Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (15 page)

Andre’s mama returns her attention to her son’s wounds, but he pulls away.

“I ain’t afraid, Mama.”

“No, I don’t imagine,” she says. “But I am. And I ain’t brought you this far to have some voodoo witch scrape yo soul with her black secrets. Yo mama have a time cleanin you up afta that.”

“I don’t needa be clean, Mama. I know right an wrong. I can tella difference.”

“And whatchoo goin do with the darkness comes yo way? Close yo eyes? Fo’get you ever known it?”

“No, Mama, I won’t fo’get. I’ll remember. Won’t be a black word can touch me when I know em all.”

Andre’s mama hears the truth in her son’s voice, even if the words bring dark thoughts to mind.

“Why you wanna know so much?” she asks. “Always with questions. Ain’t you got enough keep yo head full you gotta fill it up with blackness, too?”

Andre says nothing as he pulls his shirt over his head.

Andre’s mama sees in her son the man he will become. Like his body, his mind is maturing quickly, she hopes not too quickly.

“Keep it secret,” she says.

“I will.”

“I mean it, Andre. Don’t ever let on you know.”

“I won’t.”

Andre is a good boy, his mama knows that. He’ll do what he’s told. She prays to God so he will.

“Andre,” his mama says, “words have power. In yo head, yo tongue, and onna paper. Don’t keep em in mori’n one spot. Don’t speak em and don’t write em down.”

“Yes, Mama.”

But he does write the words down, because even though he is a smart boy, smart boys sometimes do dumb things. He writes them all down and tells himself he’s being careful by using the words and phrases of his Master and his People as well as his own to disguise their meaning.

And when he’s older and wiser, he continues to write because knowledge is power and the book is a very powerful thing, indeed. It’s not until the book slips from his possession that Andre understands exactly how dangerous that power can be.

*   *   *

Andre was lying on his cot, wide awake despite the late hour and relatively calm seas, when the first explosion rocked the ship. He leaped to his feet and had just managed to pull his jacket over his shoulders when a second rumble shook the vessel from bow to stern.

“Too soon,” Andre murmured, as he pulled on his boots and headed for the door. Naira was waiting when he opened it.

“Engine room,” she said.

Andre was not surprised.

*   *   *

The ship’s engineer gave his captain the news twenty minutes later: two of the main pressure valves had failed to release, causing the primary steam chamber to explode. The second combustion was the result of an extreme loss of pressure created by the first.

The captain, a seventeen-year veteran of West Coast water routes, had experienced his share of at-sea mishaps, but this was his first aboard the
Año Nuevo,
a ship considered one of the most dependable vessels currently in service.

“Must have been a hell of a pressure spike,” said the captain. “No one in the steam room caught that?”

“It happened so fast. Every needle was steady one minute and in the red the next. I couldn’t shut it down fast enough.”

The captain seemed unconvinced. Andre was not.

Moments before the engineer delivered his assessment, the wheelhouse had been crowded with people, many of whom had no business being there. The first mate chased most back to their quarters. Andre made it clear his presence would be tolerated.

Andre asked the engineer directly, “How long to repair the damage?”

“I can get us limping in an hour, but we’ll need to dock to make thorough repairs.”

The captain grumbled something under his breath. “Do it,” was all Andre managed to discern.

The captain turned away from his engineer to study a set of coastal charts laid out on a table in the center of the room.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Andre, “but it doesn’t look like we’ll be reaching Astoria by Saturday.”

“No, I do not believe you will, captain. In fact, I think your immediate journey may be at an end. You need to take us to port.”

The captain glanced at the man who had already dictated more changes to his itinerary than any passenger he’d previously had aboard his ship. He was a giant, sure, but it wasn’t simply his size that had convinced the captain to modify his schedule. It was his demeanor. The man was too damn polite. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t quite explain, but he was certain his agreement with the giant African and his native companion was required. For what he couldn’t say.

Andre smiled. “Any port will do, of course.”

“Sure,” the captain, returning his gaze to the chart. “We can reach Newport by Saturday morn, barring further misadventure, but you don’t need to leave the ship. Yaquina Bay is fairly well protected, so she’ll be plenty comfortable.”

“I thank you, but we will take our leave at that time.”

“If that’s what you wish.”

Andre nodded to the captain and then ducked out of the room, followed by the young native woman.

The captain hadn’t even realized she was in the room.

*   *   *

“Is it the book?” Naira asked.

She and Andre stood near the bow of the steamer, taking in the cool evening air with a dozen other very disappointed passengers. Word had spread quickly that the ship would be making for Newport, but no farther.

“The wake of it,” Andre said. “Like the ripples that roll across the surface after a stone hits water. I can feel them when they pass, a pulse amplified for my presence, possibly because of it. The ship can feel them, too, and if we stay aboard I fear a disabled engine will be the least of her worries.”

“What of the book’s new owner?”

“I doubt he has anything to do with it. Though I suspect he feels the wake just as strong, maybe more so.”

Naira looked into the night sky, her eyes appearing to reflect the moonlight more brightly than the source.

“You’re sure it’s not a
her
?”

Andre let the question hang in the air for a moment before answering. He knew Naira was not making a general inquiry—that she had a specific
her
in mind—but he chose to ignore the implication, at least for now.

“I am,” he said eventually. “I think it would feel different in the presence of a woman. A man holds it now, a young man, I believe. I can scarcely think of anything worse.”

“It was written by a young man, was it not?”

Andre nodded. “Much of it was. It was only by dumb luck and the will of the gods that the thing did not twist his intentions into something uncontrollable. I still know that young man, Naira, I feel him in my heart, but I can never forgive him.”

“That debt has been paid, Andre.”

“Perhaps. But what of the older man? I may not be forgiving, but I do not fault the young man for his intentions, misguided though they were. But much of the book was compiled by a man of many summers, a man who should have known the folly of such a collection, the danger of it—a man who should have known better. I fear that debt remains unpaid and overdue.”

Naira looked at Andre with the eyes that had spoken truth to him for nearly a decade. He saw in them the same as ever and it made him remember exactly who and where he was—and where he was going.

“I apologize,” he said, shaking his head, but smiling. “The ease with which my thoughts are corrupted is disturbing. You must watch me, my friend. Until I am able to reconcile its presence I may be prone to more negativity than either of us is accustomed to.”

Naira nodded.

Andre stared across the water. The dark outline of the southern Oregon coast was barely visible, a slender swatch of nothingness between the water and the night sky. A single light blinked on and off in the distance.

“It calls to me, Naira. It taunts me from both my past and present. I should never have let it be.”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh?”

“I believe you didn’t. There was only truth in the story you told me. I would know if there wasn’t.”

She would know, of that Andre was certain. He couldn’t lie to her, even if he believed the lie himself.

But the story wasn’t a lie and it wasn’t false. His actions in Astoria eleven years earlier had been carefully arranged to ensure there would be no mistakes. Andre couldn’t destroy the book then, but it should have been safe buried beneath soil and so many secrets. Was its resurrection the result of accident or expedition? There was, of course, a more likely target for those seeking treasure, but that did nothing to ease Andre’s mind. A man who would seek out the dead—especially this particular corpse—was already on the path of darkness.

Andre took a deep breath and slowly let it go. “Regardless of how it has come to be in this world again, it is my responsibility to see the book removed. I will not allow it to be used as it once was.”

“Could it be? As I recall, you said you took some care in its compilation. A kind of cipher, wasn’t it?”

Andre chuckled. “Enough of a nuisance to slow down a simple man, perhaps even a man with some education. But I discovered after repeated readings the disguised words begin take on meaning, even as they appear to have none. They reveal themselves. It was my mistake to think that shifting tongues would rob the words of their power to those who could not read them. I was a fool to write them down in the first place.”

“You were eight.”

“And then I was nine, then ten, then twenty, but I still continued to fill the pages.”

Naira raised an eyebrow.

“No, I am still here,” Andre said, pulling his coat tighter against a growing wind. “It will not have its way with me that easily. But what I did was still foolish.”

“And what of this young man who carries the book now? Is he a fool or merely foolish?”

“Either would be preferable to a man who sees the thing for what it is, but continues to turn the page.”

11

The air inside the tent was cold and damp and not at all to Henry’s liking. Since leaving Astoria he’d grown unusually comfortable in his own skin, a condition he attributed to recent reading materials. Even now, he could feel the book pulsing against his chest, the warmth radiating through his body, but without the words to focus on, Henry was forced to attend a reality that offered little in the way of comfort.

Presently, a tiny woman with one arm and no legs sat on a stool near the opening of the tent, offering a toothy grin to all who entered. Recent arrivals included a tall, slender man in a loose-fitting suit whose skin hung from his bones like a damp rag, a short, apish man covered from head to toe with thick, matted hair, and a balding, middle-aged man who was unremarkable in all regards save for the fact that it was his name painted atop every banner in the camp.

Mason, whose body language suggested he was equally uncomfortable in the presence of the carnival people, stood beside Henry, with Hugh and Charlie close behind. The Hanged Man’s body lay at their feet, unwrapped from head to chest. To Henry it appeared the deceased had lost some of his resilience, but was otherwise in excellent condition for a decade-old corpse. This, as it turned out, was not a selling point.

“I don’t see it, boys,” said John Garibaldi, rubbing the salt-and-pepper stubble beneath his chin. “I just don’t see it.”

Mason answered quickly, “What’s not to see? He’s got the scar, you got the story. It’s the Hanged Man.”

Garibaldi looked from Mason to Henry. “Yes, a very compelling tale, possibly even true.”

“Every word,” said Henry.

“Possibly, but even I can see this fellow is, to put it politely, a might fresh for a man dispatched eleven years ago.”

Henry and his new friends had arrived in Tillamook just before noon to find the carnival doing a brisk business on a hill overlooking the small coastal community. Mason fumed when told their transaction would have to wait until the midday break, but Hugh and Charlie were content to explore the many tents and sideshows of the so-called Wild Western Caravan. Henry had stayed with the horses, tasked with watching over the corpse until it was time to make the sale. He didn’t mind.

It gave him the chance to read.

One passage in particular stood out, a section that spoke of the dead, the surprising flexibility of their condition, and their potential service to the living. Henry had never thought of the dead as being particularly useful, but the book spoke of this as something very real and very powerful. Perhaps it was a coincidence that the passage had been written primarily in English and French, making its translation easier. The corpse at Henry’s feet suggested otherwise.

Garibaldi turned to the man on his right. “Carl, what do you think?”

The skinny man knelt next to the body. He had long, gray hair and a thin mustache, neither of which did much to distract from his bony frame. Had he been lying next to the corpse rather than examining it, Henry would have said two bodies were for sale.

“Well, sir, he’s been dead awhile, but a decade seems doubtful. Decomposition is only just beginning to set in. And the flesh seems almost tender to the touch, still got a bit of bounce to it. Wish I could say the same.”

“Check his eyes,” said Garibaldi.

The skinny man spread his bony fingers across the dead man’s face and forehead and pulled back the eyelids, revealing two giant black pupils surrounded by a ring of gray and slightly yellowed whites.

Henry tried to look away, but the eyes followed him, kept his gaze even when they were all but closed. Henry had little doubt the Hanged Man was watching him, waiting.

“Dios mío,”
said the apeman, quickly crossing his chest.

“Yes,” said the skinny man. “I daresay that is unusual. Eyes are one of the first things to go as moisture exits a body.”

“That’s ’cause it rains all the time in Astoria,” said Mason. “All that mud must have kept him from drying out.”