Four and Twenty Blackbirds (26 page)

11
The Death of the Sisters

I

"No," I said, to myself or to whoever could hear me. "No, of course I won't. Mae, is that you? Mae?" I scanned the tree line for some grand sign, or for a glimpse of a ghost who must be there. I saw nothing but endless rows of knobby trees and wet green leaves. For another moment, all was still except for the distant, incessant trickling of water and a choir of insects.

Just when I thought I might have imagined it, the voice came again.

He's coming, baby. You get yourself gone. Get yourself gone.

It was coming from the woods, just beyond where I could see through the foliage. The voice was almost normal, almost a fearful warning. But not quite. No living throat made that sad cry. These were ghosts I knew and loved.

I took a last look at Malachi, dribbling blood and saliva into the grass. He wouldn't be coming after me, not anytime soon. And I had his gun. The weight of the weapon pressed between my belt and my skin made me feel more secure, as though I could defend myself against the dead, or against those who had the power to raise them. I crouched down, tied my shoes tight, and stomped through the grass and mud, and between the tall old trunks. In a matter of seconds, I'd lost sight of the car behind me.

Get yourself gone, girl.

"Mae, where are you?"

Underneath the high, leafy canopy, the world was even darker than out by the road. Although most of the ground was solid enough, I had a hard time seeing where the forest floor was dirt and where it was mulch. My shoes squished as my feet sucked at the mud.

One sneaker sank at least two inches into the muck.

I lurched forward, grabbing a tree for support. A slick salamander, red and black and brown and a little bit gold, scurried up the trunk, away from my falling hand. I watched with relief as it shimmied higher, hiding itself on a low branch. For a dozen reasons, I was glad I hadn't crushed it.

I looked back towards the road. With a twinge of alarm, I realized I wasn't sure which direction I should be checking. The disorientation was dizzying, and my inner panic button was dangerously near to being pushed; but they wouldn't leave me here. The women had never proved anything but helpful before. They wouldn't let me die out there in the woods.

I hoped. I prayed. I even asked it aloud. "Mae? Willa? Luanna? I know you're here. You have to be. Oh my God, don't leave me out here. I don't know where I'm going."
And I'm sore, and I'm tired, and I have no idea what I'm doing,
I thought, but I didn't add that part. They probably knew it already. I clung to the trunk with one hand while the salamander's oil-black eyes stared down.

Yes—there, through the trees. A flash of color. A smudge of light or motion.

Then again, very distinctly, I saw yellow, a tall streak.

I staggered towards it. "Mae?"

But this was no ghost. And it was not Mae. A woman in a corn-colored dress knelt at the foot of a tree, the trunk of which was as big around as a toolshed. She was using a dull knife to scrape greenish-brown moss from the trunk, collecting it in a cloth bag in her lap. Patches of sweat dampened her dress from her shoulders to the small of her back, and her feet were bare, sticking out from underneath her thighs and twitching as her arm worked the blade.

"Hello?"

She didn't answer.

"Hello?"

The woman's head lifted, and cocked to the right. She'd heard something, but it wasn't me. I was staring down at Willa. Not the ghost Willa, who had come to my dreams, but the living, breathing woman Willa. Her flesh did not hang loose off her cheekbones, and her lips were full and firm. Her eyes and skin were not the pasty, postmortem gray I'd always seen. She was the color of black tea with a small spoonful of cream, and her eyes were olive-brown. A sudden swelling in my throat reminded me of the obvious—she looked a great deal like Lulu.

But her eyes were not looking for me. They were searching for something else, a different presence. One I'd not detected.

Who's there?
she asked, and only then was she betrayed as a figment. Although this apparition looked as solid as the woods around us, her voice remained the hollow echo that marked the speech of all the ghosts I've ever heard.
Avery, is that you?

Yes, ma'am.

He stepped from behind another large tree. He was wickedly handsome, as dark as European chocolate, with ivory white teeth. A cream undershirt showed from beneath the cotton plaid button-up he'd half tucked into a pair of dirty black pants. It would have been easy for me to say he resembled Dave, but he was so much bigger, and he walked with a sense of masculine aggression that my uncle generally lacked. This was a man accustomed to being obeyed.

It's just me.
His words had no more volume than Willa's, but I heard each precise letter when he spoke them. He walked up close to her then, and picked at the moss on the tree.
What are you doing getting this? We don't need any. It ain't the right kind.

Willa lowered her eyes to the bag sitting across her knees. I thought I saw fear beneath her lids before she averted her eyes. Fear and something else . . . guilt.
Sure it is,
she nodded, but Avery didn't believe her and neither did I.

No, it ain't. This is good for some things, but not for what we need tonight. You know this isn't what I asked for.

She looked up at him.
Honest I don't. I thought this was what you said.

Well, it ain't.

What kind do we need, then?

Never mind,
he said.
I got it already. I got almost everything I need to make it work.

He turned his back to me and offered her his hand, as if to help her rise. But in the other hand, behind the small of his back, he held a long, serrated knife with a wooden handle.
I only need one more thing, and you can help me with it.

Oka
—

The knife cut her word short.

She tried to move backwards but he held her by the shoulder, at the crook of her neck, and he would not let her fall. Blood gushed over his hands, and down the front of her dress in dark orange streaks where it wet the yellow fabric. She clawed at his arms, and pushed at his chest, and kicked weakly at his legs . . . and then went slack.

Her knees unlocked and she folded to the ground, still sucking at air through her slashed throat.

While she lay there soaking the grass around her, not completely unconscious, Avery took the big knife to her wrist and began sawing. I clapped my hand over my mouth and turned away, but I could not escape the sound of splintering bone and snapping veins, accompanied by the woman's gasps of astonished agony.

Avery was strong, and he worked quickly. When I dared to look again, he was dumping out the contents of Willa's little bag, and replacing them with the gory trophy of her right hand. He stood and tied the bag onto his belt. Then he hoisted her up, slinging her over his shoulders and carrying her away. One of those naked, calloused feet still jerked faintly against his back.

Go on, girl, Get yourself gone.

I heard it again, more urgently. I followed Avery's gruesomely laden form anyway, staring fixedly at the knife he'd shoved down the back of his pants, just like I was toting my gun.

Someone had to know. Someone had to see. I owed them this much.

I must have said that last part aloud, for a response came unbidden from the trees.

No, you owe us much more.

II

Avery carried Willa to the edge of a fetid pool that reeked of rot and disease. He dropped her in, splashing his ankles with the smelly black liquid. She didn't sink fast enough for his liking so he put his foot on her back and pushed. Bubbles gurgled up from her dress, from her lungs, and from her hair. And then she was gone. She did not rise.

Avery shook his leg, driving the worst of the water away. Somewhere, not far off, I heard the low plop and ripple of something quite large entering the pool. Soon after, a second plop, and more ripples. Then came the yellow periscope eyes and the long, scaly heads. I marveled to see how quickly the forest had given way to wetlands.

He left the pond purposefully, striding almost happily between the trees, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Sometimes when he turned or shifted I could see the bag at his side, and I could see how the bottom grew damp and deeply red.

He nearly ran into Luanna, who threw her hand to her chest and gasped when he came charging at her between the trees. She too was perfect and alive as far as I could tell, but when she spoke it was the same tinny, faraway sound I knew and recognized from my childhood.

There you are. I was just coming for you.

He smiled.
Were you, now?

Oh yes. I got the last of the roots to grind down for tonight.

Let me see.

She hesitated.
I told you I got them. Let's go back home and get this started.

Let me see them, Lu.

All right, then. No need to be that way.
She handed him a bag much like Willa's, lumpy with its contents.

He opened it up.
This ain't what I said for you to get.

It is so.

I said it ain't.

She shrugged, but her shoulders trembled with it.
Maybe I'm wrong. I thought that's what you told me.

Avery threw the bag down and cuffed her with the back of his hand. She clutched her face and wavered, but didn't fall.
A pinch of this would throw off the whole batch! You were gonna go on back home and mix it up before I could see it, weren't you? That's what you were gonna do. You women are out to get me, that's what it is. Either that or you're all stump stupid, and I know that ain't right. What's this turned into now, Lu? Why are you three trying to interfere with what you know I mean to do?

Ain't no one interfering, Ave. I just made a mistake, that's all.
She was just beginning to notice that the filth on his clothes wasn't entirely made of swamp scum and mud, and she was getting nervous, though she did her best not to show it. Only the quick twitch of her eyes betrayed her fear. Left to right they went, and right to left, intuitively seeking some exit even before the danger.

He took her quickly, though not so quickly as Willa, for Luanna was not taken off guard. She screamed and tried to run when she saw the knife, but he caught her hair in one huge fist and yanked her head back to be beaten and sliced. She didn't go down without a fight. Once, twice, even a third time she nearly got loose, only to be drawn back into his sharp embrace. I wanted to applaud her for it, but my stomach was turning, wanting it to end.

Luanna fought back like a jungle animal, and although Avery eventually took her down it was not without losing a handful of hair and flesh of his own. Towards the end I turned away, unable to watch another moment of ripping fabric and shearing skin. God, I hated myself for my revulsion. I hated myself for wishing she'd quit struggling and just give up already, so he wouldn't have to mangle her any more.

Finally she died, but even then he did not quit hitting her. When he was done, there was little left of Luanna to be recognized. Everything was covered with mud and blood from the random chunks of flesh torn in the fray. Her face was nearly gone, and what remained was blue or black. It was only afterwards that it dawned on me that she went by "Lu," and I wondered if it was more than coincidence that women with this name could fight so hard.

Eventually Avery's rage was satiated and Luanna's hand was tied up in her own small cloth purse. Avery carried her to the same dark pool where he'd sunk her sister. I did not see Willa's body, and I did not see any horrific, bloody-mouthed alligators, but I could not help but notice the ominous floating eyes lurking quite close.

III

Still, I followed.

Avery hiked with half-hopping steps between the trees, along a path he must have known well to walk so quickly. He was going deeper, farther back into the wettest lands that could still be called land and not a sinking stretch of mud. All the way I watched his back, swaying and dipping to dodge the low limbs and the softer patches of earth. A second bag hung at his side, jostled by his shifting hipbone, containing a second hand that leaked blood through the soft fabric, staining his pants in short pendulum swipes of russet brown.

One to go.

"No, no, no, no, no," I murmured to myself, keeping time with Avery's expertly stomping feet. He was getting ahead of me, but not by much. I knew what must happen next and I chanted against it,
no, no, no, no, no,
but all the prayerful begging in the world can't change what has already passed. I'd like to say that nothing can, but a brief while ago I would have said that nothing could bring back the dead, and now my opinion on the matter was not nearly so certain as before.

I tailed Avery maybe half a mile to a wood-slat cabin, set on short stilts to keep it from sinking or flooding. Three crooked steps led up to a narrow porch and an open door that swung without a screen. Clattering, boiling sounds of cooking came from within, and a pungent, earthy odor steamed from the stovepipe chimney that leaned out from the wall. Avery kicked the excess mud and gore from his shoes against the bottom stair.

Avery?
Mae called from within.

You got it all ready?
He went up the steps and stood in the doorway for a minute before going in. He used the back of his foot to close the door.

I climbed the stairs behind him. They creaked and groaned beneath my weight. Surely this was no phantom place. A stray nail was solid enough to snag my shoe. But why didn't they see or hear me? I didn't understand, but I was too fascinated not to watch. I didn't let myself in; I stayed at the window like a cowardly peeping Tom.

Mae nodded.
I got it all ready. Don't you smell it? Lord, but it's enough to clear out the swamp, it stinks so bad. Where's the girls?

Out there.
He waved towards the door.

They not done getting their share yet?

No, they ain't. Where's my little one? You didn't let her go out alone, did you?

Mae's eyebrows came together just a tiny bit.
She's right out back, playing with the frogs in the puddles. Once they started their croaking, there was no keeping her in here. She about drove me crazy, bouncing around calling out 'ribbit, ribbit,' until I sent her on out—

Avery put his hand on her cheek, and traced the curve of her face. Mae stopped talking. She touched his arm. I thought for a moment—that is, I tried to make myself believe—I thought they might kiss, and everything might be all right. Avery reached back behind her neck and firmly, but almost gently, he held her and kept her from falling backwards. She laughed and turned her back to him, thinking he meant to play.

I turned my back to the window, not wanting to see. Her frightened squeal, and her gurgling cry—I heard them, and this was enough. I heard her fall against the bed in the corner, and I heard the straw stuffing that made up the mattress crackle beneath her body as she thrashed against the fast falling knife.

And then everything was still. I waited for more, but no more came. Maybe as long as a full minute I stood there, back to the rough slat wall, panting as though it was my throat that had been slit with a rusty-edged knife. Something had changed in the swamp around me—something signaled a shift and a warning, and I braved the window's view once more. I couldn't see much of what I feared; Avery was facing the wall away from me, his back hunched over the bloody form on the bed. His elbow jerked furiously back and forth as he sawed off his third trophy.

I couldn't stand it.

I stepped aside and put my hands on the split-log rail of the porch to hang my head, fighting the dizziness and nausea that was creeping up my throat. My hair hung around my face in a wavy black curtain, one I did not care to part. I could not look through that window again or I would go more mad than my cousin, and with madness I could not save Lu or even myself. I'd seen enough.

Yes, now you've seen enough.

I raised my head just enough to see out from between layers of hair with one wet eye. They were all three there, Willa, Luanna, and Mae, standing before me in the damp overgrowth that passed for a front yard. They appeared the way I had always seen them before, dead and unhappy. Three furies, or three fates . . . the Gorgon sisters once beautiful, made into sad monsters.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, having half an idea but needing instructions.

Your mother-aunt will be dead at sunset,
Mae said, nodding towards the sun. It had already fallen behind the trees and would soon be level with the horizon. I had light enough to see by, but not much more than that.

The energy that hit you, that was his call for her life.

It's gone to claim her.

If you kill him, the wave will wither before it reaches her.

I glanced sideways into the window at the hulking form, still looming and carving at Mae's corpse. "I can't kill him. I don't think I can even look at him."

But you will kill him. Or all is lost.

"What do I do?" I asked desperately, clutching the rail with my hands and forcing back a wad of rising vomit. The women remained immobile, stiff as statues except for the swaying of their garments, pulled at by a wind I couldn't feel, touched by a peculiar breeze that didn't brush anything around them.

Why ask us?
Luanna finally shrugged.
Go and make your own try if you want to save her.

Willa agreed.
Go on, now. You've come this far. Would you kill her now by waiting? She who hesitates . . .

Yes, she who hesitates . . .

She who hesitates . . .

Once again I begged their aid, "What do I do?"

Mae shrugged as casually as if I'd asked her for the time and she had no watch.
How should we know? As you've now seen, we failed. We would have stopped him if we could, but our try came too late. We were weak against him, because we loved him.

"I'm not strong enough."

You are. He's seen to that. He's given you everything you need. What did you think those draughts were for? Why do you think his old sister still lives? Oh yes, darling. You're plenty strong now.

I stood on the rickety porch, clawing at the rail that would give me splinters if I held it any harder. I still smelled the tangy, earthy cooking that spewed out steam and smoke from the stovepipe, and the sun was sinking even as I stood there.

I steeled myself, prepared for the worst, and looked in the window again. There was a familiar shape—no, not the same one, but with a smaller, thinner back—hunched over a form lying prostrate on the bed; and instead of bare black feet thrashing against the mattress, the prone legs now occupying that space were clad in muddy tennis shoes not so different from my own.

So this was the shift the woods had signaled. I was back in the real world, if in fact I'd ever left it.

I reached for the door and pushed it with my fingertips. It bounced inward with a squeaky jolt. The man at the bed stopped what he was doing. In one of his hands I saw a thick twine ropedangling. He was not cutting the body on the bed, he was restraining it. I was so relieved I took a deep breath.

From the kneeling, skinny body came a familiar voice. "You came in time. I knew you would." That voice was strong, and deep—it did not seem to match the wrinkled hands that held the rope. And I had heard it before, in my stranger dreams and lucid fears.

I started to reach backwards for my gun, but something made me reconsider. "Who are you? And what are you doing to . . . him?" Yeah, I
did
know those shoes. I knew those dirty jeans.

He laughed, low and mellow. "I'm not hurting him near so much as you did. Boy, but I knew I did right giving you the medicine. Of course, you're mine anyhow. I knew you'd be tough. But this one, he's the vessel. I won't be harming him. I need him." He spoke so smoothly, it was like being on drugs and listening to Barry White. Impossible for that voice to belong to those skinny arms, that bony back.

"Who are you?"

"You know who I am."

I argued, but my protest was a lie and we both knew it. "No. I don't."

"You do. But you're afraid. There's no need for it. I'd not harm you any sooner than I'd harm
him.
" He twisted his neck just enough to see me with one brown eye, the whites gone yellow with age. "Naw, I'd not harm you none at all. You're here to help me."

"I'm . . . not. You're crazy. I'm not going to help
you.
"

He nodded and his jowls flopped. "Oh yes, you are. You've come back to me. You know you're mine. You've always known. That's why you're here." He returned his attention to my poor cousin, wiggling and whimpering. He tightened one last knot.

"I'm here because you're trying to kill Lulu. And I mean to stop you." A slim, pale ray of light squeezed in past the gauzy burlap curtains. I had just a little time. A few minutes, maybe. I reached for the gun; I pulled it out from my pants but let it hang down at my side.

"There ain't no stopping what's already done."

"I've got until sundown."

"Maybe." He rose to his feet and faced me for the first time. He still stood with that aggressive confidence I'd seen in the visions. He stood like a man who knows something that you don't, and it's something that can make the difference between living and dying. "Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. But I do know you'll not kill me. I've lived too long to be taken by my own child."

My fingers went numb, and then weak. The gun slid loose and clattered to the wood floor. I did not hear or feel it fall. "I'm not—I'm not yours. I'm not."

He cocked his head and smiled without showing any teeth. "Come now. You know better than that. Say my name, girl." A pair of drawstring pants were pulled tight around his narrow waist, and the shirt that was tucked into them was gray and threadbare with age. His feet were naked except for grime, and his once smooth skin had gone ashy and dull. I remembered, someplace in the back of my mind, the letters from this place—one to Pine Breeze. Eliza must have been here to visit, at least once or twice, though it was hard to imagine her in such a place.

"It's not possible," I breathed.

"Say my name. He's awake now." He pointed down at the body, now quivering with fright and straining halfheartedly against the ropes. "Say it, and let him see that you were right all along. Won't that feel good, now? Won't it be right to show him he was wrong? After all he's put you through, I wonder why you aren't throwing it in his face."

He stepped aside and I saw Malachi's face, gagged by a dirty rag, eyes bugging out of his skull as he stared up at the man who'd bound him. I looked back and forth between them, unable to move or act or think straight.

"Avery." It barely came out. Surely I hadn't said that aloud. It could not be true. It could
not.
But Malachi knew, more certainly than I did. I could see it in the bulging veins at his temples and the paralyzed jerking of his hands.

"Say it so he can hear it. You say my name, and you tell him you were right."

"Avery." There. It was out, and loud enough to be heard. Malachi closed his buggy eyes and tears of frustration welled out from the cracks. "You can't be. That's not possible." Even as I contradicted him, I knew it was pointless.

"And you can't be my long-lost baby, but that's so too."

I faltered, realizing I wasn't holding the gun. I felt around for it, but didn't find it. I didn't even look down at the floor. I couldn't look anywhere at all except at him, and it didn't seem important, somehow. I'd walked in with a gun, and now it was gone. Not in my hands. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except to see him some more, and to hear him talk. "You're wrong," I argued again, maybe just to hear him speak.

"Now, why would you fuss, when you know it's a fact? You're my child—I know it, you know it, the women know it—" and here he gestured at the door, as if he'd known all along they were there. "Even the spirit at the hospital, this boy's momma, she knew it. She smelled it on you right away."

"Wha—what?"

"You know that place—that place where you were born. That angry old bitch knew by your smell that you must be mine, but that's not why she tried to scare you so bad. Malachi, when's your momma gonna give up and go to rest? All the folks she hates are dead. I'd send her on myself if she'd listen."

Malachi mumbled a furiously garbled answer, but I didn't understand or care. The air inside the shack was so heavy I could feel it pressing down against my skin; I could have taken a handful of it and squeezed it into some shape. Or perhaps it was just the smell of the evil herbs churning and boiling as the night approached. The night—yes, the night was approaching. I only had until sundown.

Maybe
until sundown.

Hang on, Lulu,
I prayed, trying to pull my thoughts together into something coherent enough to be useful.