Harlan County Horrors (20 page)

“
I’m glad she trusted you with this.” He ran his hand over the
blanket. “She knew you, Peter. She knew you wouldn’t be able to
kill it. You didn’t, did you?”

There was no tone of a question in what he said. I shook my
head slightly.

“
It was male. The first since JR. It was a sign. The time had
come. We made it together, for her, so she could become like
me.”

“
But she’d have to be dead or dying for you to…”

I
lifted my eyes toward his voice and felt the presence of his hand
near my face, even though I could see him clearly enough twenty
feet in front of me. The blackness and pulse closed tighter around
me. The lamps seemed to falter as the bleeders exchanged the musty
air with fresh from the main chamber.

He
removed the blanket, the lower half stiff with thirty-year-old
blood. “Now all I need is her.”

“
You mean Mama?”

“
When I visited your mama that last night, I sent Becca a
message, too.” He tapped his temple. “She might’ve thought it was a
dream, if she even knew about it. She helped me make sure I’d be
able to bring her back.”

Bring her back?

I
heard his voice in my head, strong and clear: Your p’ai is strong,
Peter. Like mine. She knew that. I tried to convince her to take
you, make your energy into her own, but she wouldn’t. She loved you
too much. More than she loved me. No matter now. My p’ai is
stronger than yours, and this shell of a body has strength and
speed you can’t begin to imagine. When I finish my task, when I
bring her back, I’m going to make sure your mama has all the yang
energy she needs. She’ll be hungry and she’ll drain you dry to get
it. I’ll help her do it, even if she wouldn’t give me your sisters
and left me here to sleep for thirty years. She thought you’d keep
them safe, once you knew. She thought you’d be able to outfox me.
Seems she was wrong. Now why don’t you just come a little closer to
your pop so we can have a little talk? Just a little closer is all
I need.

The
lamplight caught his smile as he turned his face toward me and
tensed his body as though he were a cat about to pounce.

The
wire of the cage suddenly felt like molten metal. I jumped back,
letting go and stumbling back into the elevator. My sneaker caught
on Ching-Ching, and before I realized what had happened, it tumbled
forward, into the gap, and clattered against the walls as it fell
endlessly into the pit of the mines. Without sliding shut the gate,
I yanked the lever and sent the cage shooting to the
surface.

“
Peter!” he yelled. “Peter, you can’t run, boy! You’ve got
nowhere in this world you can hide from me! Once I have her, once I
bring her back into this world with this creature we made, I’ll
feed her with another! With you! With JR! And I’ll drain your bitch
sisters dry before I’ll spend another day hiding in this hellmouth!
You hear me?”

My
hand trembled as I reached into my jacket pocket for the envelope.
I pulled out the note I’d written so long ago, the one I’d left in
the trunk. As the elevator climbed and I struggled to my feet, dirt
from my trip to the graveyard sloughed from my shoes through the
cracks in the floor.

“
There is somewhere I can go,” I whispered. “I know you can’t
cross water, and that’s why they voodooed you up to ship you home.
You can’t so much as go to the graveyard ‘til the creek goes dry.
And I’m fixin’ to make it so you can’t never get me, Pop. Nothin’
can get you across a goddamn ocean without someone to help you. And
you got no one.”

I
reached inside my jacket pocket for my old letter and used the
lighter I’d swiped from Becca’s purse to get it going. The yellowy
paper curled and blackened. I knelt at the edge of the cage and
held it until the flames licked my fingers. I watched it float
through the coal-rich blackness of the shaft until it
disappeared.

Back at the level of the main chamber, I threw the brake and I
ran, tripping over hogbacks as the air freshened into damp autumn
night. I started my truck in an instant and floored the gas pedal,
not stopping until I got to an interstate gas station in Tennessee.
I filled the tank, bought a sixty-four ounce Coke and had a nervous
breakdown in the parking lot, crying, coughing, and screaming until
I fell unconscious.

Like Pop said, it was there when I got home. I’d expected it
to be. Ching-Ching grinned its devilish grin from the “C” on my
welcome mat. It wasn’t as hot as it had been, but it still pulsed,
faintly but with the same constancy and intensity.

That Monday, I tried calling Becca and JR to tell them the
story I’d planned about moving overseas indefinitely, but there was
no answer anywhere, not even on Becca’s cell. I took a couple of
the pills I’d been prescribed and I called Sissy.

As
soon as she heard me speak, she said, “You haven’t
heard?”

“
Heard what?”

“
Two big things, Peter. One is that there’s a fire at
Gertie.”

“
Fire?” My voice sounded rusty.

“
Yeah. They can’t fight it. They’ve had to block it off and
let it burn out. They say it could turn into another
Centralia.”

“
What else?”

She
whispered, “Someone disturbed Mama’s grave. Buncha others too.
There was a hellacious mess over the whole cemetery, like a bunch
of teenagers run wild in a tornado, kickin’ over stones, uprootin’
trees, you name it.”

My
heart rose into my throat, choking out any words I would have
said.

“
Becca’s so upset, she got admitted to the hospital. I have
the kids here. JR’s trying to sort it out, talking to the cops.”
She paused. I heard her sip a drink.

“
But JR’s okay? You’re all okay?”

“
Fine, Peter. Becca’ll be fine too. She’s just
drained.”

“
What do you mean, ‘drained?’ ” I snapped.

“
Tired, Peter. Don’t you think she has the right to
be?”

“
Sorry. I just…I’m kinda drained myself.”

Sissy sighed. “You didn’t say goodbye, you know.”

I
ran my hand over my unshaven face and decided to tell her. “I’m
being transferred to the UK. I leave tomorrow.”

Silence.

“
I
have to do this, Sissy. You have no idea.”

“
I
do, Peter.”

I
said nothing. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her to get as
far away from Harlan as she could, that the stories were true about
the evil lurking in the mines. That she wasn’t safe and neither
were Becca and Jania.

“
Chiang-shih,” she said.

“
What?”

“
Chiang-shih, Peter.”

“
How do you know?”

“
Becca asked me to come over and sit a spell with Mama while
she went grocery shopping. She’d gone delirious and kept saying
this word and I must’ve wrote it a thousand ways before I hit the
right spelling. Thank god for Google.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me? At the funeral? Why didn’t you tell
me what you knew?”

“
You’re the occultist, not to mention Mama’s secret-keeper.
Why didn’t you tell me what you knew?”

I
sighed and rubbed my eyes.

“
Can you get rid of Ching-Ching? Would that help?”

“
I’ve tried for a solid goddamn week. I’ve run it over with
the truck, I set it on fire, I gave it an acid bath...I can’t even
crack it, much less open it. I don’t know what else to
do.”

“
I
have to go. Call me when you get to the UK.” She disconnected
us.

I
picked Ching-Ching up and turned it over in my hands like Pop had
done that night in the mine. As I turned it, I saw the white band
around its middle develop a thin, dark gap.

I
turned it over faster and faster, thinking of my mother and what
I’d done for her. Did I help her? Did I damn her? Did I damn
myself? The gap widened. The thing was opening like a plastic
Easter egg.

Blisters rose along my palms and fingers; my skin pinkened
with the heat it generated, but I didn’t dare stop passing it
between my hands. The bubbles of skin burst and began to fester
into bleeding sores as tears rose in my eyes and my nose. As my
blood soaked into its coarse hair, the pulse quickened into a rapid
tattoo and the little figure split neatly along its waist. I eased
its halves apart with my tender flesh and the pulse hit me square
in the chest. I dropped the pieces when I stumbled backward and
something fell out of its hollow body with a thud and landed
between my feet.

Your father’s purple heart, the old steamer trunk, and
Ching-Ching.

Your father’s purple heart.

Your father’s heart.

It
pulsed slightly, like a sleeping beast saving its energy. I
gathered it with my bare, bleeding hand and took it out to the back
porch. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had to try. I didn’t
think that it would. It wasn’t the shell that followed me; it was
the heart. But without its shell, could it be destroyed? And
without the magical energy that held it closed, could the shell be
destroyed as well?

My
theory was that the shell had kept it safe, kept it whole, and kept
it from destroying itself as it accompanied my father’s body over
the Pacific Ocean. Pop had to have been under some kind of sedation
to get back to us in his chiang-shih state—keeping the heart with
him, near him but not vulnerable—disguised as one of the truly
dead. If the rest of my theory held, neither he nor his heart would
be able to follow me over the water.

I
took the broken Ching-Ching to the grill, doused it and the heart
with lighter fluid, and tossed a match onto them. To my
astonishment, Ching-Ching’s remains began to splinter and break,
curling in the blue-orange flames. I watched them turn to ash,
flaking and falling into the copper bowl below the grate. I smelled
the heart cooking, but not burning. I latched the lid of the grill.
Purple-black smoke poured through the air vent and I watched it
rise, willing myself awake all night to see it.

I
stirred around dawn, having fallen asleep in a webbed lawn chair.
My back ached and my legs were stiff but I pushed up, took a deep
breath, and flipped back the grill’s lid. Ching-Ching, the
enchanted shell that had protected his heart when his body was weak
from its transformation, had incinerated down to its last wiry
brown hair. The heart remained, slightly charred but mostly
untouched, a material form of his p’ai. There was nothing to be
done but to take it with me, taking away its power to follow me and
destroying his p’ai, that minor soul that still burned in the shell
of his body.

I
couldn’t decide what kind of container to pack it in. I would
definitely check it, but I certainly didn’t want anyone to open it
in an NSA check or something. I dug out some old sample containers
marked “biohazard” with the university logo engraved into the metal
lids. I had no idea if it would burst into flame, explode, implode
or what. I waited on the porch for my seven a.m. shuttle, nodding
off into a dreamless sleep. I slept again while I waited for
boarding and all through the flight into Gatwick.

I
arrived by train and then walked to the B&B where the
university was putting me up until housing opened for me on the
islands. The old woman who greeted me talked about her time in
America, how much the mountains in the east had reminded her of the
bens at home. I asked her if she could make me something simple to
eat with a dram on the side. She replied that she loved my accent
and I returned the compliment.

After she left, I toppled my largest suitcase and ran the
zipper open around its edge. I sat back on my heels and took a deep
breath. I ran my fingertip around the container’s edge. No use in
waiting, I said to myself. I twisted it open, and as I did,
realized that it was light. Too light. As though it was empty. But
it couldn’t be empty.

I
peeled away the lid and peered into the blackness. A thin trail of
purple-black smoke rose out of the container and fought the air
currents to reach me. I pushed back and hit the edge of the
mattress. The smoke followed. Instead of scrambling onto the bed, I
slouched down, covering my face with both hands. The smoke invaded
the tiny spaces between my fingers. I held my breath as best I
could but panic made me breathless and dizzy. I gasped and inhaled.
The vapor felt thick, almost liquid, passing through my nose,
throat, and lungs. It affected me like liquor, numbing my
fingertips first. The room grew dark, the air oppressive and
scented with burning leaves, fresh earth, and pine; it smelled like
home.

The
hardwood below me became packed earth choked with roots. I lay on
my side, frozen between worlds, unable to connect to either. I
reached for where I knew my suitcase had been and felt nothing. Not
even what I saw: my mother’s trunk.

Distorted and foreign, I heard Sissy speaking. I recognized
her voice first and then deciphered what she said.

“
I’m absolutely sure he took it with him.”

Then our father’s voice, clearer, as though he spoke a
language I could understand when my sister only spoke it in
snatches. “Then that must be what’s happening to me. I’m dying. My
heart and soul are destroyed and I’m dying.”