The Tangled Bridge (33 page)

Ferrar said, “I know him. Had to run hooch with him a few times. He's the one who did the collecting when folks owed your mother money.”

The children looked at one another. They'd already suspected that the stranger had worked for Maman.

Ferrar said, “Name's Bruce Dempsey. I never liked to turn my back to him. They called him The Brute.”

“But why would he have come for us?” Gil asked.

“To bring you to your mother, I imagine. Alls I can say beyond that is if he was the one comin for you it wasn't gonna be for kindness.”

They were quiet for a moment. It sounded like the Mississippi was rushing past the banks but it had to be the wind in the trees making that shushing noise. The Mississippi usually went easy. Easy.

Easy,
Patrice thought, because the river devils were whispering at their hosts. The devils were much more vivid than the humans, who were just shadows. Why was it so difficult to keep the briar away? She was concentrating so hard that surely her physical body was in a sweat.

Trigger cocked his head and squinted upriver.

Patrice said, “We came looking for you because we didn't know where else to go. But, our being here makes it dangerous for you.”

“I'll do whatever I can to help y'all.”

“We've got to get Rosie back.”

Gil and Trig were already slipping, the way their gazes kept darting from one point to the next. Patrice tried her best to listen and look past the briar to Ferrar in the physical world.

And she was aware that his knee was touching hers. Such a small thing. A circle of skin no larger than a Mercury dime. She was still wearing that idiotic dress of Rosie's. She looked at Ferrar, and he smiled and lowered his gaze to the fire, going shy.

She said, “We've got to hide. At least until we get our wits back. Then we can find her and go get her. I never wanted my brothers to improve their pigeon games but I've got to work with them if we're ever going to find Rosie.”

“Why didn't you? Why wouldn't you want them to improve their pigeon games?”

Patrice frowned, and the briar surged around her. She resisted the urge to fight it and instead focused on Ferrar's face and the firelight, letting the briar come forth and then recede again of its own. There, she saw him again in clear focus.

She hadn't answered his question, but he said, “How do you know these things aren't from God?”

She was surprised to hear it. “You of all people should know. The day we met you we nearly killed you. Because Maman was trying to make a point.”

“But you didn't kill me. You used the skill instead to drive your mother out.”

“Treesey,” Gil said, but his voice was so soft it barely registered.

Ferrar said, “What can I do now, tonight, to help you?”

“We need to find someplace safe to wait out this time in the briar. And then we must go get my sister back.”

Ferrar was thoughtful. Patrice knew she couldn't keep this up much longer. She put her hand to her throat, regretting the amount of time it had taken her to get her story out.

She looked at Ferrar.
Just tell me someplace where we can go!

Ferrar said, “Bayou Bouillon.”

She closed her eyes and relaxed a hitch.

He said, “You remember.”

“Mm, you told me about Bayou Bouillon once before. Good place to hide.”

“The best, but…”

“Can you get us there?”

Ferrar's face had taken on a strange expression. “You sure you haven't been there? It's so full of ghosts.”

“Patrice!” Gil said.

He and Trigger both were on their feet now, staring toward another camp.

Patrice said, “Please, how do we get there? We're running out of time.”

“It's far. The only way to get there is by boat. I have only shoes.” He pointed at the thick leather soles.

But Patrice rose to her feet with her fists balled. The briar was pulling her down to it. Gil was calling her. Trig.

She said, “Ferrar, just show me where this Bayou Bouillon is.”

He frowned and rose to join her. “About fifty miles that way. But you can't get to it by—”

“
Think
of this place. As though you're there!”

He looked confused, but he listened. She knew because she saw Bayou Bouillon now inside him.

Oh, this briar!
Easier now to search inside a man's heart than to say hello.

A very secluded village where people existed outside of any law. Bayou Bouillon. Full of ghosts. This was a place where the water boiled cold. She saw the gentlest, finest bubbles, the swirling eddies. A boardwalk and floating one-room shanties with roofs made of accordion tin.

Was she holding Ferrar's hands? She wished he could pull her through to him the way he'd pulled her up from the water beneath the ferry dock. She strove for that one last glimpse of him and of the physical world. She just couldn't force her way through again. Her focus collapsed.

Too soon. Far too soon. Because the river devils, each and every one of them, had been occupying themselves with the men of the camps. Whispering. All this time, whispering to all those men.

Gil looked at Patrice and was shaking his head. “We shouldn't have come. We're going to get him killed.”

The devils hated Ferrar. They saw to it that their hosts hated him, too. Wished him dead. Patrice remembered how Rosie's river devil had hated him. Ferrar was a lumen. He opposed chaos just by existing.

“Patrice, you hear it?” Gil said.

Yes. Patrice turned her ear toward the river. Francois.

Every night.

He sang out one line and went quiet.

She listened for him. Listened so carefully she could hear the heartbeat pounding in her own body.

When the sun goes in.

There, Francois sang out again. Just the one line.

Patrice looked toward the Mississippi, gone now, and in its place only the shadow river that coursed through the briar. She saw the raft. It drifted toward them.

Trigger sprang toward the riverbanks.

“It's no use!” Patrice called after him.

A hand on her physical body. Someone was clutching her wrist.

She said, “Ferrar, is that you? If you can hear me, look around you. They hate you. They want you dead. I'm so sorry.”

The river devils were hesitating. Patrice had seen them react to Ferrar before. She knew how his lumen quality could replicate itself inside of her and the others, and dispel whatever whispers or sickness the river devils tried to spread. She opened her heart and waited for that sense of peace to come.

Every night.

Trigger was now splashing into the river. “Francois! Ho there, Francois! Hear me?”

Patrice dared a look at the raft where she knew she'd see that awful vulture. She wanted the thing to look at her. She just wished he'd stop looking at Francois.

When the sun goes in.

The dead stranger—Bruce Dempsey, as Ferrar had called him—still lay in a heap of blankets now torn to rags by the vulture.

The river devils erupted into fury all around them. Those who were wanderers were in the trees. Those with human hosts were shoving, goading. And she knew what they wanted. They would keep at their hosts until someone attacked Ferrar.

I hang down my head.

The vulture leaned over Francois. He finally stopped singing and simply wept. He did not lift a hand against the thing. He probably couldn't. Trigger was swimming toward the raft.

Something else. The creature that looked like it was covered in tar. She sensed it before she saw it. She turned. It was folding its horrible, filthy arms around Gil.

“No!”

Gil bucked and tried to wrench away from the thing. But it had him. Was dragging him down into the slick of oil or tar or whatever muck it had come from. It had the feel of Maman in it somehow. Like she was spying. This was her crude, brute magic, but her beast had taken Rosie and now it had Gil.

“Gil!”

But he was gone already.

Just like that.

Gone.

Patrice dug her nails into her scalp and screamed.

Thornflies were swarming her. They came up from the river, that dark, coursing bramble flow. Trigger had reached the raft and was looking back. He probably didn't even know his twin had been taken. Patrice had no idea what was happening to Ferrar somewhere in the physical world. With all those river devils focusing their fury on him he could very well be dead.

The vulture raised its head from Francois and turned its gaze to Patrice.

Let the river swallow you!
she called to it from within her mind.

She stepped toward it. Someone was pulling her physical body backward. Ferrar? Or some other fool who'd been listening to river devil whispers?

Or the creature made of tar.

The river formed a wake that rolled down its center instead of outward toward the shore.

Yes. Let the river swallow us all.

The river's wake rolled on itself and then folded again, turning in a circle. The raft turned. The water coursed afresh with a higher flow. She felt her physical body kicking, but whoever had her was not letting go. Not the tar creature. Someone in the physical world. The tar creature was long gone now, and so was Gil.

The water was surging at her ankles. It had reared up from banks and was sweeping over the campsites. Fickle river devils abandoned their goading, chiding and danced in the chaos of the water. They called for panic among their hosts.

The raft was turning in a wide circle. Trigger was on it, now, his hands on Francois' shoulder.

Patrice felt her physical body go slack, and she knew that the water had knocked her off her feet. She let it pull her toward the center. Toward the raft, which had tilted toward the sky and then disappeared.

 

forty-two

LOUISIANA, NOW

IN A STRANGE KIND
of way, Madeleine's urinary tract infection made itself useful. The frequent need for the latrine forced her to rise up from her cot and walk outside. She also made herself drink water every hour to keep her system flushing. Movement was good, she thought. It made her breathe deeply, caused the blood to circulate. The breath, the blood, the water; all in constant, cleansing flow.

The early evening rain subsided to a fresh drizzle. Daylight diffused through the clouds and lit the inside of the shanty in soft tones of gray.

She felt the raft rock beneath her, and she sat up. The strange boy was standing there, dripping wet, in the doorway.

She said, “Go away!”

He blinked at her. He looked like he was about to say something. But then he turned and slipped back into the water and was gone. Like a ghost.

Madeleine was striving to stay alert now. The lack of food had left her weak and sluggish, and her injuries kept her in a constant state of pain. She listened for signs of the boy returning but heard nothing but the usual evening dissonance. The sun gave her a scarlet sunset as it sank over the bayou, underlighting the remaining clouds with deep vermillion and sending a fan of crepuscular rays heavenward. She watched it all. The sun finally disappeared and the daylight trailed off behind it, leaving complete darkness. No moonrise yet. The clouds blocked the stars.

She realized she was kneeling beside her cot. No recollection as to when or why she'd positioned herself there, or for how long. Her knees were so stiff she realized hours must have somehow fled by. Her hands were raw behind her back, and the mosquitoes fed relentlessly. The sounds that carried across from the shore—the chirruping of frogs and crickets, and the night birds' calls—they all converged together into a single rhythm. Pulses of unified sound with silence in between. She listened, fascinated. Her mouth had gone slack. The shanty itself seemed to twitch with that sound. She realized she was not alone.

“Who's here?” she asked aloud.

No reply. Just the pulsing dissonance. Madeleine's breathing grew shallow, because she knew what had come. Not the boy. The coldness. The void that had filled her in the briar, a disembodied thing that had become embodied in her, until Bo had wrapped his arms around her and pushed it out again.

She felt something move over her jeans where she knelt. A slow, dragging motion. She crawled backward to the wall and pushed herself against it. She couldn't hear it move. It found her again. It wound its way up to her waist, light flicks of a serpentine tongue at the skin of her arms.

A voice, neither male nor female, said, “Almost.”

She cried out, terrified, as it moved up over her shoulder. The thing was not the void but it had traveled in on its coldness. She felt it bite the back of her neck and she screamed. She drew in her breath and screamed again, quaking, letting her fear travel with that long, drawn scream over the bayou, ending in a sob.

But the thing had made its bite, and its body was now unraveling from her.

A sense of déjà vu. Had this happened on previous nights?

“What do you want?” she shrieked.

A silence, and she gulped back tears.

Then, the voice came again. “You are given a chance. You may live if you choose.”

Madeleine felt her throat go numb in dread, but the familiar sleep was stealing over her.

The thing said, “Tell us where to find the infant.”

Madeleine cried, “What infant?”

The chirps of the bayou creatures continued their pulsing, louder now.

This time, another voice came in reply: “Your brother's child. Tell us, or you die here, alone.”

“Oh God, Chloe? Are you doing this? I'm your blood!”

But she knew it wasn't Chloe she was talking to. And it wasn't a bayou serpent, or the cold void. She was talking to all of these. They had somehow come together the way a great fungus can permeate beneath the soil and taint several fields of crops at once.

She heard, “If you choose to live, you will see all and know all, and you will be elevated above all men.”