her by Uncle June’s. He’s my granddaddy’s brother, and he knows what to do. He says it’s like those spirits flock to the swamp in summer, the way fish spawn. And they leech on to the young ones. That’s why Mama calls them leeches.”

  Danielle almost asked about the flies she had seen, but she caught herself. What was she thinking
about? Grandmother might have kept her candles lit, but this was plain crazy talk. The minute you start letting family close to you, turns out they’re bent on recruiting you for the funny farm, too. No wonder Kyle was so happy living so far from Atlanta and his relatives. He might never want to go back home.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Odetta said, grunting as she handed Lola back, almost as if to punish her. Danielle watched the sweetness seep from Lola’s face, replaced by the mocking glare she saved only for her mother. If Odetta hadn’t been sitting here watching, Danielle would have glared right back.

  “I got to get home and see my stories. Just remember what I said. Watch over this girl.”

  The swamp leeches can have her, Danielle thought. God as her witness, that was the exact thought in her mind.

  Just to be on the safe side—and because she knew Grandmother would hound her in her dreams otherwise—Danielle brought Lola’s crib into her bedroom so the baby wouldn’t be alone at night. Danielle hadn’t let the baby sleep in the master bedroom since she was four months old, and Lola never had liked the nursery. Now Lola fussed less at bedtime and Danielle rediscovered how much she enjoyed the sound of another person breathing near her at night.

  The strange thing didn’t happen until nearly a week after Odetta’s visit, when Danielle had all but forgotten the flies and Odetta’s story about leeches. A loud noise overhead woke her one night. It sounded like a boot clomping on the rooftop.

  Danielle opened her eyes, staring at the shadow of the telephone pole outside on her ceiling. Her bedroom always captured the light from the single streetlamp on this end of Tobacco Road. Sometimes her eyes played tricks on her and made her think she could see shadows moving. But shadows don’t make noise, Danielle thought.

  Kyle would have sprung from bed to get his rifle out of the closet. But Kyle wasn’t here, and Danielle didn’t know the first thing about the rifle, so she lay there and stared above her. That hadn’t sounded like breathing wood or any of the old house’s other aches and pains. Someone is on the roof. That was plain.

  Not a rat. Not a raccoon. Not an owl. The only thing big enough to make that noise was a deer, and she’d stopped believing in creatures with hooves flying to the roof when she was eight. The clomping sound came again, and this time it was directly above her.

  Danielle imagined she saw a large shadow on the ceiling above her, as if something was bleeding through. Imagined, because she couldn’t be sure. But it seemed to be more than just the darkness. It was a long, large black space, perfectly still. Waiting. Danielle’s heart galloped, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  The thing on the rooftop made up its mind about what to do next.

  The shadow glided, and Danielle heard three purposeful strides on the rooftop above the mass. The sound was moving away from her bed–toward the baby’s crib. The baby was still asleep, breathing in slow, heavy bursts. Danielle could hear Lola over the noise.

  Too late, Danielle realized what she should have done: She should have jumped up, grabbed the baby, and run out of the room as fast as she could. It wouldn’t have hurt to grab her Bible from inside her nightstand drawer while she was at it. But Danielle had done none of that, so she only lay there in helpless horror while a shadow-thing marched toward her baby girl.

  As soon as the last clambering step sounded above—CLOMP—the baby let out a loud gasp.

  The rooftop went silent, and the baby’s breathing was normal again. Well, almost. Lola’s breathing was more shallow than it had been before, more hurried, but it was the steady breath of sleep.

  After listening in the dark for five more minutes, feeling muscle cramps from lying so still beneath her blanket, Danielle began to wonder if the horrific sound on the rooftop had been in her imagination. After all, Lola woke up if she sneezed too close to her door—so wouldn’t the baby have heard that racket and started wailing right away? Suddenly, it seemed all too plausible that the sound had been from a raccoon or an owl. Just magnified in the darkness, that was all.

  Served her right for letting family too close to her. Just crazy talk and nightmares.

  But although she didn’t hear another peep from the rooftop—and Lola’s breathing was as steady as clockwork running only slightly fast—Danielle couldn’t get back to sleep that night. She lay awake, listening to her baby breathe.

  The next thing Danielle knew, sunlight was bright in her bedroom.

  Lola woke up at six o’clock every morning no matter how late she went to bed, so Danielle hadn’t lingered in bed long enough for the sun to get this bright all summer. Danielle looked at her alarm clock: It was ten o’clock! Midmorning. All at once, Danielle remembered the racket on the rooftop and her baby’s little gasp. She fully expected to find Lola dead.

  But Lola was sitting up in a corner of the crib, legs folded under her Indian style, patiently waiting. She wasn’t whining, cooing, babbling, or whimpering. The baby was just staring and waiting for her to wake up.

  Danielle felt a surge of warmth and relief, a calm feeling she wished she could have every morning. “Well, look at Mommy’s big girl!” Danielle said, propping herself up on her elbows.

  The baby sat straighter, and her mouth peeled back into a wide grin as she leaned forward, toward Danielle. Her eyes hung on Danielle, not missing a single movement or detail. She looked like a model baby on the diaper package, too good to be true.

  And Danielle knew, just that fast. Something was wrong with the baby.

  This isn’t Lola, she thought. She would swear on her grave that she knew right away.

  There were a hundred and one reasons. First, Lola started her days in a bad mood, crying until she got her baa-baa. The new sleeping arrangement hadn’t changed that. And Lola never sat that way, Indian style like a Girl Scout around a campfire. The pose didn’t look right on her.

  Danielle went through the usual motions—seeing if Lola’s eyes would follow her index finger (they did, like a cat’s), testing her appetite (Lola drank a full bottle and ate a banana), and checking Lola’s temperature (exactly 98.6). Apparently, Lola was fine.

  Danielle’s heart slowed down from its gallop and she laughed at herself, laying Lola down flat on the wicker changing table. The baby didn’t fuss or wriggle, her eyes still following Danielle’s every movement with a contented smile.

  But when Danielle opened the flaps of the Pampers Cruisers and the soiled diaper fell away between Lola’s chunky thighs, something dark and slick lay there in its folds. Danielle’s first glance told her that Lola had gotten her bowel movement out of the way early—until the mess in her diaper shuddered.

  It was five inches long, and thin, the color of the shadow that had been on her ceiling. The unnamable thing came toward Danielle, slumping over the diaper’s elastic border to the table surface. Then, moving more quickly with its body hunched like a caterpillar, the thing flung itself to the floor. A swamp leech. A smell wafted up from its wake like soggy, rotting flesh.

  For the next hour, while Lola lay in silence on the changing table, Danielle could hardly stop screaming, standing high on top of her bed.

  Danielle didn’t remember calling Odetta from the portable phone on her nightstand, but the phone was in her hand. The next thing she knew, Odetta was standing in her bedroom doorway, waving a bath towel like a matador, trying to coax her off the bed. Danielle tried to warn Odetta not to touch the baby, but Odetta didn’t listen. Odetta finished changing Lola’s diaper and took her out of the room. The next time Danielle saw Lola, she was dressed up in her purple overalls, sitting in the car seat like they were on their way to lunch at Cracker Barrel.

  “We’re going to Uncle June’s,” Odetta said, guiding Danielle into the car.

  Danielle didn’t remember the drive, except that she could feel Lola watching her in the rearview mirror the whole way. Danielle was sure she would faint if she tried to look back.

  Uncle June lived at the corner of Live Oak and Glory Road, near the woods. He was waiting outsid
e his front door with a mug, wearing his pajama pants and nothing else. A smallish, overfed white dog sat beside him. Odetta kept saying Uncle June could help her, he would know just what to do, but the man standing outside the house at the end of the block looked like Fred Sanford in his junkyard. His overgrown grass was covered with dead cars.

  Odetta opened the car door, unbuckled Lola from her car seat, and hoisted the baby into her arms. As if it were an everyday thing. Then she opened Danielle’s car door and took her hand, helping her remember how to come to her feet.

  “Just like with Ruby’s boy in ninety-seven,” Odetta told Uncle June, slightly breathless.

  Uncle June just waved them in, opening his door. The dog glared back at Lola, but turned around and trotted into the house, where it made itself scarce.

  “Let’s put her in the bathtub, in case another one comes out of her,” Odetta said.

  “Won’t be, but do what you want.” Uncle June sounded sleepy.

  Lola sat placidly in the center of the bathtub while the warm water came up to her waist. Her legs were crossed the way they had been in her crib. Danielle couldn’t stare at her too long before she was sure a madwoman’s wail would begin sliding from her throat. She looked away.

  Danielle gasped when she saw a long blue bathrobe hanging on a hook on back of the bathroom door. It looked like a man floating behind her. And the mirror on the medicine cabinet was askew, swinging to and fro, making her reflection shudder the way her mind was shuddering. Danielle wondered how she hadn’t fainted already.

  “I told you,” Uncle June said, and Danielle realized some time must have gone by. Uncle June had been standing before, but now he was sitting on top of the closed toilet lid, reading a well-worn copy of The Man Who Said I Am. “Won’t never be but one o’ them things.”