Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
Author: Jordan Peele
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Horror; Anthologies (Multiple Authors); African American & Black; General; Women; Fantasy; Paranormal; Gothic; Ghost; Magical Realism; Occult & Supernatural; Psychological; Science Fiction; C
Description: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The visionary writer and director of Get Out , Us , and Nope , and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. “Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.”— The Guardian A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR** A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him w
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Out There Screaming is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Monkeypaw IP Holdings LLC

Introduction by Jordan Peele copyright © 2023 by Monkeypaw IP Holdings LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Random House and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Contributor credits:

“Lasirèn” by Erin E. Adams copyright © 2023 by Erin E. Adams

“The Other One” by Violet Allen copyright © 2023 by Violet Allen

“Invasion of the Baby Snatchers” by Lesley Nneka Arimah copyright © 2023 by Lesley Nneka Arimah

“The Norwood Trouble” by Maurice Broaddus copyright © 2023 by Maurice Broaddus

“An American Fable” by Chesya Burke copyright © 2023 by Chesya Burke

“Hide & Seek” by P. Djèlí Clark copyright © 2023 by P. Djèlí Clark Ltd.

“Pressure” by Ezra Claytan Daniels copyright © 2023 by Ezra Claytan Daniels

“The Rider” by Tananarive Due copyright © 2023 by Tananarive Due

“The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World” by Nalo Hopkinson copyright © 2023 by Nalo Hopkinson

“Reckless Eyeballing” by N. K. Jemisin copyright © 2023 by N. K. Jemisin

“The Aesthete” by Justin C. Key copyright © 2023 by Justin C. Key

“Flicker” by L. D. Lewis copyright © 2023 by L. D. Lewis

“Dark Home” by Nnedi Okorafor copyright © 2023 by Africanfuturism Productions

“Origin Story” by Tochi Onyebuchi copyright © 2023 by Tochi Onyebuchi

“Eye & Tooth” by Rebecca Roanhorse copyright © 2023 by Rebecca Roanhorse

“A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree” by Nicole D. Sconiers copyright © 2023 by Nicole D. Sconiers

“A Grief of the Dead” by Rion Amilcar Scott copyright © 2023 by Rion Amilcar Scott

“Your Happy Place” by Terence Taylor copyright © 2023 by Terence Taylor

“Wandering Devil” by Cadwell Turnbull copyright © 2023 by Cadwell Turnbull

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Names: Peele, Jordan, editor.

Title: Out there screaming: an anthology of new Black horror / edited by Jordan Peele.

Description: New York: Random House, 2023.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023035758 (print) | LCCN 2023035759 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593243794 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593243817 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Horror tales, American. | American fiction—African American authors. | LCGFT: Horror fiction. | Short stories.

Classification: LCC PS648.H6 O98 2023 (print) | LCC PS648.H6 (ebook) | DDC 813/.0873808896073—dc23/eng/20230901

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035758

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035759
randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

Cover art: Don’t Make Friends, by Arnold J. Kemp © 2023

Cover design: Janay Frazier
ep_prh_6.1_145079109_c0_r1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword | Jordan Peele

Reckless Eyeballing | N. K. Jemisin

Eye & Tooth | Rebecca Roanhorse

Wandering Devil | Cadwell Turnbull

Invasion of the Baby Snatchers | Lesley Nneka Arimah

The Other One | Violet Allen

Lasirèn | Erin E. Adams

The Rider | Tananarive Due

The Aesthete | Justin C. Key

Pressure | Ezra Claytan Daniels

Dark Home | Nnedi Okorafor

Flicker | L. D. Lewis

The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World | Nalo Hopkinson

The Norwood Trouble | Maurice Broaddus

A Grief of the Dead | Rion Amilcar Scott

A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree | Nicole D. Sconiers

An American Fable | Chesya Burke

Your Happy Place | Terence Taylor

Hide & Seek | P. Djèlí Clark

Origin Story | Tochi Onyebuchi

Acknowledgments

About the Contributors

About the Editors

_145079109_

FOREWORD

JORDAN PEELE

A number of years ago I became morbidly obsessed with the notion of the oubliette. For those who don’t spend their nights reading about medieval torture practices, an oubliette was a dungeon shaped like a bottle with only a small covered opening at the top that barely let in any light. Prisoners would be thrown to the bottom of the pit, which was so narrow you couldn’t even lie down, and left there for days. Perversely, these dungeons were often placed in parts of the castle specifically where a captive could smell delicious food being eaten or could hear the laughter of parties, while their screams would fall on deaf ears. When you did eventually expire, they didn’t even bother retrieving your body. The elegant name for this horrifically simple contraption comes from the French word oublier, which means “to forget.”

This became, in many ways, the foundation for the Sunken Place in Get Out, where, through pre-operation hypnosis and neurosurgery, Black people were sent to these psychological oubliettes. A place where you were stripped of all agency and left alone with your struggle. Where you could see life going on around you, but you were essentially a bystander—forgotten.

The details of the Sunken Place that you see in Get Out are bespoke to the character of Chris, and it’s intended to be personal to him, not everyone. Chris’s Sunken Place channels his deepest childhood trauma, the time when his mother was killed in an accident and he did nothing; instead he sat there watching television in fear. But I always imagined that everyone’s Sunken Place would look different, a manifestation of our own personal horrors.

Chris’s Sunken Place in many ways was also a reflection of my own personal Sunken Place, at least in how it looks. When I was a child, I would sit staring at a screen and desperately want to be on the other side. I view horror as catharsis through entertainment. It’s a way to work through your deepest pain and fear—but for Black people that isn’t possible, and for many decades wasn’t possible, without the stories being told in the first place.

In this collection, nineteen brilliant Black authors give us their Sunken Places, their oubliettes. And I could not be more flattered and honored to have my name next to theirs. They come in many forms: dances with the Devil, fantasies of alternate realities, monsters real and imagined. They are raw imaginings of our deepest dreads and desires. And they will not be forgotten.

Black female, approximately midthirties, alone. Driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Tesla? Yeah, Carl would’ve stopped her regardless. Casually dressed. Not light-skinned or pretty enough to be some wealthy man’s side piece.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” she asks as he comes up to the window. Hands in clear view on the steering wheel, no expression on her face. No smell of weed or anything else illicit, but he’ll find something. There’s always something, when he sees the eyes.

“License and registration, please,” he says.

“Is there some reason you’ve pulled me over? I’m pretty sure I wasn’t speeding.”

“License,” he says, slowly but (always!) politely, “and registration.”

She hesitates a moment longer, the silence between them punctuated by the windy drone of passing cars. Carl could take her in on the hesitation alone—obstruction or maybe resisting—but he waits. He’s a patient guy. After a moment, she takes her hands off the wheel, slowly. “I’m going to reach into the pocket here on my car door,” she says. “I keep my registration and other information in a small folio there. May I pull it out?”

“Be my guest,” Carl says, amused. So many “how to talk to police” videos on TikTok these days.

She hands him two cards. One is the registration, which is current. The other is her license, also current—and stuck to it, apparently by chance, is her membership card for the National Lawyers Guild. Also current.

He glances at her. She gazes off down the gently curving length of the interstate, as if unconcerned about his presence or whatever he might think of her little “Do you know who I am?” play. That’s not important, though. Where is her phone? Most drivers keep it on the seat or in the console next to them, or attached to a dash cradle. If it’s out of sight…Carl’s state allows one-party recording. Best to assume the worst.

So he hands back the woman’s documents. “Thank you, ma’am. You have a nice day.”

She looks fully at him for the first time, still with that neutral face—but her eyes are cold. Truth always lies in the eyes. “Can you tell me why you pulled me over, Officer…Billings?”

“Well, I can see them now, but at first I thought there was an issue with your headlights.” He moves away from the window, around to the front of the car. Her headlights are still on, and he’s familiar with what this make and model should have: LEDs with a white rim, inward-slanting. What’s actually on the front of this woman’s car are prettier than LEDs, and sly-looking. They shift to follow him as he moves into their range. Brown irises, just like those of the driver, and just as cold. No blinking, no ducking his gaze, just a steady, sharp stare back. Whatever she’s up to—because it’s always something—this bitch is ready for him.

He could take her in anyway. His dashcam is off, “malfunctioning.” Drag her out of the car, rough her up a little to let her know he’s not scared of her or any other lawyer, park her in holding until he can figure out what she’s really done. Probably better to shoot than arrest her, really; dead women file no lawsuits.

While still in front of the car, he glances up. There’s a tiny rectangular device behind her rearview mirror. Can’t make out what it is or tell where it’s aimed, but he’s pretty sure it’s a camera.

Could still do it. Black women don’t usually go viral.

He sighs and heads back to her window. “I apologize for pulling you over, ma’am, but there’s no issue that I can see at this time. You have a nice day.”

He feels her eyes—the ones in her face—against his profile as he turns back toward his car. “You, too, officer.”

Next time, whore.

—

Carl started seeing the eyes a few months back. Thought they were just some new headlight fad at first. Every year there’s a new one—neon rims, insectoid multiple bulbs, designs like hearts or cobra hoods. Tacky, but not illegal. These eyes, though, are far too realistic to be simply another mod. They blink. There are veins throughout the sclera, striations in the irises, boogers at the corners. Carl actually saw them manifest once, ordinary halogen one moment and then blink, and they were blinking. Since that moment he’s come to understand something else: The eyes are a magical thing, or supernatural, if there’s any difference. He asks around, casually mentioning the new headlight fad to a couple of his fellow highway patrol officers, but no one else has seen them. Nobody mentions freaky car-eyes. It’s a Carl-specific magic, or blessing, or psychic gift. Just for him.

There has to be a reason for it, so Carl starts pulling over anyone whose car has eyes to figure out what the reason might be. This is tricky at first. He usually sets up speed traps with his patrol car oriented along one side of the highway, with the traffic flow, but he sees the eyes most easily on the oncoming side. They’re never on the taillights. They actually glow with the same illumination as any headlights, beams angled through the pupils, so he loses a couple because it’s hard to clock the model or color of a car when one’s night vision has been ruined. Still, the first “eye car” he catches is a gold mine. Professionally dressed guy, nice (though not too nice) car, but there’s a faint chemical smell. Guy’s name is Gimenez. Chatty in a pretend-friendly way. Third-generation Cuban from Florida; makes sure to mention that he votes Republican. When Carl calls in a K9 unit, the guy stays cool, even offering them his suitcase to examine. The dog alerts on the guy’s suitcase, which turns out to have a couple of prerolls tucked into a pocket. Marijuana’s legal, as Mr. Gimenez clearly knows; nice red herring. He smiles when Carl and the K9 officer close the suitcase. Carl smiles back—and reminds Mr. Gimenez that he just drove a Schedule 1 substance over the line from a non-legal state, which gives Carl the pretext to do a full search of the car. Gimenez flips. Starts talking about lawsuits and calling the mayor of a city Carl’s never heard of. Anyway, there’s a palpable lump in the fabric of the car’s ceiling, which Carl cuts open to find two keys of pure South American white powder heroin, flattened and sewn into little vinyl pouches. There’s also a wrapped packet of cash—ten grand in small bills.

Unit captain later tells Carl that the heroin was worth more than two hundred thousand dollars in street value. No sign of the cash that Mr. Gimenez reported, but a drug dealer will lie about anything, won’t he? Anyway, Gimenez takes a plea bargain, and Highway Patrol gets to brag about a big bust on Facebook, so everybody’s happy.

Carl resolves to not call in any other units the next time he sees the eyes. His magic just bought the K9 guy a new deck, and the fucker didn’t even thank him for it.

—

Carl’s walking past his shift supervisor’s desk when the supervisor—Kinsey—gets up and follows him into the locker room. The room is empty since it’s not a shift change, and there are no cameras here. They’ve got privacy.

Carl doesn’t like Kinsey. Highway Patrol is full of good ol’ boys; they all bleed blue here but for most of ’em, the color white matters more. As in, Kinsey is. As in, Carl’s Black. Another reason he’s so careful.

“Getting some complaints,” Kinsey says, while Carl changes into his civvies. “I mean, I always get complaints, about everybody, but lately there’s a lot of new ‘no probable cause’ ones specific to you. You, uh, reading chicken bones or something?”

Funny. “I get hunches,” Carl says. “Same as everybody. I always make sure there’s cause on my reports, though, don’t I?”

Kinsey sighs, in a “these people” tone. Carl’s not sure whether it’s for him or for the complainants. “You know what it looks like when you break somebody’s arm after pulling them over for an ‘outdated inspection certificate’? You can’t think up anything better?”

“All I did was pull that kid out of the car. I wasn’t even trying to hurt him.” Apparently it was something called a torsion fracture. Kids don’t drink enough milk these days.

“Look.” Kinsey rubs his face, sounding annoyed at having to show empathy. “I get it, but you gotta remember people are out to get us. We’re just trying to keep them safe, but all they’re thinking about is how much they can get selling a video to TMZ, or suing the city. So can you try not to make it easy for them? Please?”

He walks away before Carl can answer. Duty done, now he doesn’t have to treat Carl like a person anymore.

Message received, however, so now Carl’s going to write up every probable cause like a potential felony. It feels unnecessary, performative—incident report theater. Qualified immunity and the eyes are all the justification Carl needs. But fine; he’ll suck it up and do it anyway, because even the righteous need to cover their asses.

—

Carl doesn’t have a girlfriend, just a rotating collection of fucks. Not “fuck buddies” or “friends with benefits,” as these imply a friendly relationship. There’s still enough public goodwill out there to make lots of women love cops; Carl’s just picky. He needs women with a certain…maturity? Detachment? Awareness of their own insignificance? He also dates only white women, mostly because this pisses off Kinsey and the good ol’ boys. All the women really want from him is the chance to say they screwed Black, anyway, and maybe to smirk at any nearby Black women in the process. Carl likes fucking them, so it’s mutually beneficial manipulation. He drops them if they object to being called a fuck instead of a “girlfriend,” or if they want more from him than dick. Best to keep things simple.

He does have one great passion in his life, however: a 1975 G-Series Porsche 911, which he’s been restoring for the better part of a decade. First Porsche model to have turbo, 250 horsepower, Vredestein tires; it’s a beautiful little beast. Carl picked it up for a sniff—literally, a hundred and fifty grams of confiscated coke to the impound-yard LEO, who pulled the car off the auction list for him. Fully restored, it’s probably worth a hundred grand, easy. Poor baby had some kind of puke-green paint and pumpkin-orange upholstery; he’s redone the upholstery in dark blue sheepskin and the body paint in black. Keeps it in his garage under a tarp, but once a month or so he takes it out for a good fast highway drive in the small hours of the morning, during shift change or when Miller is on duty, because Miller just sleeps in his car. Carl doesn’t bother driving it around town, because he didn’t buy it just to look good or score any kind of status points. His dick is plenty big. He’s in it for the power. Nothing like flooring it, losing himself in the engine growl, and leaving the world and its judgments behind.

(Carl knew the car was meant to be his the first time he saw it, months before the eyes came into his life. Poor gorgeous thing, being absolutely neglected by an old retired white hippie who had priors for a protest back in the seventies still on his record. Punched a cop but got off with probation, then. This time, with Carl’s help in the form of a planted gun, the hippie landed upstate for a few years—and now a beautiful car is where it belongs. The universe’s reward is the eyes, thanks to which Carl has never tried to plant evidence again.)

But one night Carl struggles to sleep and then struggles to wake and finally sits up, sweating and panting and clutching at his chest. In the dream, he was walking through the impound yard as he sometimes does in real life, looking for another good score. Maybe he’ll start a side gig restoring and selling vintage beauties—but it was night in the dream, worst time to get a good look at anything. Nobody in the guard booth, either, which never happens. The dream-yard’s lights were out or nearly dead except one, bright but flickering at the back of the lot. And there, with a Jesus Is Watching billboard looming overhead, was Carl’s Porsche. He knew it was his, though it had reverted to the color of puke, because the headlights blinked rapidly in the flashlight beam before settling into a pair of calm, cool brown eyes. Familiar eyes.

Awake, Carl gets up, pushes open the window, and stares across his property. He lives in a quiet subdivision, and it’s an hour or so before dawn. Deathly quiet outside, apart from the rattle of his windowpane.

He needs to know.

Downstairs, outside. The detached garage is closed, undisturbed. Motion-sensing lights come right on, security system turns right off at the touch of his code. He turns on the showroom lights—LEDs so they won’t fade the paint—and there is no flickering. Carl takes the front edge of the car cover in one hand and lifts it, slowly. Tires need polishing. And…

No eyes.

Just a dream. Carl’s never seen his own eyes on anything, let alone this car. Shouldn’t have had that ice cream before bed.

Carl resets the alarm, turns off the lights, and goes back to the house, lingering on the porch for a while so that the cool, quiet darkness can calm him down. While he stands there, willing the shakes to fade and wishing he’d thought to pocket Gimenez’s weed along with the cash, he glances up and notices another of those damn billboards. The local megachurch has them everywhere, trying to scare people into buying their pastor another beach house. The billboards aren’t supposed to be placed so close to residential areas—light pollution or something—but here it is, big as day. Same one Carl saw in the dream: a lurid red background with stark black words etching out Jesus Is Watching.

Jesus better keep his little bitch mouth shut. Carl goes back inside.

—

Carl knows he’s in for it when he walks into the station that day and notices his fellow troopers not looking at him. They usually prefer to glare or follow him with their eyes, splashing his back with all the contempt they don’t quite have the courage to lob from the front. Now, however, they look pointedly at their desks or screens as he passes, and there is something uneasy in their tension. Shame, he later suspects—whether because they want to admire him and hate themselves for it, or because what he’s done reminds them of their own transgressions.

He walks into Kinsey’s office with the “SEE ME” Post-it Note, peeled off his desktop screen, in hand.

The video just got posted the previous day on Instagram, but he remembers the actual incident being over a year ago. Middle Eastern woman in hijab, middle-aged, nice rack. Made the mistake of mouthing off when Carl pulled her over for speeding. He’d been having a bad day. Got better after he shoved his collapsible baton into her mouth. She lost a few teeth and spent a night in jail; got off lucky as far as he’s concerned. Could’ve been a lot worse. Now she’s suing him for—get this—sexual assault. Because the baton was phallic, Carl guesses, but sometimes a baton is just a baton, damn.

What’s really frustrating is that there’s video at all. Even when Carl’s having a bad day, he still checks for a phone with that telltale recording light on. He still looks behind the mirrors and even makes them turn off the car so their phone can’t sync to the car mic via Bluetooth. By the angle, it seems this woman had her phone positioned in the backseat. The video is crooked and something’s occluding part of the view; maybe she had it under something? Either way, he missed it, and now he’s caught. Worse, apparently the woman was older than she looked. The media’s already running with headlines like “Grandmother Assaulted on Camera Sues Police for $3 million.”

(He saw them, sloe-eyed and inviting, on the front of her car. There were extra eyes, too—a couple on the bumper, one nearly hidden amid the brand emblem on the hood. That’s how he knew she was bad news even though he found nothing worthwhile after a search. DA dropped the resisting charge. He should’ve been more careful.)

Kinsey closes his laptop. “Union’s already running interference,” he says. “Her lawyer went to the media before talking to us; they’re obviously trying for a big payday. But I gotta put you on unpaid till this blows over.”

He’s matter-of-fact about it. Carl’s matter-of-fact about handing over his service weapon and Taser. It’s not the first time he’s been put on a desk or leave for something like this, so he knows it’ll be fine. The “grandmother” isn’t young, pretty, or white enough to hold the public’s attention for long.

After Carl goes home and checks Facebook, however, he sees more people talking about the incident than he likes. Some big-name accounts are sharing it on other social media, and—fuck. A couple of celebrities? Don’t they have better things to do? And a state senator…

It’ll be fine.

—

It is not fine.

—

Carl has one friend: Bo Walker, a sheriff in the next county over. They go out for beers every few weeks, and get together sometimes to watch the game. Bo lets Carl know that Carl can have a job in his department in about six months, which should be enough time for the worst of the foofaraw to die down. There are some unspokens in this: Carl’s going to have to take a pay cut, for one. For another, there’s still a chance Carl could catch a charge from the baton video, because the union didn’t step up the way it should have. Oh, they made a lot of noise and threw up the usual roadblocks, but when Kinsey decided to fire Carl, they didn’t stop it. That means Carl is vulnerable enough to actually, maybe, go to jail, and everybody knows it. Bo knows it too, but he probably figures it’s worth the risk to get another experienced LEO for a bargain price. (Men don’t really do friendship, Carl believes, even if that’s what they call it for civility’s sake. What they really have is friendly rivalry. He and Bo do favors for each other all the time, but each still tries to get over on the other when they can.) Still, six months and a little luck, and Carl can have a life, if not his preferred life, back. He’ll take it.

Bo also agrees to buy Carl’s Porsche. Carl doesn’t want to sell, damn it; he loves that fucking car. But six months is a long time to go without income, and Carl’s GoFundMe isn’t doing great. He drives it to Bo’s himself, then personally wipes it down with a chamois as a slow farewell. Even sheds a tear or two, once Bo’s driven him home and no one can see.

It eases the pain, a little, that the dreams stop. He’s been having them a few times a week, always the same, always ending with his eyes on the Porsche. Suddenly he sleeps beautifully, and for about a week, the free time and weightless conscience combine to make Carl feel like he’s on vacation, for the first time in years. He stretches out and enjoys it. Puts up a hammock in the backyard and sits in it for hours, swinging away the stress while he sips a beer and reads car magazines. Even jerks off there a couple of times, though he knows one of his neighbors can see the backyard. (Once, after an especially good nut, Carl looks dead at the neighbor’s window and grins. The neighbor, who was indeed watching, quickly flicks the curtains closed and doesn’t meet Carl’s eyes ever again.)

Then, out of nowhere a week later, he gets a call from Bo. “The fuck kind of shit you tryin’ to pull, man? The car is fucked-up.”

“What?”

“It’s fucked-up. Starts but won’t stay on.”

Shit. Carl sits up, awkwardly in the hammock. “It wasn’t doing that before. Did you have a mechanic—”

“I just bought this shit from you, I shouldn’t have to take it to a mechanic! You said it was mint! Man, I been tryin’ to look out for you, but you make it so fucking hard. Fix this. Now.” Click.

So Carl goes over to Bo’s. Bo stands around muttering the whole time while Carl checks the igniters, the fuel line, all the usual suspects. There’s definitely something wrong. She doesn’t even sound the same when Carl starts her up; the engine turns over, but there’s a sluggy chug deep in her guts that turns into a cough and she finally blats out a puff of dirty exhaust and dies after about five minutes. Carl suspects a blocked fuel filter, or maybe he just hopes it’s something simple like that. If it’s the crankshaft, he’s not going to be able to fix that with his little bag of hand tools.

He suggests that Bo have the Porsche towed back to Carl’s place where he’s got a lift—and Bo loses his shit. He’s always had a temper, but Carl’s never seen him like this. (Then again, he supposes a hundred-thousand-dollar car would put a strain on any friendship.) Bo gets in his face, poking him with a finger to emphasize every other syllable. “You think you can play me? You think I’m one of those chickenshits back in your old unit? They don’t see how fucked-up you are, but I always did. I see you right now!” He jabs two fingers at his own eyes, the first half of the “got my eyes on you” gesture—and Carl’s guts clench, inexplicably. “You’re gonna take this piece of shit back, and you’re gonna give me every dime of the money I paid you. Then that’s it. No more favors for you.”

Carl wants to ask if that includes the promised job—but there’s a more immediate concern. He’s already spent a good chunk of the money paying down his three-months-overdue mortgage. “Man, come on, you can’t—”

“Watch me.”

They go back and forth for a while, Bo sounding fucking insane, Carl restraining his natural urge to just beat the shit out of Bo, until finally Bo agrees to give Carl more time to try to fix the issue. Carl decides to go home before his temper can slip. In the morning he’ll return with his good tools and do the best he can, and hope that Bo calms the hell down.

He can’t sleep that night, going over the encounter again in his head. Why was Bo so agitated? It feels like there’s more to it than the money. It wasn’t just anger, either; Carl hasn’t been a cop all these years without being able to tell real anger from belligerence-covered fear. Why was Bo afraid? And why did that little offhand comment bother Carl so much?

I see you right now.

Carl’s breath catches. Can Bo see the eyes, too?

Carl still sees them, even though without a badge he can’t do anything about the drivers. This old Miata, that shiny new Escalade; the drivers are young or elderly, white and not, well-dressed or slobs, but he knows they’re into some shit because of the eyes. There’s always something.

And. Carl sits up in bed, breath a rasp in his throat. He’s never looked at the front of Bo’s car.

(Much later Carl will realize he was not thinking clearly in this moment. He never looked at any of his fellow officers’ cars at the trooper station because he figured most would have eyes. They beat their wives and sold fake vaccine cards and hid their opioid addictions, and worse—much worse transgressions than anything Carl’s done, end of day. He hated those guys, but he did have to work with them, and that meant playing See No Evil in the parking lot.)

So what’s Bo been getting up to? Must be pretty bad.

By morning, Carl’s got a plan. Just half a plan, really, but an important half: He’s going to take a look at Bo’s car—the pickup truck that he drives regularly, since Carl’s already seen that there are no eyes on the Porsche. It’s what Carl will do afterward that’s in question, assuming he sees them. Mostly he’s going to ask Bo some questions, gently and carefully. Still needs that job. But if Bo thinks he’s going to railroad Carl into giving the money back when Bo is clearly the one who somehow damaged the Porsche…Well. They’ll talk.

He brings his personal baton, though. Technically illegal to concealed-carry, but Bo’s mouth might need loosening up.

Carl’s supposed to show up to Bo’s at ten. He shows up at eight to throw the guy off. “Just want to get started,” he says when Bo glares at him blearily through the screen door. He flashes a shit-eating grin as he says this, which is easy because Bo’s got epic bedhead. “All you gotta do is open up the garage, man, and go back to sleep if you feel like it. I want to make this right.”

That seems to mollify Bo, who grumbles but ultimately puts some pants on his narrow ass and heads out with Carl to the detached garage. Along the walk, Carl chats him up, getting him to relax, taking advantage of his just-awakened fuzziness. Didn’t get enough sleep? Oh, bad dreams? Yeah, Carl gets those; stress. Guys in the unit giving Bo any trouble? What about that hot new rookie—Samantha, was it? Looks like she could suck a wrench through a tailpipe, right? Ha ha ha. Carl keeps up the banter while he jacks up the back end—then, shit. He needs to jack the front end, too. Has Bo got two more jacks? What about the one in his regular car? Nah, nah, Carl will get it, if Bo gives him the keys.

Bo’s not that trusting, but he does lead Carl to the attached garage. It’s cluttered with conspicuous consumption of the rural kind—a deep-freezer and a generator and some kid’s bike and the most rusty, piece-of-shit driving mower Carl’s ever seen. Doesn’t he ever clean the thing? And Bo’s pickup truck, though it’s relatively new, is dinged all over and looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. Carl can’t believe he sold his baby to such a slob.

Anyway, he contrives a reason to meander toward the front of the truck, and…

No eyes. Huh. Shit. He was sure there would be.

They head back to the detached garage. Carl gets the Porsche jacked up and starts working. It’s quiet for a while, and then:

“That bad dream was about you, y’know,” Bo says, folding his arms.

Carl, arms deep in the engine, frowns. He makes a joke of it. “I don’t swing that way, man, sorry.”

Bo breathes a humorless laugh. “Yeah, funny, dipshit. Anyway, I dreamed you pulled over some girl and fingered her when she begged you not to take her to jail. And there was a kid who was, what, thirteen or fourteen? Took Dad’s truck for a joyride and crashed it, but he was fine—till you got there. Then he ended up with a concussion and broken ribs, somehow. And there was an old man.” Bo yawns. Carl stares at him from the hood’s shadow, his skin a mess of goosebumps. “Little dippy in the head, eighty years old maybe. You got him for going too slow in the fast lane, and you started breaking his fingers while he cried for his son and his wife and—”

“Man, what the fuck are you talking about?” Carl’s not stupid. He knows how interrogations work. Bo’s fishing. But underneath the dumb act, Carl’s horrified. How the hell does Bo know? The joyriding kid was too scared to report Carl. The old man had a heart attack, didn’t live to explain the fingers. (A fall, Carl reported. The coroner didn’t bother to question him about it.) And there are details in what Bo has said, which he could not know unless there were cameras, but Carl checked, damn it, he checked every time—

“Just a dream.” Bo shrugs, but his gaze is hard. “That said…You got any ideas about not paying me back, if this baby’s still a lemon when you get done…I guess I’ll just have to check up on some of the stuff in the dream. Make sure none of it really happened. Yeah?” He smiles, with friendly malice.

How. How does he know. “You got a fucked-up head, man,” Carl says. He wants to say more, but. He focuses on the engine, and tries to think.

Bo must be seeing the eyes. That, or he’s got his own related power—because Carl’s dreams were never true and Bo’s are. No wonder he’s scared of Carl now, if Justice’s blindfold has slipped a little.

But the dreams are also lies. Like—whatever Bo saw him do to that girl, she wasn’t innocent. She had an OnlyFans; Carl saw the business cards in her wallet. A lot of DAs consider prostitution a victimless crime and send them to counseling or something, don’t even press charges. Carl just made sure the girl got the punishment she deserved. And he knows damn well she didn’t report it, because afterward he reminded her that he had her home address—

Focus. Bo hasn’t mentioned the eyes, so maybe it’s just dreams. And maybe the dreams are distorted for him, incomplete, because this is Carl’s magic. Somehow Bo has picked up a version of it from the Porsche, vicariously feeding on Carl’s power—but he’s not supposed to. It was never meant for him.

Could the Porsche be the source of the magic? Oh, God. And because Carl has made the terrible mistake of selling the Porsche, what Bo has gotten is like the car itself now: a beautiful precision instrument damaged, tainted, by the hand of an unworthy owner.

Okay. This is fixable. Carl may have broken the rules by selling the Porsche, but even righteous men can make mistakes. Carl must simply redeem himself.

He works on the engine steadily through the morning, not so much trying to solve the engine problem anymore—because now he knows it’s really an ownership problem—as killing time. He works in silence while he replaces the battery cables and does other busywork. Usually Bo turns on talk radio for background noise while they chat and hang out, but for whatever reason this time Bo hasn’t offered to put on the radio. He watches Carl work for a while, hovering and pretending he understands half of what Carl’s doing, but after about an hour of this Bo sits down in an old folding chair and starts thumbing through his phone. Maybe forty-five minutes in, his head starts to sink toward his chest. After another ten or so—Carl watches without being obvious about it, counting his own breaths, taking care not to make any sudden loud noise—Bo’s head dips, and he starts to snore.

Finally. Carl takes the baton out of his tool bag.

—

There’s a box of plastic tarps in the attached garage. Carl’s got a UV light in his tool bag, too. He stuck it in there ages ago to help with tracking down engine leaks, but it’s useful for finding all kinds of fluid spatter. It’s like the universe is finally working with Carl again, to make things right.

Bo’s pickup truck won’t do. Neither will Carl’s Mustang, for obvious reasons. He decides, with great sorrow, that it’ll have to be the Porsche. He’ll get it running then drive it to Echo Lake, next state over. That lake’s so full of trash that a vehicle would normally not be found for years—but Carl will of course report that Bo is missing, out of concern for his friend. Carl will also note that the Porsche is missing. At least a few speed or toll cameras ought to point the way to the lake. It’ll look like a resale gone wrong, some vintage car nut trying to cover his tracks by ditching the object of dispute. Carl will have to do some creative rearrangement of the body to make it fit the Porsche’s tiny front-end trunk, but hey, Bo always said he needed to work on his flexibility.

Shame about the job. Carl will have to sell his house and move elsewhere to find another police department to work for, which sucks. He’ll keep tabs on Bo’s county, though, and see if the new sheriff is also interested in an experienced officer who knows the area. Maybe they’ll even let Carl buy the Porsche back once it’s out of evidence.

He’s so pleased by how things have shaken out that he’s humming when he pops the trunk to tuck Bo in. Then Carl stumbles back in shock, sucking air in a great wheeze, because—

Eyes. Eyes. Eyes on the trunk light and eyes on the lock mechanism and eyes on the hinges where they’ll get crushed, doesn’t even make sense. Individual eyes blinking in the sudden light. A spider’s cluster of seven peeking up from the bottom of the empty spare tire well. Eyes that might have been here beneath the Porsche’s skin for a while, because Bo had already taken the jack out and Carl’s never really looked in the trunk much. Nobody buys a Porsche for the trunk.

Bo’s eyes are—were—hazel. These are brown. Like Carl’s eyes.

“But I made it right,” Carl murmurs. Bo was extorting him. It’s Bo’s fault the Porsche is messed up. Bo’s fault the magic has gone wrong! “I made it right!”

He lurches away—and there are eyes on the headlights too, now, just like in the dream, big and familiar and shifting to follow as Carl nearly trips over the bundle of Bo and grabs a shelf for balance. The shelf is a cluttered piece of shit like everything else in Bo’s garage, just a chunk of plywood balanced atop some cinder blocks, and it goes ass over teakettle when Carl’s weight hits it. An unsecured circular saw blade tumbles over and hits his arm; Carl barely feels the flash of pain as he goes down on one knee. (All the car’s eyes wince.) He claps a hand over the wound and tries to right himself, tries to focus, tries—

Something pulses, warm and rounded, under his hand.

He freezes. Looks at the arm, which is bleeding profusely; it’s welling up between his fingers and onto the floor in a thick, coppery cascade. Damn it, now he’s got to clean this up, too. The unknown something moves again beneath his palm, quick and fitful and slippery, something like a knot? Beneath the skin.

He peels his hand from the forearm wound and stares for a very long moment at the single brown eye pushing up from within the bloody slice. It blinks rapidly, trying to clear blood from its lashes.

Okay. Plus: The magic is back, and stronger than ever.

Minus: It’s tainted now.

This is Carl’s punishment for selling the Porsche, he feels—and for getting caught by that old Muslim lady, and for wasting friendship on Bo, and for letting the good ol’ boys get the better of him in any way. Justice is blind and Jesus Is Watching and Carl is meant to be a soldier of righteousness, meant to make the world a better place, even if he has to break its teeth to get it there. But he’s been sloppy, not careful enough, foolish, and this is the reward for his failure.

Carl wipes the bloody hand on his shirt. (Many small rounded knots beneath the skin, rolling against his palm as it passes over his chest.) Amid the clutter of crap that fell with the saw blade are a sheet sander and a utility knife. Carl can’t be sure these new eyes will be invisible to others like the headlight-eyes have been. Until he can resume his work of punishing wrongdoers, the magic is just going to be wrong. He’ll have to manually correct everything.

The eye on Carl’s forearm widens as he picks up the sander and angles it toward the wound. He smiles, glad to be putting the world back to rights again even if only in this small way.

Then he gets to work.

First class ain’t what it used to be, so it’s not like you’re missing out.

That’s the lie Zelda tells herself as she shifts in her economy middle seat trying to get comfortable. The stranger on her right is sleeping, big snores dribbling from an open mouth showcasing some seriously subpar dental work, and her brother, Atticus, has claimed the aisle seat. She doesn’t begrudge Atticus the space to stretch out. Six-foot-four-inches needs the legroom.

She watches the flight attendant move through the promised land up front, offering rows one through three single servings of protein cookies and snack bags of baked pea pods. Baked pea pods! What kind of shit is that?

When she and Atticus used to fly first class, they were always getting a real meal with cutlery and everything. Not that she could eat it, but it was the thought that counted. The respect.

Used to be their line of work was appreciated. Used to be when a client called begging for a little supernatural wetwork, a hunter could demand pretty much anything they wanted. Rich fucks would break the bank for someone with Zelda’s and Atticus’s talents to save them from whatever awful horror they’d conjured up.

There was this one time this golf pro out in Temecula shot his ex-wife, but she refused to die. He’d panicked, put another half-dozen holes in her like he was Rambo, but she kept getting back up—some real ghoul shit. The man had called the hotline sobbing, ready to confess all and turn himself in to the police if only his ex would stop wriggling.

Zelda had handled that like the professional she was. Talked the man down, told him they’d be there by nightfall and to just keep his old lady locked up until she and Atticus could arrive.

He’d paid for first class.

But in the end, it hadn’t mattered, because the dumb bastard hadn’t listened. Instead of waiting for the professionals, he’d tried some bullshit internet remedy that said throwing salt at a corpse would keep it down, when every true hunter knows it’s grave dirt or nothing. Got his face eaten for the effort.

But face-eaters aren’t the usual in their line of work. Most monsters are run-of-the-mill. Haints that needed blessing down, river spirits that some greedy land developer riled up, once, a poltergeist that was terrorizing some poor condo board.

And while some TikToking amateur had led the Temecula golf pro astray, most of the time the internet got it depressingly right. Seems like more and more these days, people rid themselves of the supernatural on their own. Weekend warriors with flamethrowers, AKs, and some basic YouTube skills were making the art of monster hunting passé.

It used to be a finesse business that required a special skill set.

Now it was all do-it-yourselfers.

“We there yet?” Atticus asks, slipping off his headphones.

On cue, the overhead crackles, and the flight attendant informs them that the plane is beginning its descent.

Atticus winks at his sister like he saw that coming. Maybe he did.

He’s always been able to see things others can’t. Mama calls it the Eye. Says what Atticus has got is hereditary, that there’s always been someone every generation in the Credit family blessed with gifts that help them fight the evils of this world. After all, monsters ain’t new.

“You remember to make the car rental reservation?” Atticus asks. “And the hotel?”

“Yes to both. You know I never slack.”

“I know, sis.” He says it with affection. “Where we at again?”

This is Atticus, too. Can’t be bothered to remember where they are even though it says Dallas on his ticket, same as Zelda’s. Mama said it’s because he’s living in two worlds most of the time, Ours and Theirs, and people like that aren’t so good with mundane things like eating three squares and remembering where the fuck they are, so that’s Zelda’s job. Take care of her little brother, handle the details, and be the Tooth to Atticus’s Eye.

Because Seeing ain’t the only power that runs in the family. And where there’s light, there’s also got to be some dark.

The plane cuts through low clouds and the rumble of thunder. The ticket says Dallas, but their destination is really somewhere west of Fort Worth. Soon, Zelda’s steering an F-150 into a sky streaked the color of old blood by the setting sun. Streetlights flicker to life just as the dark clouds blister and break, rain hammering the roof of the truck. An endless line of eighteen-wheelers sends wave after wave of tsunamis against the windshield, turning visibility to shit, but the big rigs thin out as they leave the sprawling suburbs. It’s full dark outside by the time Zelda picks up a rural route that cuts through some of the flattest, emptiest land she’s ever seen.

Under the steady thump of rain, the GPS leads them deep into cow country. The road winds through a series of one-traffic-light towns, each as full of the dead and dying as any graveyard Zelda’s ever seen. She squints down poorly lit side streets looking for speed traps and bad cops, but all she spies are dilapidated storefronts and neon-signed dollar stores.

Another hour and Zelda’s pulling the truck up a long dirt road, tires rolling over dips and drops deep enough to rattle her teeth. A burst of lightning fires up the night sky, edging a big old farmhouse in a halo of light. Their destination looks like it was plucked from an old painting, maybe that one with the girl in the field reaching for something she ain’t never gonna get.

The house has three stories of gray wooden planks, a peaked roof, and a columned porch. Another flash illuminates a yellow cornfield and a hill of derelict farm tools. Zelda’s pretty sure she spots the rusted-out frame of an old tractor out there, too.

“This is some real Children of the Corn shit,” she mutters, thinking between the storm and the dark and the absolute lack of anything good, they’ve stumbled into her own personal nightmare. She’s a California girl, preferring a hot sun and streets thick with prefabs over this nothing and nowhere. “Why’d we take this job, again?”

“Living ain’t free,” Atticus says.

“Neither is dying.”

Her brother chuckles, his voice a deep rumble that twins the thunder. He rouses himself enough to look around. As his posture sharpens, so does his whole being, like he’s coming into focus, like that laconic man-child on the plane was all surface, and he’s peeling it back inch by inch as they get closer to whatever’s waiting for them in that big old house.

“You feel anything?” Zelda asks, already tense, happy that Atticus is here to do the seeing, knowing she’ll be the one to do the biting.

“Not sure. Could be.” He gives his sister a look. “Or it could be your energy interfering. Maybe after we meet the client, you take a walk and give me a little space.”

Zelda eyes the dark stretch of empty, the persistent rain.

Atticus grins. “Unless you’re afraid there’s nobody out here to hear you scream.”

Zelda huffs. “Now, why would you say that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“The truth is overrated.”

“ ‘Death ain’t free’…‘the truth is overrated’…” He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re shook.”

And then he’s out of the truck, long legs halfway up the farmhouse steps before Zelda’s even closed her mouth. She hurries after him, hoodie pulled tight against the weather, feet slipping across the muddy path. By the time she joins her brother at the front door, he’s got his hand out, knocking.

They don’t wait but a second before the door swings open. Dark eyes look Zelda over. She’s suddenly aware of how sorry she must appear with her frizzy hair and mud-splattered sweats.

“Ms. Washington?” Zelda hazards.

Unlike Zelda, their client is immaculate, her hair freshly pressed, her red dress, designer, looking like this treacherous weather wouldn’t dare touch her.

“You were supposed to be here two hours ago,” she says.

“Drive was longer than expected,” Zelda apologizes. “And the rain.”

“I’ve got supper on the table.” Washington’s voice is crisp and no-nonsense, the Texas showing through only in the drop of her r’s. “Take off those wet jackets first and leave them here. And watch your shoes. I don’t want mud in this house.”

Zelda does her best to shake off the outside before Washington leads them through the foyer and directly into a dining room. On the table sits a pot of red beans, a thin layer of congealed fat resting on top, but the cornbread in a metal pan is golden and smells of butter. Even if Zelda did eat things like beans and bread, she’d decline, but Atticus doesn’t hesitate. Six-foot-four stays hungry, and she’s never known her brother to turn down a free meal.

Washington watches Atticus fill a plate, a small, satisfied smile curling her lips. Maybe it’s only the woman taking pride in her cooking, but something about it is enough to raise Zelda’s hackles. Washington senses her looking, her judging, and, cool as can be, raises a questioning eyebrow.

Zelda’s a professional and has no intention of insulting the woman in her own house when they’re here to do a job and get paid, so she smiles and looks away.

And sees dolls.

Everywhere, dolls. In a bookcase, in a custom cabinet, on the mantel. Most are porcelain, but there’s a handful of paper dolls captured behind glass and some ancient-looking vinyl dolls with jointed limbs arranged in various poses beside them. There’s even a shelf of corncob dolls in gingham dresses and woven hats like Grandma Credit used to have.

“You a collector?” Zelda asks, trying for polite. The painted faces staring back at her are unsettling, and she can’t quite suppress the shiver that works its way down her back. Big bad monster hunter, but she remembers that Talking Tess job, the child-sized ax and the all-too-adult-sized bodies. After that, nobody could blame her for not liking dolls.

“I’m a creator, not a collector. There’s a difference.” Washington sounds mildly insulted. She pulls out a menthol cigarette from a green hard pack and lights it. “You can have a look if you want.”

There’s a tap of feet and a little girl comes trundling into the room. She’s not more than six, maybe seven, with braided pigtails and cat-print leggings. She’s wearing one of those old-fashioned boots with a metal brace that makes her drag her foot, but that doesn’t stop her from beelining to Washington. She peers out at Zelda from behind the older woman’s chair.

Zelda waves. The girl, shy, waves back.

“What’d I tell you about guests,” Washington says, voice sharp with disapproval as she drags the girl forward and shakes her by her chubby arms. “Go on, and don’t come out until I say so.”

The girl ducks her head and limps back the way she came.

“She didn’t mean nothing,” Zelda says, the cruelty making her blood heat, her teeth ache.

Washington exhales a cool plume of smoke. “I know you mean well, but that child’s got to learn. So, don’t tell me how to do my job, and I won’t tell you how to do yours.” She stretches her mouth in a smile she doesn’t mean, white teeth and gums showing.

Silence hovers in the room, thick as the fog wafting from Washington’s menthol. The only sound is the click of Atticus’s fork against his plate. Zelda, thinking of the money, thinking of professionalism, says nothing. She hates herself a little for it, though.

Finally Washington speaks. “Granny told me about your family. Real deal Black folks. Root workers and hoodoo queens. My granny worked with herbs, made tonics for the folks around here, but it wasn’t anything like what you got. They say there’s power in y’all’s blood.” She exhales. “You sure you won’t eat?”

“No, ma’am. I’m sure.”

Washington’s eyes narrow. Cigarette ash floats down to the table like poisonous snow. “They say one of you got the Eye. It better be true, after all the money I’m paying you.”

Zelda clears her throat. “Speaking of money.”

Washington reaches into the sweetheart neckline of her dress and pulls out a fat envelope. She waves it in Zelda’s direction before tucking it away. “When you’re done helping me,” she says.

“Actually, you were vague on the phone about exactly what kind of help you needed.”

“You got the Eye. Why don’t you tell me?”

Zelda shares a look with her brother.

Washington turns to Atticus. “Oh, it’s you that has it. Tell me what you See.”

Atticus pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. He straightens, and his gaze goes soft. But only for a moment before he glances at Zelda and shakes his head.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Zelda hedges. “Maybe if you just told us.”

Washington grunts, eyes lingering on Atticus. “Out in the cornfield. That’s where I first found the birds. I thought it was just an old possum gone feral or something, but it progressed.”

“Progressed?”

“Got the barn cat next, and then…something bigger. I hear it sometimes at night, out there screaming.”

“Screaming? You sure it isn’t a fox or a cougar?”

Her eyes go flat. “Too big for a fox, and there haven’t been cougars in this part of Texas for fifty years.”

“Too big? So you saw it?”

Washington rubs another dusting of ash from the table. “Something’s out there.”

“Then I best go take a look.” Zelda’s thinking that as much as she doesn’t want to go out in that cornfield, especially at night in the middle of God’s own storm, her absence will give Atticus the space to do his Seeing.

“You look tired, young man.” Washington stubs out her cigarette. “I got you a bed ready upstairs.”

Zelda’s taken aback. “I don’t think—”

“At least let him rest here while you hunt around. Besides, the only motel in town’s got bedbugs.”

Zelda looks at Atticus who yawns big, eyes drooping. He does look tired, maybe even a little wan, and Zelda knows he’s got a sensitive nature.

“All right,” she concedes. “While I hunt.”

Washington leads them up creaky stairs to the guest bedroom. It’s not much to look at. The floral wallpaper is starting to yellow and floorboards creak around thin oval rugs. A knitted blanket is folded neatly at the foot of each of the two narrow beds, and Zelda can clearly hear the rain knocking against the roof.

“You going out there?” Washington nods toward the curtained window.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s what you hired us for, and I won’t let a bit of rain slow me d—”

“Don’t track mud in,” she says. “I don’t want to have to clean up tomorrow.”

She walks away, leaving Zelda with her mouth open. She stands there for a moment, stunned at the rudeness, wondering why she’s trying so hard when Washington is giving her nothing but attitude back.

“She’s a piece of work,” she mutters.

She turns to Atticus. He’s already curled up on the bed, the thin blanket not even long enough to cover his feet. Zelda frowns, worry for her little brother replacing her irritation.

“You okay?”

“Sick,” he mumbles.

“You shouldn’t have eaten those beans,” she says, thinking of that layer of fat.

“Trying to be polite.”

“Trying to feed your stomach.” She shakes her head. “You See anything down there?”

“Doll,” Atticus murmurs.

“Creepy as fuck, right?” Zelda can tell that without the Eye. “I couldn’t live with all those little eyes staring at me, but maybe that’s countryfolk. Maybe they’re different.”

Lightning crackles outside and Zelda goes to the window. She pulls back the curtain and peers out over the cornfield.

She sucks in a breath.

Something is out there. Something low, moving on all fours. Another flash of lightning, and…nothing. But she was sure she saw…She shakes her head. Probably a fox.

“I’m going out,” she says over her shoulder. “Washington’s keeping secrets, and I don’t like the way she talked to that child. Can you look around while I’m…Atticus?”

But the only answer she receives is the soft sound of her brother’s snores.

—

It’s wet and miserable, and Zelda wishes she hadn’t come out after all. She’s a city girl at heart, and this pitch-dark country shit is worse than a horde of zombies running through the Fashion Place Mall.

It takes her a moment, slick fingers sliding over the switch, but she manages to flick on her flashlight. She aims it low. The amber beam lands on a face.

“Shit!” Zelda shouts and stumbles back.

But it’s only the little girl, the one from dinner. She’s standing there in the rain, her back to the field, big black eyes on Zelda. Her clothes are soaked through, shoulders limp in the downpour.

“What are you doing out here?” Zelda hisses, still working to calm her heartbeat. “You oughta be inside, out of this rain. You’re gonna catch your death!”

The girl stares, mouth a wide pink O.

“Your grandma’s gonna tan your hide when she finds out you’re out here,” Zelda chides, and immediately regrets it, thinking of how Washington scolded the child earlier. How the older woman riled up that something inside Zelda that made her hot, loose, less in control. She’s not sending the girl back to that.

The girl motions Zelda forward.

Zelda gets a feeling. She doesn’t get feelings often. That’s Atticus’s game. But sometimes even a Tooth can tell something’s wrong.

“You got a name?” she asks the girl.

Nothing. Maybe she doesn’t talk.

Zelda sighs. She knows it’s dumb to bring the kid along, maybe even dangerous. But she’s also got a feeling this kid ain’t just a kid, like she knows something. Maybe something she can’t say but can show.

Zelda glances back at the house one last time before she slips off her hoodie and wraps it around the child. She zips it up, pulls the strings snug, and gives the kid a smile. “Well, come on, then, No Name. Maybe you can help me out.”

She lets the girl lead her out into the cornfield, her little form limping along. They go deep into the high stalks until she can’t see the house. Can’t hear nothing, either, beyond the steady pounding of rain battering the dried-out husks. But then she smells something. Something dead.

The kid stops. Zelda thinks maybe she smells it, too.

The kid points.

Zelda trains her flashlight where she’s told and squats down, the girl hovering over her shoulder. Zelda nudges the lump. Turns the thing over. She’s not sure what she’s looking at beyond a mess of flesh and fur, white bones poking out every which way. It steams slightly, still hot despite the rain.

Zelda swallows, can’t quite stop herself from licking her lips.

“Hungry,” the kid whispers beside her.

Zelda near about jumps out of her skin. It takes her a moment to collect herself, to turn to the girl and mutter, “So you can talk.”

But the girl stays focused on the dead thing in front of them.

“Yeah,” Zelda says, once she realizes nothing else is forthcoming. “Something was hungry all right, but we must have interrupted its meal.” Which means it could still be close.

Zelda stands. Listens. But she can’t hear anything but rain, and the scent of death is so overpowering she can’t track past it. She’s not going to find anything out here tonight.

“Let’s get you back inside,” she says. She keeps the kid beside her as they retrace their steps. She’s halfway convinced Washington is wrong and it’s just some kind of natural predator out here in the field, but she keeps her head on a swivel, her senses alert, just in case.

As they pass out of the field and back to the yard, she feels eyes on her and looks down to find the kid staring. “Go on, then,” she urges, gesturing toward the porch. “Go get dry, and don’t tell your grandma you were out here with me. She’s like to skin us both.”

The kid slips out of Zelda’s hoodie and solemnly hands it back before she hobbles off to the house. Zelda spares one last glance for the field before she follows. The lights are all out, the little girl disappearing into the shadows as quickly as she had appeared out in the field.

Zelda tiptoes up the stairs and quietly pushes the bedroom door open.

“Atticus,” she calls softly. He’s where she left him, curled on his side. She decides to let him sleep. Plenty of time to catch whatever it is tomorrow.

—

Zelda dreams of hunting, of freshly torn flesh and blood in her mouth. She opens her eyes, slowly, carefully, half expecting to find herself curled up to a fresh carcass. Her phone says it’s almost dawn despite the lack of light coming in the windows, and she can still hear that damned rain. She thinks about trying to go back to sleep, but her stomach’s rumbling and more dreams will only make it worse.

She decides to hit the hardware store she spotted on the way in before the house wakes up. Buy some wood and wire and set a few traps. Catch whatever’s out there feeding in the cornfield to placate Ms. Washington, get paid, and get the hell home.

The ride back to town takes the better part of an hour but she’s at the local True Value when the door opens. She grabs a cart and makes the rounds, pulling what she needs off the shelves. She gets to the cashier, and he smiles at her. He’s old enough to be her father, but his oiled hair and the strong odor of aftershave tell her he’s a flirt. She wonders who the hell there is to impress out here, and realizes that today, it’s her.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” he says, not even trying to hide his enthusiasm.

“Visiting.”

“Yeah? Where at?”

She considers ignoring the question but decides she might as well do some fishing. If she’s wrong and it’s not just a critter, it would be good to know what she can about Ms. Washington. More times than not, whatever’s troubling a place has to do with the people occupying it.

“Ms. Washington. She a ways outside of town.”

“Ah, sure I know her. Dolores and I went to school together.”

“Dolores.” So that’s her name.

He sighs, heavy. “That family’s had more than its fair share of heartbreak.”

“How so?”

He leans in, the chance to gossip with a newcomer obviously too tempting to pass up. “Her father died under mysterious circumstances, if you know what I mean. Sheriff said he passed away in his sleep, but everyone knows he beat her mama, and when her grandmother found out?”

“Murdered.” Zelda remembers what Dolores said about her grandmother and her tonics. She can’t help but smile. Her own mama’s told her about how back in the day, women would take care of bad men when the law turned a blind eye.

The man spreads his hands. “It’s ancient history now, and Dolores never let none of that stop her. She became something. Somebody. Traveled all over the world with those dolls of hers. Put our little county on the map.” He points his thumb to a wall of pictures just over his shoulder. Zelda spots a handful of local celebrities smiling in faded Kodachrome: the mayor at a ribbon cutting in front of a candy store, the local football team holding up a trophy, a beauty queen waving from a hay float. And sure enough, there’s Dolores Washington posing with one of those corncob dolls, only this one’s as big as a real child, blue ribbon pinned to its chest.

“Now she lives out there in that house all alone,” he says.

“Well, she’s got her daughter.” Granddaughter, she amends in her head. The girl’s too young to be her daughter.

“Her daughter don’t talk to her no more. Not since the accident. Hate to say it, but she blamed Dolores for what happened.”

Zelda doesn’t follow.

“The granddaughter.” The cashier lowers his voice. “She was playing out in the cornfield and stepped on some kind of old animal trap. Snapped closed, took her foot clean off.” His hand mimes the bite of metal jaws. “By the time they found her she’d bled out. Couldn’t keep enough blood in her to keep her alive.”

Zelda stares.

He purses his lips before he brightens. “I’m glad to see Dolores has got some company now. Can’t imagine how hard it must be to be all alone, nothing to keep you company but a bunch of old dolls.”

—

Zelda’s back in the truck and speeding down the road, her shopping cart left behind. She doesn’t need to build a critter trap. She knows who and what the monster is. Can’t believe she didn’t put it together when it was all right there in front of her. If Atticus had been awake, he’d have Seen something. Or maybe he had.

Doll, he’d said. Only she hadn’t understood.

And then he’d been too tired, or too sick, or—

“Oh, God.”

Power in the blood. That’s what Washington had wanted, what had made her eyes linger on Atticus, what had curled her lip in satisfaction. Because Lord knows your dead grandchild can’t survive on birds and barn cats. She needed what all revenants need: a person to feed on, and even better if it’s someone with power, someone like Atticus.

Zelda slams the gas down harder and sends the truck jumping forward, sliding on the slick street. The tail end tries to fishtail, but she rights the thing, tires spinning, as she curses herself and prays she’s not too late.

—

“Atticus!” she screams as she barrels through the door. She takes the stairs two at a time and throws herself against the bedroom door. It rattles in its frame, locked, and holds. She focuses, calls some of that heat that’s always waiting down inside her, and slams into the door again. This time it gives.

And there’s the little girl, the little doll, curled up next to Atticus. He looks to be sleeping, but there’s a looseness about his limbs that speaks of something more than sleep, that shouts at her that if she doesn’t do something, he’s never waking up.

The child looks up, heavy lidded. Blood crusts her little mouth, streaks Atticus’s neck and shoulders where she’s been feeding. Her boot brace is off, and she’s missing her leg below the knee, corn husks sticking out along the cuff of the fabric.

“Hungry,” she whispers.

Zelda starts to move. To do what, she doesn’t know. To rip the girl away from her brother, to open her own vein and feed Atticus her blood, hoping to replace his? But she doesn’t take a step before her back catches on fire.

She stumbles, howling in pain. Her hand grasps desperately for whatever weapon has pierced her between her shoulder blades, but she can’t reach it. She hears something in her body pop as she stretches, and then she catches a glimpse. Protruding from her flesh is a jumbo-sized wooden knitting needle half as thick as her wrist.

“I will not lose my grandchild!” Washington cries as Zelda staggers around to face her. Gone is the cool, put-together woman with the pressed hair and the perfect dress. The woman before her is wild-eyed, desperate. Determined.

“You can’t have my brother!” Zelda grinds out between clenched teeth.

But Dolores doesn’t hear her, gaze focused on the girl, on Atticus as he lies there dying. “Your family’s got that old blood,” she half whispers. “Magic. If anything can make my baby alive, again, it’s that.”

“The magic runs two ways,” Zelda hisses.

Dolores turns, stares.

“Your granny should have told you that magic always comes in twos. Light and Dark.” Zelda spits blood, grins through the pain. “Eye and Tooth.”

She calls her power, some of the same power that runs in Atticus’s veins, only hers is bent different. She lets it bubble up, become appetite. Her fangs descend, her nails sharpen. Zelda roars as she reaches back and rips the needle from her flesh. The pain is clarifying, almost exhilarating. She rolls her shoulder, pops the bone back into the socket, and tosses the needle aside.

Washington screams, raises her hands as if she can ward off what’s next. But it’s too late for that, and Zelda’s been hungry, too.

—

The rain has finally stopped and there’s a cool breeze blowing in through the open windows when Atticus walks down the stairs, headphones around his neck. There’s a thick bandage around his throat, white gauze crisscrossing his shoulder. His steps are a little slower, skin a little chalkier, as whatever poison Dolores put into those beans works its way out of his system.

“You ready to leave?” Zelda asks.

“More than ready.” He eyes the phone cradled against Zelda’s cheek. “Who you talking to?”

“On hold with the airline.”

Atticus’s gaze flickers to the girl. She’s sitting next to Zelda playing with a paper doll.

“I can’t just leave her here,” Zelda says. She fingers the bloodstained envelope and the splayed-out twenties on the table. She knows it’s not much, but she figures it’s just enough to buy an extra ticket in economy. “And I told her no eating until we’re home and I can teach her how to hunt proper.”

Atticus grunts, noncommittal, and slides on his headphones. “I’ll wait in the truck.”

Zelda knows he’s not happy, but he won’t make a fuss, because he understands, just like Zelda, that sometimes the best monster hunters are monsters themselves.

When he was a kid, Freddy’s grandmother would joke: “It is like you have a face on the back of your head and feet that go both ways, the way you’re always off somewhere as soon as you arrive.” Sometimes she would end the joke with a serious chastisement. “Your mother was like that. Lord knows where she went off to.” Freddy’s mother had run off on her thirtieth birthday. It would’ve been a tragedy if she hadn’t left a note. She wrote that she was going out west to chase her dreams. With the note it was a different kind of tragedy.

His mother was a beautiful singer. For a long time, he watched the television hoping to see her there, her face smiling back at him through the glass. In the fantasy, the song she was about to sing would be dedicated to him, her Freddy, who she’d return to as soon as she had enough money. She’d come get him and raise him up in one of those mansions out in Hollywood.

The dreams of children.

Freddy’s grandfather had run off too. Never to be heard from again. And so, even though Freddy’s mother and grandfather weren’t there, and even though Freddy didn’t want to be there either, the wanderlust he shared with them made him feel like a part of something: a lineage of going.

At sixteen he left Georgia with a note of his own. He would be going out west to look for his mother. He got as far as Texas. It was the midnineties, still too early in the history of the internet to make it a useful way of tracking anyone down. Since that note, his mother had never as much as called home. Freddy got himself a girlfriend in Texas and worked under the table as a dishwasher. The life he was living became the whole point of leaving. And he enjoyed it until wanderlust hit him again. East to Mississippi, and northeast toward West Virginia, and then northeast again to Boston, to New York. West to Pennsylvania.

He met Dilah in Pittsburgh, right before Obama was elected. Freddy was older. She was just out of college and very mature for her age. Worldly in the sense that she knew a lot about the world. Always talking about politics. She liked him because he had rough hands, and he looked at people when he talked to them. He was of the world, and, as she liked to put it, knew how to move through the world. They complemented each other well. So well he stayed in Pittsburgh longer than he planned. He’d felt the wanderer in him calling a year in. He’d already stayed three.

Dilah was different from him in a lot of ways, but the biggest was her love of family. She applied to universities only in Pennsylvania because she wanted to stay within driving distance of her two nieces, her brother’s children, who she was also close to. Her mother and father had never gotten divorced like many of her friends’ parents. Eventually Dilah would want marriage. And maybe after a few years working in local politics, she’d want children. Which meant Freddy needed to get going. He didn’t want to waste any more of her time.

It wasn’t that Dilah was opposed to Freddy’s desire to travel. “We can travel,” she’d say. “Go anywhere you like. I can even be convinced to go to another state. As long as it’s a short flight from Pittsburgh.”

She didn’t understand the reason he needed to go, and he hadn’t tried to explain it to her. The going was good only if he had no plans of coming back. The leaving was the point.

So many times he’d already considered packing up his possessions and leaving, even got that tingle in the back of his skull when he thought of where he’d go, that certain feeling of rightness when he landed on Detroit. It was always easy to leave. He’d left several relationships just that way, canceled his phone plan, got in his sputtering Honda Accord at midnight, and started driving.

Dilah was different. Dilah was different, and he did love her. But he thought of his mother at thirty, a life and a child she didn’t want. The terrible note. Not even a word for her son. He knew the same thing that was in her was in him, knew it so bone-deep he had never found it in himself to hate her. But he wanted to be better than she was. Only the truly evil would build a life they knew they would abandon.

Freddy thought Dilah suspected something, though she was unable or unwilling to address it directly. She talked about it at the corners.

“I saw you with my nieces today,” she told him when they were in bed.

Dilah didn’t say the rest. She’d said before that Freddy was good with children. He was unself-conscious around them. The way he was around everyone, Dilah asserted. He could have fun with them without needing to bring himself down, just the way he could exist around other people his age, more successful people, without needing to inflate himself.

He had been with the nieces the previous weekend, at a family gathering that happened for no good reason. It was the way Dilah’s family liked to do things: family gatherings just to have them. Dilah’s brother was at the grill and Freddy helped for a while, until Dilah’s father came to relieve him.

Dilah’s father was nice enough, but Freddy was good at reading people. Freddy was not good enough for Dilah. Freddy agreed.

He found the two girls inside in the living room, and he taught them how to play a game called Jhyap, which he’d learned from a friend on a train to Birmingham. It was a Nepalese game. The girls were smart and caught the rules quickly.

“Have you ever been to Nepal?” the younger of the two asked.

“I haven’t,” he said. “Someday.”

“If you and Dilah go, can we come with you?” said the older one.

Freddy didn’t want to answer. He was superstitious about making promises, especially ones too far ahead to predict where he’d be. He nodded instead, slowly enough that he could convince himself that it was a contemplative nod and not a yes.

They were excited anyway, and they asked a lot of questions about the country and Freddy answered the ones he could.

He noticed Dilah at the doorway, the approval in her eyes.

In bed he could hear the smile in Dilah’s voice as she said, “Anywhere you want to go, just ask. We’ll plan it and go. Bring the nieces. They’ve never left the country, you know.”

Freddy remained silent, suddenly aware that his feet were cold. He hadn’t left the country either.

“What you thinking about?” Dilah asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. But he did know. “I was remembering this train station down in Georgia. Outside Atlanta. There was this old gentleman”—Freddy called him a gentleman because of his fine clothes, despite them being a little worn—“and he was sitting on the floor, just splayed out against the wall even though there were rows of empty benches. He had this old banged-up banjo that he was plucking with long, thick fingernails. And he was singing. A voice full of gravel, sand, and sawdust. Could barely hear the words of the song, but I swear to you it was the most incredible thing I’ve heard. Then or since. Haunting. I came up to him and put some money in his top hat—yes, the man had a top hat—just a few bits of change I had in my pocket. He looked up at me and stopped playing, asked me to sit with him awhile. I introduced myself. He grinned and said he knew me already, a fellow wandering devil, like himself. He said, ‘Well, I’m not no regular old wandering devil. I’m Old Black Billy himself.’ No idea what he was talking about, but I pretended I did.

“He asked me if I wanted to know about the road ahead. He laughed at my confusion, and it was like his singing, vocal cords all rusted through, and then he told me my future. Said I’d meet a girl in an old mill town, we’d fall in love, and she’d be the one.”

Dilah was quiet for a moment, as quiet as she’d been the whole time he was talking. She squirmed next to him and pulled his chin down so she could look him in the eye. “I’m sure that’s the most you’ve ever said at once about Georgia.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I loved the story. Love all your stories.” She kissed him. “Old-Man Billy was right. Pittsburgh is the biggest old mill town there is.”

“So, you believe him. That he could see my future.”

“I believe that there are things in the world that are beyond cause and effect. He gave you a fortune you liked. You came to Pittsburgh, and I found you.” She smiled up at him, mischievous, running a finger along the old scar at his collarbone. “And now I’m not letting you go.”

“I really do love you.”

“I know you do.” She continued smiling and it was with the confidence of someone who’d had a whole lifetime of good fortune, of people staying exactly where they should, people who knew themselves and who to keep close and who to love and how to love them. The kind of confidence that could bend Freddy in on himself, crush him down diamond-like into the sort of man that could be all those sure things, if only he let it. He just had to let it.

“Anywhere you want to go,” she repeated, and he thought she could somehow sense the tingle inside his skull, actually feel it, vibrating beneath them. The want to go.

“I’ll think about where,” he said. “Maybe a short trip out of town. With the girls.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

—

Freddy began packing the next day. There was a lot to do, even for a man that didn’t have many worldly possessions. He stayed in a room he was subletting from Carter, a white man a little younger than Freddy who lived alone and to Freddy’s knowledge had no visitors to the apartment. A man Freddy might become someday. Freddy was quiet mostly, but when he spoke, he had the power to pull people’s attention to him. He knew this and marveled at it the same way he caught others doing. It was, Freddy guessed, because he often said exactly what he was thinking, but only when it was worth saying. A story or a comment or a joke at just the right time, and he always knew it was right because he could feel it, like when he played pool and knew he’d gotten the right angle on the cue ball; he didn’t even need to look when the ball fell into the pocket. But Freddy had played a lot of pool with men a lot like himself, older and alone. He knew eventually that future would find him if he never settled down.

Freddy wondered if there were good pool bars in Detroit. Of course there were.

He packed his big brown chest with his clothes and little trinkets and his books. Every time Freddy left a place, he got rid of most of what he accumulated, or swapped a new thing in, throwing out something he’d brought with him from the place before. Freddy liked to have twelve of everything that required more than one. Twelve shirts, twelve pairs of underwear, twelve pants, twelve books. Twelve socks. He liked twelve because it felt better than ten and was one shy of unlucky thirteen. Fourteen of anything was too much to have. The chest was nearly full, as well as two suitcases he desperately needed to replace. He had only three sets of sheets and blankets that he laundered regularly and swapped out in the same order. He decided he would keep only one. Into the chest it went.

He’d cancel his phone plan last, get rid of the phone, kill his email address. Start everything new. But he had to wait until the last day to save himself any awkwardness. Dilah texted him all the time and sent him emails of articles to read and TED Talks to watch. Freddy didn’t want anything to bounce back until he was out of town.

On Freddy’s way out that evening, he caught Carter coming up the stairs to the apartment, bags of groceries in both hands. Freddy kept the door open and waited by it.

Freddy said, “I wanted to let you know that I’m moving out. End of the week.”

Carter looked stunned. “That’s fast.” His eyes were moving back and forth. Working out next month’s rent, Freddy guessed. He sighed and said, “Finally moving in with that girlfriend of yours? She’s asked you enough times.”

Dilah had brought it up in earshot of Carter more than once. Planting a seed or hoping for a conspirator. Freddy didn’t confirm Carter’s guess, but his silence did the work, nonetheless.

“Beautiful,” Carter said. His right fingers were gripping one bag, the loops digging so deep into his fingertips that they were turning purple.

“Let me not keep you,” Freddy said.

He could tell Carter wanted to say something. He had a look on his face. Freddy knew what it was. On the road, Freddy had picked up the ability to read the weather on people’s faces, stormy or overcast, heat or cold. Carter lived under a steady rain.

“It was good having you here,” Carter said. “You were a good roommate, and I’ve had more than my share of bad ones. Shame to see you go, but I’m happy for you.”

Freddy said, “End of the week, if not sooner.”

He picked up Dilah from work and they went out to get some Chinese food. Dilah had cumin beef and Freddy picked something new from the menu, pork meatballs over rice. As always Dilah was amused by his choice and had a taste. She didn’t ask for another bite.

“I was thinking about the story you told me,” Dilah said. “When I told my brother about it, he said it sounded creepy. Was it creepy when it happened?”

Freddy shook his head. “He was just an old man, brain fried by too many summers in the Georgia heat.”

“What did you feel when he said that you’d fall in love? Was that scary?”

Freddy pretended that his mouth was too full to speak. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I don’t remember my exact feeling.”

“Isn’t that strange?”

“Only if I believed him. I didn’t.”

Dilah was unsatisfied but let the matter rest.

They turned to talking about her job. Dilah couldn’t decide if she hated it. Once again, Freddy helped her arrive at, yes, she did, knowing she’d walk herself back over the line by the next morning. These conversations were exercises for Dilah. She committed to things, even things she hated. Freddy couldn’t make up his mind if that was a good way to live in the world. Certainly, a common way. The word “common” felt like he was judging her, and it made him feel bad to wrap her up in this way. In many ways, Dilah was just as adventurous as he was.

Later, after he dropped her home, he went back to his place, thinking about the conversation. He could move in, couldn’t he? He’d already done the work of packing. It would be an easy transition. Dilah would say yes, and he could drive her home and take his trunk out the back, watch her face brighten up as he hefted it up the front steps. All it required was to flick a switch in his head. He talked himself through it the way he’d talked Dilah through how she felt about her job. He felt himself walking back over the line again and again. Leaving was easier for him to accept than moving in. But wasn’t that because moving in was the better choice? Scarier, but more right?

This need to be elsewhere. Suddenly it felt like a knot inside him, a cyst, or a stone he was grinding against, a foreign object to be removed. On the other side of the line, he interpreted that same need as a vital part of his essential self. He couldn’t decide which was truer.

It was dark inside his apartment, but he navigated the furniture like he’d done countless times, his mind turning the decision over and over. He would’ve kept walking to his room without stopping if it wasn’t for the sensation of something gently wrapping around his ankle. It was quick, and on instinct Freddy shook his leg and spun around to look. In the inky blackness he saw the thing release him. He couldn’t make it out clearly, but his brain had reached a very strange conclusion: a spider, with too many legs that tapered to sharp points. A spider on stilts that were knives.

He heard Carter’s door open and then the light came on.

“Are you all right?”

Freddy turned to Carter, saw the concern on his face. Had he screamed? “Yeah,” he said. “Thought something touched my leg for a second.” He looked back to where he’d seen the spider and to his not-surprise found nothing.

“That’s happened to me too many times,” Carter said. “Mind playing tricks. Big life steps can mess with you like that. Unsteady you.”

This felt like a weird thing to say, a reading into things that made Freddy unreasonably angry. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess. Sure.”

—

The rest of the week went by too quickly for Freddy’s liking. He gave his notice at Bar Angelo, the Italian restaurant where he worked as a waiter. Klaus, the manager of the place since as long as Freddy had worked there, let a little of his frustration show—Freddy was the second person to be leaving that month—but he liked Freddy and the rest of the staff did too. Klaus begrudgingly accepted the reality and Freddy let Klaus hug him.

Two more dinner dates with Dilah that went well, Dilah foregoing more conversations about the train station, which Freddy greatly appreciated. The truth was, Freddy had left more than a few things out when he told Dilah the story. For one, Old Black Billy wore sunglasses so dark Freddy thought the man might’ve been blind. When Freddy looked at the sunglasses, he thought he could see through that dark to the man’s eyes, which weren’t eyes at all but black pits, bottomless. Freddy kept looking at those sunglasses, waiting for the light to catch them the right way, but the sun always kept clear of that part of Billy’s face. But that detail wasn’t particularly important. What Freddy had left out, the important thing, was what Old Black Billy had said after telling Freddy that he’d go to an old mill town and fall in love.

Strumming a three-note tune on his banjo, Old Black Billy had said, “You marry that girl, and you’ll have a long happy life. But if you leave her, as is your nature, being from the same line as that no-good granddaddy of yours, you’ll see places you don’t have the mind to dream of.” When Old Black Billy gave his prediction, he must’ve seen something he didn’t like in Freddy’s face because the frail man was suddenly up and snatching at Freddy’s shirt collar. Billy got a good grip too, one of his nails lifting a strip of flesh from Freddy’s collarbone. “You know, wanderers like us could fall right through the earth and no one would know where to look. Or even bother. People like us”—he cleared some of the rasp from his throat—“we leave a string of broken hearts behind. And hatred long and black as a shadow at dawn.”

Suddenly terrified at what he might see, Freddy looked away from the man’s sunglasses to where the worn banjo rested comfortably on the jagged red rug the man was sitting on. Freddy did not see when Old Black Billy had put the banjo down.

“You listening, boy? I’m telling you best I know to tell it. Best I can.”

Freddy pulled himself free, but it was halfhearted. He wasn’t afraid, not just then; the whole moment was so quick, and Freddy’s mind had done the opposite—it had slowed to a stop, barely able to pull together what the man had said to derive meaning from it. But Freddy had heard the words. And he had played them over many times since that day. Old Black Billy had known his grandfather in some essential sense, knew Freddy’s own future, and knew Freddy himself enough to know the allure of the latter choice, the choice of going places Freddy didn’t know to dream of.

But in the moment, it was all too much, and Freddy was struck speechless, his mouth open with nothing inside his head.

Old Black Billy frowned and turned away. He picked up his banjo and went back to strumming his three-note tune. “Be off with you. A fool if I ever seen one.”

Only back at his seat did Freddy realize his shirt was torn and stained with blood.

—

His mistake was telling his boss. Freddy had ghosted jobs at least a dozen times, but he’d liked Klaus, liked his co-workers. And Dilah had made him soft, he guessed. Because he warned his boss, Klaus had time to tell everyone. Because his co-workers knew about Dilah and had all at different times remarked on how good they were together, and because they had her number as a contact, someone had called her up, invited her to the farewell party.

On his last day, at the end of his shift, which was closing time for Bar Angelo, there Dilah was, coming in from the rain with her navy-blue-and-white polka-dot umbrella. Davie, who unlocked the door for her, standing there and smiling, and Dilah smiling back, giving nothing away. Only because he knew her so well, only because he was putting it together, did he understand it for the performance it was. Her eyes were on his, unblinking, the secret between them. Freddy had the rag he was using to wipe off the tables in one hand, his other against a chair for support. He smiled a little too late, but Davie couldn’t’ve known the difference. Everyone else came out the back. A red velvet cake was set down on the table he’d just wiped off. Davie and Joel and Rita and Ducky and his manager, Klaus, all there, grinning at him.

Nothing to sing about, so they didn’t. But Klaus had prepared a speech: “You’ve been with us only a short time, Freddy. But you’re a hard worker and a good co-worker. Funny when you want to be, but always a good solid presence. And your stories. I’ve never met a person with so many strange stories just ready to tell. For any occasion. And always a quiet lesson to be learned.”

Was that actually true? Freddy didn’t think his stories had lessons. He had his eyes on Dilah. She was next to him, but her focus was on Klaus and his speech.

When she looked up at him finally, Freddy tried to tell her through his expression how sorry he was.

She leaned in, said, “Later.”

Klaus was eventually finished. Everyone applauded. Freddy smiled sheepishly; he’d missed the ending.

Every person said their goodbye with their own story. Freddy covering for Rita when she had to go to the hospital to see her sick dad. Freddy’s surprise birthday party for Davie at the end of her shift, which had given her the idea for this little shindig. Freddy hugging Ducky as he cried over a breakup, not even a little self-conscious about it, Freddy offering no words of judgment or encouragement, just being there.

Dilah told the story of the train station, the prediction that she and Freddy would find each other, and how beautiful the last two and a half years had been. She looked at Freddy the whole time.

When it was his turn to speak—and Freddy had to speak after all of the fuss they’d all made—he thanked each one of them, told one of his stories, this one with all of them in it, that time when there was a snowstorm and they all came in anyway and when people stopped showing up, they hung out later than they should, drinking a few bottles of wine on Klaus’s dime and listening to music from the restaurant speakers. Dilah had been there too by the end, to pick up Freddy because his car was in the shop. She’d stayed and was so drunk when the snow stopped that Freddy had to drive her home and spend the night.

“I’ll miss you all,” he said and found that he meant it.

“Where are you going?” Ducky asked.

“Detroit,” he said, and shrugged. Freddy didn’t dare look at Dilah. His stomach was in knots.

“I’m taking a job there,” Dilah said.

And this was enough. Everyone was satisfied. They ate the cake, shared around dessert plates from the restaurant. Someone would have to wash those up. Someone would have to go through that little bit of trouble because he was a coward. Dilah was smiling still, all through everything, every little conversation that came her way.

Finally, it was over, Freddy in the open air outside Bar Angelo, at last able to breathe.

“I took a bus, so you’ll have to drive me home.”

“Of course, no worries.”

In Freddy’s car, driving out of downtown and into Monroeville, Freddy was trying to find the words. Dilah stayed silent all the way.

When they were in front of the apartment building, Freddy said, “I was still thinking it through.” And this was what he was avoiding, saying those words. Even if they were true, nothing he did looked like a man still thinking about staying. Based on his actions, he’d be thinking it through all the way out of town.

By her expression, Dilah didn’t believe him either. “Dad told me. He said, ‘That man has never considered another person his whole life.’ And I defended you. Because that’s not what I saw. I thought he misunderstood you. I thought…” Something gave in her expression. She was looking at him, looking and looking and trying to find him there, whoever that man was that she thought she loved. And even though she was too proud to plead, her face was betraying her. “Let me think about it. Give me a week. You can move here in the meantime. Just let me think about it.”

That man could exist. Somewhere in Freddy, he was there. “Okay,” Freddy said.

She was searching his face again, hesitating to get out of the car. “Go grab your things and come right back.”

“I will. I’ll be right back.”

He could see that she wanted to change her mind, go with him. But it wasn’t just about her pride. She wanted to be the sort of person that could trust a man like him. She got out the car and didn’t look back. Even at the door, where he could see she wanted to, in the set of her shoulders and the short pause before she went inside.

Freddy drove home. He ran up the stairs. Carter wasn’t there, the apartment dark and noiseless. He flicked on the living room light and the light in his room. He pulled out his trunk and put it in the car. Gathered the last of his things. He returned one last time to get his toothbrush and deodorant from the bathroom.

He wished he could say he was all the way decided. He would make his final decision in the car, he thought, though he felt himself leaning toward Dilah. He was leaning toward the fiction he’d have to fit himself into for her, the one reflected back to him through her eyes. He wanted to be that fiction for her.

And yet, even as he was making up his mind, he still wanted to leave.

He was in the hall again when something caught fast to his right leg. In the faint light shining through from the living room he could see it this time—hands, long fingers, and taloned nails. And he’d seen those hands before. He yelled out, but all the scream in him went right back down into the pit of his stomach where he could not draw it back up again. He was sinking now, first by his right leg—he couldn’t see the hands anymore—and then both legs, and then he was waist-deep into the floor, the white tile of the hallway giving around him, rippling, frothy like warm milk. He failed again to scream. He felt the hands around his right leg, digging into the flesh—that too felt familiar—and pulling him down. And where he was going wasn’t the apartment below. This other place was both hot and cold…and swampy—and he could smell sulfur coming up to meet him. His chest, his neck, his mouth, and then just his eyes remaining, that last bit of self, looking out into the living room, the faint light giving him one last glimpse of the apartment before he was yanked clear of the world.

Used to be, you could tell an alien pregnancy from a human one with your naked eye, back before they’d figured people out. Back when post-hysterectomy wombs ballooned overnight, or an entire nursing home of geriatrics would be expecting and everyone’s, like, expecting what exactly, and send in the troops.

Your baby was born with a literal cow head? Fourteen stomachs? That doesn’t seem right. Stop counting its hoofs (heeves? hoofeses?) and call in the damn troops.

They had no idea how our bodies worked. It was almost funny.

But of course, they learned.

—

The woman looks so much like her file photo it surprises me. No tired creases bracketing her mouth, no eyes shadowed by exhaustion, none of the tells of a lived life that cameras collude to hide. She is as lovely as her home. Aside from her very pregnant belly, she could have stepped out of the photo and settled into the wingback chair she now occupies. There’s nothing of the last four years on her; even her hands are soft and neat. Unlikely, then, that Olivia Schultz has been roughing it off-grid.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

She’s all smiling solicitude; the arched doorway behind her makes for a charming frame. A few years ago I might have bought it, but that bloom has withered. I’ve been punched, kicked, bitten. I have punched, bitten, kicked. Two agents armed to the molars now accompany me on every intake. More if I ask. The optics of armed security dragging expectant mothers into agency vans aren’t great, but after Miami no one’s complaining.

“Olivia Gladstone. When you disappeared, it was Olivia Schultz. Congratulations must be in order.”

She says thank you, gives the very fake ring a fretful twist before hiding her nerves.

“My husband will be coming home any moment now.”

“Tell me about him. Name? Genetic Identification number?”

“John Gladstone. A654390-778.”

I already know what result I’ll get, but I plug the number into my tablet. We study each other while the machine trawls the database looking for A654390-778. It comes back flagged, faker than the ring. I flip it so she can see.

“There must be something wrong with the records. I—”

“Cut the shit, Olivia. Either provide a real genetic number and verification paperwork, or the agency takes you in. The rules haven’t changed since you ran off. Four years. Your parents think you joined a cult.” I press when her smile warps. “There are thirty-six corpses in the Midwest matching your description and we only know none of them are you because your mother and father went to identify all of them.”

The smile is back, her eyes steady. I want to shake her, maybe get in a bit of that biting and kicking. Time to change approach.

“Olivia, do you understand what’s happening to you? You know there isn’t really a baby in there, right? I don’t have to tell you how much trouble you’re in. Come to the agency, do the blood test, and I’ll get all charges dropped.” I’m not making the fines go away, but she can find that out later. You don’t get to incubate an alien invasion without payback. “You won’t have to lift a finger. You won’t be alone. Aren’t you tired of doing all this alone?”

If that unwavering gaze hadn’t blinked, she could have been a wax figurine. I wait her out, begging with my eyes for her to make this easy on both of us and just turn herself in. People may look the other way, but wrestling a pregnant woman into restraints is far from ideal.

Olivia doesn’t break, and after a sixty-year minute I start to speak, but something—a sound? A breath?—brushes my ear and every hair on my neck wants out. Dots begin to find one another, connect, party.

Olivia Schultz has flown under the agency’s radar for years. (Dot.) No person, security camera, or drone caught sight of her in all that time until she shows up on a random store feed. (Dot.) Olivia Schultz is of childbearing age now, and had been back when she disappeared, too. (Dot.) Olivia Schultz is acting like someone who wants to be found. (Dot.) If she’s incubating now…(extremely reluctant: Dot.) It’s a bit of a leap, but I take it.

“Olivia, are we alone?”

Everything shuts off, her smile, the light in her eyes, even her posture falters.

Right. Okay.

“Olivia, I’m going to stand up. You’re going to stand up with me. And then we’re both going to back toward the door and we’re going to leave.”

A faint almost whine from the hallway behind her.

I stand up, slow and easy.

“Olivia?”—she’s crying now, soundless—“just come with me, it will be fine, I promise.”

She shakes her head. Whispers.

I keep backing to the front door, years of training holding steady. Never give them your back. I’ve seen too many photos of what happens when you do.

“Olivia. It can all be over right now. Please. Stand up, walk toward me.”

Two whines this time, one from Olivia, tortured with indecision, the other from…I scramble behind me for the doorknob. From the safety of the stoop I see Olivia, her pose turned rictus at the edges. And in the doorway behind her, a small hand sliding up the arch. There are no knuckles, no fingernails. Up, up, higher than any child with hands that size should be able to reach.

I call in the troops.

—

They got better at making us. For one, they now stick to women of childbearing age. The days of culling a herd of dudes who found themselves seven months along after a guys’ night out are gone. Even then, the incubated specimens were always a little off—not cow’s head off—but shit like not having any joints (starfishes) or having way too many (what-the-fucks). Lots of stillborns with molars in their knees and toenails where their eyes should be.

Then two years ago at a Florida hospital, a newborn unfolds his jaw and eats half a nurse’s face. And you think, it’s Miami, it happens, until the video comes in. There’s a still from that first clip that ends up as the unofficial agency screensaver. Just after the camerawoman tells her exhausted wife to smile, just after she directs the nurse to hold the baby up so relatives scattered across the country can see what Tallahassee girls could do. Just when things turn. The cherub/gremlin dichotomy of a new child’s face interrupted by a peculiar assembly of too many teeth, mouth opening so wide that chin obscures belly button.

The agency pulled everyone in—even the Research ghouls who were excited, mind you, by this new development. The possibilities, they said, the things they could learn from the most evolved live alien specimen to date, blah blah.

Every day there’s something in the news about alternate dimensions and pipe dreams of building portals to get there, and all that’s great, but when they find the one with time travel I’m going back to that night and I’m going to throat-chop every ghoul who insists on the extravagance of a “live capture.”

The NICU, the families eager to meet their newest members, the doctors checking their pagers, the nurses checking their patients. They’re the ones who paid for it.

—

Thirty minutes after I call it in, the Schultz house is surrounded and the entire subdivision is evacuated. I’m debriefed until everyone who needs to know knows what I know. No one likes the disjointed hand, its journey up, up, up. And they really hate the last thing Olivia whispered when I begged her to leave: “It won’t let me.”

I’m soon superfluous and everyone of rank eyes me to make sure I know it, but I’m not going anywhere. If Olivia comes out of this alive, I’m her ride. Well, the Intake ambulance is her ride, but I’m in charge of it. I wave to the medics, fix a cup at the coffee station, and park my ass in central. They might want me out of the way, but they can’t make me leave, so there. I let my husband know it’s only him tonight and he replies with a thumbs-up emoji. Alien head emoji lets him know it’s for real, not a last-minute girls’ night or some me time.

I nurse my coffee and eavesdrop. To breach or not to breach the house? Do they try to get Olivia Schultz out alive? The negotiator calls her, but it rings and rings. I want to give my input, but I’ve done such a great job of outskirting myself into invisibility, I don’t want to remind anyone I’m still here. One of the ghouls advances Research interests, but everyone ignores her rationale for capturing “the mature specimen” alive. “No one’s ever seen one this old. Four. That’s ancient in specimen years. You’re essentially cutting down the last redwood. This is the only chance we’ll ever have.” She tries to make Fellow Civilian eye contact with me—as fucking if—and I click into my tablet, yielding a handful of messages from my husband and one from Teresa reaming me for whatever I let slip that brought Research to the scene.

Deputy Director Teresa Haaki-Byrd (rechristened Trigga-Happy Bitch by the ghouls) has a whole save-the-people-shoot-all-the-aliens vibe that I, as a people, can really get behind. When the single attempt to secure “a live one” ended with half a ward in body bags, the agency adopted a nonnegotiable “How About We Just Shoot Them” policy. No reasonable person who’d been there or seen the aftermath objected. The final Miami report includes words like “pulp” and “slurry” that should never be used to describe human remains.

Logging on to the informant portal yields even more messages from the snitches, a moniker agents are discouraged from using, but one of the analysts called the program “Snitchbook” on launch day and it stuck. Olivia’s informant messages me like he knows I’m online.

Snitch: I just saw it on the news! That’s where she lives right? When do I get $$$paid?

I don’t say what I want to say and continue my winning streak of five months without a reprimand.

Me: Once the intake paperwork is complete, funds will appear in the account you provided in 7–10 business days.

Snitch: But I was right? She’s breeding invaders?

And already gave birth to one some years ago, yes. But I’m not giving this guy a chance to claim one cent over the standard five hundred dollars. Don’t get me wrong, informants and spotters are a necessary part of all this, but you read enough articles about people making twice your salary snitching and, well, bitter isn’t the word, but it’s close.

Me: If it’s a confirmed invader, someone will reach out to you.

It’s the same FAQ script they all see on the website, which must be annoying, but no one can say I wasn’t professional.

I ignore the pending reply and put away my tablet when the phone, our phone, rings.

The negotiator answers. It’s Olivia. I can’t hear what she’s saying but her voice is pitched at panic. The negotiator can’t get a word in. Rookie.

Olivia Schultz went off the grid four years ago. Her parents reported her missing, but she was an adult and she’d emptied her bank account. No significant suspects and her friends thought she’d mentioned a trip. No foul play suspected. Obvious cult work.

The so-called “rebirth cults” are what happens when people defect from Team People. You saw them less when it was all cow heads and feathered tongues, but after they started looking like us, people lost their minds. I swear, there must be some genetic well of low self-esteem that makes humans look for something, anything, to worship. Give us a glimpse of a more powerful, sentient entity and some of us will offer up our wombs as incubators. These cults lure, brainwash, or kidnap women of childbearing age, though they could probably survive on volunteers. That Olivia is alone suggests a cult of one, and is probably why she has evaded us. No hive would abandon someone so close to delivery.

The negotiator snaps his fingers for attention, looks around until he sees me. He holds out the phone and it might as well be a spotlight. All eyes on me.

“She wants to talk to you.”

I put down my suddenly powerless coffee cup of invisibility and take the phone. Research ghoul wants to tell me something so bad I can feel it radiating off her. To hear them talk, the many tissue samples, whole entire corpses, aren’t enough. They want a live one.

“Olivia, I’m here, what do you need from me?” I hope the negotiator is taking notes.

There’s no sound for a long moment and then…the only way I can describe it is foil. A voice as crumpled and metallic as wrinkling foil says my name. It says my name again when I don’t—can’t—answer, and then it keeps saying my name over and over as though it knows the script for how conversations are supposed to go and will persist until I play my part. My voice sounds like I tried to swallow it.

“What do you want?”

It’s The Question everyone from evolutionary biologists to news pundits wants answered: What do the aliens want? We know the lengths they’ll go to, parsing through the human genome over a decade to learn us, to become us.

But why?

A commotion by the front door draws everyone’s attention, a half-dozen voices calling out some version of “Hold fire!” One of the voices is Olivia’s. I spot her, hands up, belly leading the way. This is no longer a hostage situation.

It won’t let me, she’d said. Yet there Olivia is. Why? How?

Then: A whisper of a sound. A whine?

A cry?

A laugh.

It laughs.

—

After Miami, shit got real. There’s an unauthorized viral clip of what looks like a baby bounding down a hospital hallway on all fours, slinky like a cat. Back then the agency had fifty employees and a budget that struggled to keep toilet paper in stock. Integrating the army gave us access to real funding and cloud-soft triple-ply. There’s only about three hundred and fifty core staff divided among Intake, Analysis, and Research, but now we can mobilize just about any government entity to scrub what shouldn’t be made public and shoot what needs shooting.

—

I hyperventilate while Intake medics flutter around me, offering oxygen—which I gasp down—and pills—which I swallow. The new guy takes it well, but Mateo has never seen me like this, frantic and babbling. It’s the first time I’m caught by the curiosity that plagues Research, where I want answers enough to consider letting one of those things live. Was it just messing with me or is there a specific reason it said my name? If we need to ask it questions—“the first of its kind that can speak!” the ghoul says—what is the best way to capture it? Then I see Olivia on a gurney, blanket at her waist, still with the silent weeping while the new guy checks her pupils. She’s been staring at me this whole time.

It won’t let me.

It takes a few minutes, but Olivia and whatever Mateo gave me settle me down and I’m back on Team Save the People and Shoot All the Aliens Until They’re Dead. I begin a mental file for the report, condensing my panic into notes. It’s hard to stay on task, imagining that thing looking at me, thinking about me, so I call it early and head home. With no objections—Research doesn’t count—they’ll follow standing agency orders: firebomb the building, annihilate anything that tries to crawl out.

—

When I wake up, it’s afternoon and I have seventeen missed calls. Fifteen of them are from Teresa. It takes a minute for alarm to work its way through my medicated calm, in which I remember getting home, Nnamdi helping me shower, tired hugs. Christ. I rub my eyes awake(ish). Teresa’s incoming call and her not-quite greeting bring me the rest of the way.

“Where the fuck is Olivia Schultz?”

“Wha…? Intake has her. Last night—”

“Intake doesn’t know where she is. There’s no report—”

“I was going to submit it in the morning.”

“—just a half-assed write-up from the medics because they were waiting for you to sign off. Morning ended two hours ago. Where’s my report and where’s Olivia Schultz?”

Shit.

Shit shit shit. I scrabble through the notes I jotted down before I crashed, looking for the coherent summation I only dreamed of writing. Teresa hangs up; it’s unspoken that the discussion will continue in person. I stop midskim, one word snatching at me, and I just know.

Research.

The ghouls have Olivia.

—

One thing I’ll give Research—the only thing, mind you—is the identification test. After Miami, the ghouls took their very-much-unlive specimen and did what ghouls do. They stripped it down to its parts, then sliced, scraped, lasered, radiated, and centrifuged until they discovered a protein structure that simply couldn’t exist in the human proteome. Their reverse-engineered Invasive Protein Analysis did a lot for the agency. We went from—and I quote—“a bunch of assholes hassling babies” to humanity’s saviors. (Said quotee was my mother. It was Thanksgiving. I don’t want to get into it.)

Funding poured in. A couple of the ghouls shared a Nobel Prize. The agency director made the rounds on every news show, got a whole segment on 60 Minutes, just for him. With a simple fetal blood sample run through a complicated mass spectrometer, you could know if your baby might eat you. There’s now one in every hospital and birthing center. We finally had a plan to stop the invasion.

What those fawning newscasters didn’t know is that Miami could have been over in half the time with a fraction of the deaths if we’d just taken the shot the minute we had that thing in our sights. If the director, freshly promoted from the Research track—even after seeing the mush that was once two women from Tallahassee—hadn’t given a stand-down order when that thing escaped into the vents. “It’s contained. Research has proprietary equipment and its heat signature will tell us exactly where it is and when it moves. Let’s wait a minute and see what it does.”

Lies. All because he wanted to lure in “a live one.”

So, yeah, fuck Research.

—

Teresa is the scary kind of quiet when I make it to her office. Mateo is leaving as I enter and he avoids eye contact.

As expected, Teresa rakes me over the coals, flips me over, and roasts the other side until I’m done. I have no defense worth a damn and if I did I’d keep it to myself. I can’t even hint at my suspicions. If I have a grudge against Research, what Teresa has is a blood feud. She needs only the veneer of a reason to dismantle their facilities with her bare hands. She’d been up for the director position and turned it down to create Analysis from the ground up. The methodology, the training, the core data sets, that was all her. So she knows, to the number, how many lives she’d have saved in Miami had she been in charge.

She’s pretty much in charge now since the director fucked off into the limelight. But there’s always a chance he’ll take a break from being feted to pick up the phone and become a problem. And the agency needs Teresa.

“Whoever grabbed Olivia Schultz had this plan ready to go. Fake Intake van, fake staff. Everything checked out when the medics scanned their paperwork. That’s not something that happens overnight. All they needed was for Intake to make a mistake. And here comes you, our mistake. What were you thinking, abandoning a scene like that? Did you just try to answer a rhetorical question? Do you think this is a conversation?”

And so on.

“The next time I see your mouth moving, there’d better be a solution coming out of it. Until then, fuck off.”

Not gonna lie, I cry a bit on the way to my office and a lot after I shut the door.

—

My office is an organic organization of files and loose papers that an inconsiderate eye might call a “mess.” It’s mostly publications and pamphlets about cults, some of which are so old or obscure they’ve never been digitized. We’re encouraged to take on side projects at Intake and my side project is to transfer to Analysis. I’m tired of hassling babies.

I add a couple of pins to an electronic map, a task that soothes. I’m working on a theory about where cults are likely to quarter themselves, but my data hasn’t yielded any patterns relevant to the rebirth cults. Soon, the rote mechanics of mapping tunes my thoughts. The only way to unfuck my career is to find Olivia Schultz. My hunch that Research is behind Olivia’s disappearance is strong, but I also want it to be them, enough that I can’t trust my suspicions. The cults are also nimble and wily and this isn’t beyond them.

What to do: Return to the scene? Question everyone who was there that night?

My tablet pings. An internal message from an analyst friend loyal or stupid enough to still be sending me their charts.

Ekert: Want to see something cool?

I appreciate that they aren’t treating me like a leper; still, I have to offer an out.

Me: You sure you want to do that? It’ll show up on an audit.

Ekert: Is that a yes? Call me after you look at this.

It’s a layered chart showing a progression of every recorded incubation from all over the world. I scroll through an image-only version and it’s like flipping through a notebook where someone has drawn one frame of a cartoon on each page. The changes were subtle, but a hundred and fifty frames in, my neck hairs start doing that thing. There’s a difference between the abstract knowledge that the invaders are learning us and seeing the slow, persistent improvements. There are just under a thousand images. Whatever they want from us, they want it baaaad.

I toggle on the map of incubation locations and layer my cult map over it. Nada. I read through the notes on minute anatomical changes until my eyes tire. It’s late and I hear agents leaving and returning, no doubt assigned to clean up my mess. But I can feel the edge of the euphoric state the analysts talk about, where your mind is at its most plastic. I switch to Analysis’s cult data sets and it’s nothing like mine.

They’ve created layouts of every cult compound we’ve raided, and it takes only a couple to see the pattern. There are only so many ways any group can organize a living space.

But there’s something off about the rebirth cult layout that scrapes my nerves…until I notice that it puts the most vulnerable—the incubators—at the entrance to the compound. Their caretakers spread out behind them like the grooves of desperate fingernails dragged through dirt.

The office lights dim with inactivity. A solid hour passes without another human sound as I isolate the rebirth layout onto a transparent layer. I flip it over, flip it back. I pull the agency building plans to calibrate a neutral baseline. I layer it over the Intake floor plan. Over Analysis.

Then I layer the rebirth layout over Research.

Well, shit.

—

After Miami, after the director left on his world tour, Teresa siloed Research. They got their own facilities compound and a mean budget. Every cent they received needed accounting and Deputy Director Teresa H-B needed to sign off on any research. Every hoop in the known world needed jumping for Research to get data from the other departments and every bit of their findings belong to us. Was Teresa a little stingier than she had to be? Maybe, but they would have to earn back every benefit of her doubt. Research must have felt isolated and persecuted, vainglorious advocates for a mission the rest of us couldn’t see. We couldn’t have handmade a better gift for a cult.

I screenshot the rebirth/Research overlay and scan employee photos until I locate yesterday’s ghoul. I email the image and a note.

“Rachel, we need to talk.”

—

The rebirth layout shows fully in aerial view, but I sense the tendril of buildings snaking behind the large glass construction that welcomes all visitors. If the layout bears true, Olivia Schultz is in this building. A regular rebirth compound might have eight incubators, a dozen at most. In a facility this large? Kajillions.

“I don’t do guns” seems less a principled stand and more an antiquated one when faced with the possibility of a swarm of “live ones” eating their way up my body. I bring two Tasers, the illegal one Nnamdi bought when I started running again and the standard issue. They will buy me time.

I try my husband once more but get his voicemail. “I love you, jackass, don’t wait up.”

Rachel swipes me into the building. The cults have primed me for doorways festooned with umbilical cords dried hard and bloody palm prints on the walls, but the place is as sterile as a state-of-the-art research facility should be. We pass an open office where a voice calls out, “Did the goon bring a gun?” and Rachel shouts back that she didn’t think so. This is where I get nervous. It’s the casual way they talk around me, the audacity of calling me goon (goon!) to my face without a flustered apology at the inside joke getting out. Like I don’t scale as a person.

She walks me to her office and leans on the desk, arms crossed. A large window of smart glass flanks her, the adjacent lab rendered blank. It’s midnight and the building should feel empty, but it doesn’t. Before whatever’s about to pop off pops off, I want answers.

“Where’s Olivia Schultz?”

Rachel taps a module and the glass window switches. Olivia kneels on a half-reclined hospital bed, thighs spread. She’s turned around, forearms resting at the head. She is nude and pasty with sweat. When she sees me, she waves.

It won’t let me. I am a fool.

“Intake intercepted before we could get to her, but it worked out,” Rachel says.

Intercepted and fumbled. I am a damn fool.

“And if we’d taken her in?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“But if we had?”

She remains silent. She already answered the question.

“Why me? Why did that, that…thing call my name?”

“You weren’t going to let Mateo dose you if you weren’t freaked out, so we freaked you out.”

Mateo? Fucking Mateo.

Rachel laughs. She isn’t the obsequious, sniveling ghoul she had been outside the Schultz house.

“Yes, he’s ours, too. We own a share of Intake.”

I sit. I need all of me to think. Olivia growls through a contraction and Rachel shuts off the two-way like she’s trying to help me out.

“Analysis?” Too much data to fall into rebirth/Research hands. Every single strategy at humanity’s disposal.

“Soon.”

We both watch the absurd pantomime of Olivia tensing and moaning on mute.

“Why do this? Why help them?”

“Them?” Rachel’s disappointment is genuine. “You still don’t understand.”

I’m trying, but a buzzing interferes. I think past the sound. Incremental improvements from each specimen to the next, until Miami, a specimen that looked like a human being until it didn’t. We killed every invading specimen after that. Whatever it took. A task made easier by…a machine in every hospital, every birthing center. A mandatory blood test implemented the world over. A famed agency director from the Research track preaching its necessity.

At first, I think I’m hyperventilating but the breaths come from an open door to the lab where Rachel checks on Olivia. She returns with a stethoscope and nudges my shirt away from my belly. She settles cool metal onto my abdomen and listens.

I understand and I want to die.

“When?” I whisper.

“Think about it,” she whispers back.

She offers one kindness before she steps out.

“While you still remember who you are, make peace with what’s happening. It makes everything easier.”

As if I’d ever take advice from a ghoul.

While I still remember who I am, I palm Nnamdi’s stun gun. I make it to the doorway as Olivia grabs the top of the bed and grunts, strains, squeals.

They kept trying until they got us right. But they didn’t stop there. We’ve obliterated every specimen for the past two years. I think through molasses, past buzzing. Think. Analyze. It won’t let me. Nothing to analyze. We have no anatomical data. We have no idea what changes, what “improvements” they’ve made since Miami. Bounding forward on all fours. We have no idea what they are preparing for. And like a warning bell whose source I’ve just discovered, this sudden epiphany returns me to myself.

They’re preparing for something the human body won’t sur-vive.

I smoke a cigarette on the roof and look up into the starless sky. It’s past midnight, but I’ve begun to fear sleep, particularly the dark space between waking and dreaming. I’ve gotten spooky since Oglethorpe left, rediscovered a child’s fear of death. In bed at night, when it’s cool and quiet and soft and warm, I can feel the gravity of the void, the gentle tug of inevitability, and I startle awake whenever I feel myself drifting. It’s atavistic, almost a reflex. That thoughtless, senseless darkness, it’s like staring into a map of the undiscovered country, and it’s frightening to realize that, night by night, I learn by heart the shape of that territory a little more. If I can somehow conquer sleep, could I conquer death as well? Not that I could live forever exactly, but that I could conquer the thing called death that ruins living, the word and its associations, the sight and sound and taste of nullity. Perhaps then I could be entirely fearless and unsentimental.

But whatever.

A pair of flies are fucking by the edge of the roof. I suppose they could be fighting or exchanging some platonic touch. But I prefer to imagine they are fucking. I wonder how much of a fly’s life is spent in fuck-time. What is it to spend a few hours fucking when you only live for a month?

I send a text message to Oglethorpe:

what would it feel like to do nothing but fuck for a whole year?

what would it feel like to fuck until you died?

And he doesn’t reply.

He still hasn’t blocked me, despite everything.

I smoke the cigarette down to the filter. There are only a few left in the pack. I stole them from the nightstand in his bedroom—his new bedroom in his new apartment. He quit cigarettes two months ago, quit me three weeks ago. But who can resist an occasional indulgence? So it’s good we’re together now, me and these cigarettes. Even as I smoke them away, one by one, they become a part of me and I become a part of them, the tar and ash and buzz and the gestalt phenomenon of mutated cells in my lungs mirroring the lipstick stains on the discarded butts. It’s obvious. He has made me into a pack of cigarettes, and I will be a pack of cigarettes forever now. Shades of Faulkner (“my mother is a fish”) and the poet (“…saxum iam colla tenebat, / oraque duruerant, signumque exsangue sedebat”).

What the fuck am I even talking about?

Grad school is bad for the brain.

My phone buzzes. My breathing accelerates.

He texted me back.

At first, my heart feels so weightless that it might escape the gravity of my soul, and then heavy again with realization, inevitability. He’s not going to take you back, you dumb bitch. He’s just texting to tell you to leave him alone. If I were smart and mature, I would just ignore it, ignore him, ignore everything.

If I were smart and mature, which I am not.

So I look:

lol, why are u texting my boyfriend?

What?

What?

It’s been only a few weeks. How could he be with someone else already? Is she the one he used to murmur about?

What the fuck?

who are you?

who are YOU?

are you dating oglethorpe?

lol
are you angela?

Just put down the phone and go to bed. I should just put down the phone and go to bed. Nothing good is going to come of this.

yeah
who are you?

lol
meet me at his place
bring money
what?

what??

answer me

I sit there for a second, dumbfounded, then I find myself, stupidly, automatically, walking back into my building, walking down the stairs, out the door, across the street, and on and on. This is stupid, I think, and Don’t walk there alone, at least take the bus, I think, but I have too many thoughts to sort out right now, and paying attention to any one thought, however wise it might be, is impossible.

This is so pathetic. What’s even so great about him? Oglethorpe is a stupid name. It’s stupid, and you can’t even make it into a good nickname. Ogly? Trash. Thorpe? That’s not anything. So you have to say the whole ugly word every time. Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe. Honey on the tongue, poison in the ears. You know, when we first met, I made fun of his name, and I wasn’t joking, but I guess he thought I was flirting, and one thing led to another. Isn’t that some fucking bullshit?

My phone buzzes; I look.

She sent me a picture of a heart, a real heart, bloody and fleshy, sitting on our—his—coffee table. It really looks real, so much so that I drop my phone when I see it.

“Fuck!”

I pick the phone up when I have gathered myself. It still works, but now a long crack winds across the screen, bisecting the image of the heart.

what the fuck?

did you photoshop that?

are you crazy?

lol
you’re one to talk

I’m not crazy. I’m not. Have I had some mental health struggles? Sure, who hasn’t? But I’m not fucking crazy. I’m not sending bitches pictures of hearts in the middle of the night. I’m not treating the whole thing like some big fucking joke.

what the fuck is wrong with you?

i thought you might want to see his heart
the one i stole
lol

Jesus.

I should go home. This is fucking crazy. Worse. This is some country shit. Confronting the woman who stole your man in the middle of the night? This is some shit my sisters would do, not me. I’m the good one. I was always the good one, never got in trouble, left the country and went to college, then grad school, and now I’m working on a PhD. “Angela the Angel.” Not the cleverest insult, but it hurt my feelings when I was a kid, so I guess it was good enough.

If someone stole Bernice’s boyfriend, she would not hesitate to throw hands. When I was in high school, I had to talk her out of physically fighting the boys who hurt my feelings. And Bria, I can’t even imagine what Bria would do. The kind of thing where everyone involved ends up in the hospital or prison. I love them, I do, but they don’t know how to control themselves, don’t know how to act decent when things go bad.

I take a turn. Usually, I like walking in the city, but tonight, it feels less like I’m exploring and more like I’m solving a labyrinth. I know where his apartment is. Already, I know it by heart. Sometimes I go by there, just in case we might cross paths. Leave it up to fate. It’d be pathetic if I were waiting for him or seeking him out, but if I happen to go by his apartment on my way to the train or the library or the coffee shop I like, and if I happen to see him, that’s just fate. If he didn’t want to see me around the neighborhood, he should’ve moved farther away.

I know, I know.

I know I’m not coming off as the hero of this story. This is, at the very best, loser behavior, if not actual creep behavior. But I just want to see him, you know? It was all so sudden, how things ended, just completely out of nowhere. You’d be weird about this shit, too, if it happened to you.

My phone buzzes again.

A video this time. The same heart on the same table, but now it’s beating. Slowly, subtly, but undeniably. Thump, thump, thump, a little burble of blood spilling out each time.

you thought the picture was fake
so here’s proof
lol

I stop. I stop. I stop, and I watch the video, again and again. It’s disgusting. It can’t be real, can it? A real heart? Oglethorpe’s heart? It must be some kind of trick.

But it feels real. It doesn’t make logical sense, but the feeling of it, the way it follows everything else, it feels real.

is he okay?

of course not
dumb
hearts are supposed to go on the inside
that’s like the number one thing
about hearts
did you kill him??

no
he’ll live
come hang out with us

(bring money)

Fuck this, actually. This is fucking insane. Whatever’s going on, I don’t want to be a part of it. I’ll call Oglethorpe in the morning, maybe go by his place. Just wait till the sun’s out and people are out and the world fucking makes sense. This shit is how people get murdered. They get lured somewhere by some sketchy weirdo and are never seen again. That video’s fake, too. It’s not like it’s hard to fake video. She’s trying to get in my head, make my imagination run away with me.

I turn and start to walk back home.

Buzz.

what are you doing?

i said to come hang out
i’m going home
you’re just fucking with me
i said to come hang out

Nothing for a few minutes, then another buzz, another picture. Two pictures. First, Oglethorpe, sitting alone on his bed, staring blankly at the camera. There’s some dark spot on his chest, but it’s hard to make it out in the dim lighting. Second, a close-up on the spot, revealing that it’s a hole, a big, bloody hole around his heart, or where his heart should be. There’s something else, little spots all over him.

ants
you know how hard it is to keep out ants?

once you see one, it’s over
what the fuck?

what the fuck?

what are you?

a ghost?

a witch?

an experiment gone wrong?

a monster?

who can say?

what are YOU?

this is crazy
is it crazier than when u went to the mental ward?

or is it less crazy?

can you rate it on a scale of zero to kill yourself?

how’d you know about that?

did he tell you?

maybe
or maybe i just know
maybe you’re just very obvious
self-hating intellectual type, not exactly rare
it’s funny, tho
most people, if they told someone about this
people would just say they were dreaming
but if you ever tell anyone about this
they’ll send you back inside the cuckoo clock
i could call 911 right now
and tell them how my boyfriend’s ex has been stalking us
hanging around outside
and now sending crazy texts
how many days would they keep you inside
how long until the clock chimes
and they finally let you out?

No.

what do you want?

come hang out
and don’t forget the money

I don’t say anything for a long time, but then finally I write back,

okay.

I turn back toward Oglethorpe’s place. This is why I didn’t do anything when this all started, when Oglethorpe first started acting weird. It started so simply, but at the time, it felt like the worst thing that could ever happen to me. One night in bed, he leaned over and whispered, “I don’t love you.” Just like that, like it was just words, just sounds, meaningless and useless and without consequence. I was crushed, because I had never known a love like his before, and I was shocked, because I had thought we were as happy as two could be.

He said “sorry,” and I said “please” and “please” and “please.”

And he held me as I cried. He fell asleep eventually, still holding on, but I stayed awake, if only to prolong our time together, now suddenly precious, and not wishing to confront the dawn’s particulars and practicalities without him.

But then, when he woke up, he asked me why I was crying and why I held him so tightly and why I looked at him like that.

“You know why,” I said.

But he did not.

He told me I’d been dreaming, and he laughed at me. I did not question it. Instead, I laughed with him. Of course, of course, of course. A nightmare, obviously. It had felt so real, but of course it could not have been true. Of course he loved me.

The day came and went, peacefully, but that night, again, he whispered that he did not love me anymore and worse, that he loved someone else. I pinched myself. Literally, I pinched myself, and I dug my nails into my wrist as hard as I could, and I held my eyes open so wide, so long, that I began to feel pain. And still, not trusting that I was awake, I asked him, “Is this a dream?”

He said no, empty and listless, like he was describing the weather on a gray day.

I stayed up again, this time to see if things would be good again in the morning, and they were. He gave me a kiss when he woke, and he went about his day like normal. Had I been dreaming after all? The bloody crescents on my wrist said otherwise. Maybe he was sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleepsomething? He’d never done anything like that before, but people often never do things right before they always do them.

I decided not to talk about it with him.

You have to understand. I have a condition. I have a condition with an ugly name. One of the symptoms of this ugly condition is that I am afraid, profoundly, that I will be abandoned. The doctor says this fear is irrational, even though I have been abandoned before. I knew that Oglethorpe would think I was being irrational and silly and ugly. Untrusting. Jealous. Clingy. The sorts of traits that would make him actually fall out of love with me.

And so the next night and the next night and the next, he told me again that he didn’t love me. He never elaborated, never described the why of it. Just the bare fact, over and over. Sometimes, he would mention loving “her,” but he never explained, even when I asked. I began to search for malice in his tone, any hint of meanness or cruelty. This all might make some sense if he was angry at me, submerging some grievance in his subconscious that could not help but spill out in the dark. But no, he was calm and easy, and if his words had not been so harsh, you might have even called him tender.

So I tried to ignore it. I knew he didn’t mean it. It was just something glitching in his brain. I know that sounds bad, but you have to understand, he was so nice in the daytime, so understanding and funny and handsome and cool. He was the perfect boyfriend in the light. Perfect.

But then, one morning, he asked me why I hadn’t left yet.

And that was it.

I didn’t tell anyone because I knew no one would believe me. It’s exactly the kind of clingy bullshit that gets me into trouble. This stuff now, the heart and the ants, not really my style. I’ve never had hallucinations or delusions. But once you crack the seal on being a crazy person, people don’t really make a distinction.

Angela the Angel is as psycho as her sisters, just in a bougie way.

My phone buzzes when I turn onto Oglethorpe’s block.

Before I read the message, I notice a sticky red fluid clinging to the screen, dripping from the crack. I drop my phone again, and the crack splinters out in all directions, and the red liquid starts to seep up from the new fissures, too.

Breathe. Just breathe. This is weird, but it’ll be over soon.

Right?

I pick up my phone and look at the messages.

buy me some brandy and cigarettes
some bitch stole my last pack of cigarettes

(you)

There’s a liquor store across the street; I get her what she wants. The door to Oglethorpe’s building is unlocked. I go inside. I keep my breaths as long and slow as I can as I walk up the stairs. It’s going to be okay. This is weird, but there’s got to be some kind of explanation. I’m going to be okay. This is real. I’m not crazy. Everything’s going to be okay.

Buzz.

I put my hand in my purse, but the moment I touch my phone, I feel a sharp sting. I pull my hand back to see my index finger covered in blood, with a long gash running from the tip down to the second knuckle. The phone continues to buzz, and I try again, more gently this time. The crack has opened up, but inside the crack isn’t electronics and circuit boards. It’s a mouth, a wet and bloody mouth. It snaps, and I drop it back in my purse just in time to avoid another bite getting taken out of me.

Somehow, the screen is still working, still glowing in the dark, and I look down at it snapping in my purse.

leave the stuff outside the door
and go
go home
i’m done with you now

I leave the liquor and cigarettes by the door like she says, but I don’t leave. I can’t just leave. Fuck that. Not after all this. I go a little bit down the hall and behind a corner and kneel down and watch.

The door opens a crack, and a long, spindly arm reaches out, and another, and another. Five, six, seven arms reaching out into the darkness. Finally, one touches the bag, and all the arms seize upon it like wild animals dragging away a carcass. The bag disappears, and the door creaks closed.

I walk up to the door. Oglethorpe’s in there. I have to help him. I have to save him. I go to knock, but I pull my hand back at the last second and try the knob. It turns, and the door opens into darkness. I step inside, and it closes on its own behind me.

It’s dark, too dark. Outside, there are streetlamps and neon, but here the darkness is penumbral, seemingly infinite.

“Oglethorpe! Are you here? It’s me!”

Nothing.

I’ve been here before, but it’s different trying to navigate in the dark. Like remembering a dream. I stumble around, knocking into things and banging my knee and stubbing my toe. I see something in the corner of my eye, something moving. Something on the wall, suddenly opening and closing. I keep walking, and I see it again on another wall, more clearly this time. A small eye, blinking.

And a creaky, curdled voice whispers, “Go away.”

More eyes appear on the walls and ceiling all around me. I guess I’m getting close.

“Oglethorpe!” I shout.

“He doesn’t love you,” the voice says. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but it’s close.

“I love him! That’s all that matters!”

No response. I reach the door at the end of the hallway. His bedroom. I take a deep breath and turn the knob. Oglethorpe is sitting on the bed, staring straight ahead. In his lap, he holds the bundle of arms. I don’t see any kind of body, just arms tangled like a ball of snakes.

“Leave us alone.”

I look at my purse. I put my hand inside again. The phone—or whatever it is now—bites me, but this time I don’t flinch. I just pull it out and look at it.

“Go home,” it says, the broken glass imitating lips.

“You’re the one who made me come here. What’s wrong? I thought you wanted to hang out!”

“And now I want you to leave.”

I place my phone on the ground, and I begin rifling through my purse. My sisters bought me a gift when I left the country. The city’s not safe, they said. You need to be able to defend yourself, they said. I ignored them, but I kept the gift. A knife. Sturdy, expensive, sharp.

I find it at the bottom of a little pocket I never use.

“Don’t hurt me,” says the monster.

“What the fuck?” I scream, pointing the knife right at the arms. “What do you want from me? You’ve been torturing me all night, and now you just want me to leave?”

“I wanted to see what you look like,” the monster says, after a long pause. “He still talks about you.”

“And then what? When I actually came you got scared?”

It doesn’t say anything, but I know the answer is yes. And suddenly I see. I see. Untrusting. Jealous. Clingy. This thing, whatever it is, it’s just like me. Everything about me that is wrong, putrid, and disgusting. Just a bunch of grasping hands, taking, taking, taking.

So I do it a favor; I use the knife. Oglethorpe just sits there, placid, as I rescue him. Kill the monster, save the prince. Maybe I’m the hero of this story after all.

“I’ll show you who’s crazy,” I whisper.

And I cut until there is nothing left to cut, and I drop the knife, and throw my arms around him. I can feel the ants on him and now on me, but I don’t care. I just hold on.

He doesn’t respond to my touch.

I look over at the dresser. The heart lies there, gently throbbing. I walk over, pick it up. It’s disgusting. If I put it in his chest, everything’ll go back to normal, right? He’ll love me again, and we’ll live together again, and everything will be good, right? Like in a fairy tale.

But…he seems okay without it. Not great, but okay. He’s alive. He can definitely live without it. And it strikes me, if I have his heart, then he has to love me, right?

No matter what.

It doesn’t make sense, but it makes as much sense as anything else. It worked for the monster.

I look at Oglethorpe’s eyes. They look blank, almost dead. I look at the heart, covered in blood and wriggling with each beat. I know what I should do. I do. I should just be decent. Control myself and be decent.

That’s all you have to do. Just this once, do the right thing. I can do it, can’t I?

Can’t I?

—

For dinner, I make Oglethorpe his favorite, curry chicken with roasted potatoes. He smiles at me so wide when I bring it out to him, my heart just absolutely melts.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I say.

He’s been doing so much better since the…creature left. After I saved us, everything went back to normal like I wanted. He doesn’t really remember what happened, which I think is for the best. She was sucking his life energy away, making him weak and empty. He’s getting stronger every day now.

“I love you, too,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “And I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says.

Sometimes, he gets stuck in a loop a little bit. You just have to wait for it to pass.

I slam my hand on the table. Goddamn ants. They really get everywhere. Just everywhere. I’ve tried everything to get rid of them, but there’s always so, so many ants.

“I fucking hate you, Angela,” he says.

I shake my head, smiling gently. He gets confused sometimes. “No, you love me.”

He stares at me for a moment, then nods, slowly understanding. “Oh, right. Yeah. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I say, looking out the window at the darkening sky, savoring an indescribable lightness in my chest.

Our love will never die, and so I have conquered death itself.

“Forever.”

When I try to wrap my lips around a story I’m not supposed to tell, it sours on my tongue. The only way to sweeten it? Name some truths before the lie. I am my mother’s first child. True. I have two younger sisters, Lovelie and Marie. True. We live on an island. Mostly true. Every piece of land, no matter how large, is eventually surrounded by water on all sides. This language is the lie. Everything arranges itself in my mother tongue first and then shifts into the one I’m using now: English. I’ve nearly forgotten all of my first language, Haitian Creole. I remember the songs. The melodies stayed because I memorized them long before I learned their meanings.

Lasirèn, labalèn. The sound of the sea was my first lullaby. Chapo’m tombe nan lamè. My father’s fishing songs were my second. M’ap fe kares pou lasirèn. Soon my mother learned that the musical phrases he mumbled were the only way to get me to sleep. Chapo’m tombe nan lamè. When my middle sister, Marie, was born, my mother said I sang his songs to calm her when she fussed. M’ap fe kares pou lasirèn. Chapo’m tombe nan lamè. By the time my youngest sister, Lovelie, came, the tune was all we had left of our father. We were the only ones he sang for. His songs reminded him of when he could spend days on the ocean without being tethered to the shore. In the end, the water didn’t take him. A land-dwelling woman two villages over did that. He left my mother with three girls singing his songs.

My mother never cried for my father. She poured herself into taking care of us. Feeding us. Teaching us. Cleaning up after us. I know she played with us, too, but I can’t remember how. No matter what games I conjure in my mind, I can’t find her in them. To me, she was too grown-up for that. But she was never too old to tell us stories. My mother loved to weave truths into a tale. Her voice would drop low and quiet, to make us lean in close. Never trust a woman alone in the water. She would raise her pointer finger in warning. She will have dark skin like ours and straight hair like theirs. Us and them. Those born on this island and those who crowned it the jewel of an empire. If she calls to you, run before she can speak. If you are fool enough to hear, you must do as she says. She always grabbed my hand at this part. Listen! Or she’ll snatch you and leave a shell in your place. The story goes on, but I always covered Lovelie’s ears after that part. She got too caught up in stories, especially if she’d heard them before, and would have nightmares for weeks. We’d heard enough to know the truth in the tale: tragedy can strike without reason and leave no meaning in its wake.

If you see a woman alone in the water, run before you hear her, but listen if she speaks? The story made sense to me then because I still had patience for childhood logic. An excuse to bend the rules. A riddle. Lovelie and Marie thrived on riddles. They would twist my words to stay up reading past bedtime. They’d logic away hours in the day needed to do homework and allot more time to combing the beach for shells. When they returned home they’d beg me to string the rainbow hulls into necklaces for them. I’d make the jewelry with a smile. I was too old to play like them. But I did play. That’s true. The necklaces? Also true. But that I made them without complaint every time? There’s the lie.

—

One day Lovelie came home soaking wet holding one dark abalone shell in each hand instead of my sister.

“We listened!” she cried to our mother. “On our way home—after collecting shells—we saw a lady alone in the water. She called to us, just like you said—she told us to give her one or she’d take all three. We listened! We gave her one shell, but she took Marie!” Lovelie’s face burned with tears and a harsh lesson: grown-up riddles usually aren’t very clever and rarely end well. What was meant by “one”—a shell or a child? My mother and I didn’t pry into this woman’s words because no matter their meaning, she took what my sisters were not willing to give. We looked for Marie but, as the days wore on, we couldn’t find her and she didn’t return. The woman in the water became the lie we told ourselves instead of the truth. Someone had taken my sister and no matter how long or hard we looked, Marie was gone.

After that, my mother called me only by my full name. Wideline. Our house became a list of laws. Unbendable. No going out after dark. No storytelling. No straying from our duties: school, home, and church. I longed for the one place I knew we’d never be allowed to return to: the ocean. I was forever tethered to the shore. My sister’s fate was unknown to me, but, sometimes, I foolishly imagined it was better than my own. Sometimes I miss the selfishness of being a teenager.

I kept the shells Lovelie brought home instead of my sister. They started to gather dust after the first month. After the second, I’d wipe them clean as one of my daily chores. On the first day of the twelfth month, one fell and shattered. I moved the shell that was left to the center of my dresser. At the start of the second year, the wood warped around it, making a cradle. It never rattled, or slid, or fell. It just lived there.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Three years to the day Marie disappeared I woke to a sound I barely recognized. Tap. Tap. The shell was rocking in the moonlight. Tap. Glimmers glanced around our room. But they could not penetrate the shadow that now stood in the corner.

If I had been younger I would have screamed. Instead, I was more concerned about how close the shadow stood to Lovelie. My eyes focused and I stared it down, intent on making it melt away. Its arm reached for the foot of Lovelie’s bed. I sprang out of mine and pulled Lovelie from her covers. She started to fuss at me for waking her, but I softly put my hand over her mouth and shifted her eyes to the thing in the corner. The moment she saw it, she gripped me tight. The shadow took a step toward us and I pushed Lovelie behind me.

“Leave,” I whispered, not wanting to wake my mother. The shadow moved toward us again. I drew breath to scream.

“No!” The shadow thrust its hand into the moonlight between us. A dark rainbow washed over everything. Lovelie let my hand go as we both marveled at the colors. The shadow’s skin was dark, like ours, but its blackness was deep. It stepped fully into the moonlight. Webbed toes appeared first. Then long dark legs. Taut muscles rolled under the skin. Kelp wrapped around the lithe figure, like a dress. Long straight red hair, slick and wet, hung around its shoulders. The shadow’s face is what silenced Lovelie and me. We recognized it. It had grown longer, but the nose, lips, and heart-shaped visage were unmistakable.

“Marie?” Lovelie’s voice trembled with excitement. She peaked out from behind me, but I held her back. I’d finally seen the shadow’s eyes. They were entirely black and when it blinked, it did so with two lids.

“She came back!” Lovelie stepped out again.

“Shhh.” I wrapped my arm around her waist. “That is not Marie.”

“Yes, it is!” Of course, even in the presence of danger, my younger sister couldn’t help but argue with me.

“She told us to give her one or she’d take all three.” The thing spoke and it sounded like Marie. “I remember.” It couldn’t be her.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am…” The figure’s mouth slid into a sad smile. “I am not Marie, yet.”

“What?” I frowned so hard my brow ached. The thing claiming not to be my sister annoyed me like she would.

“I will be her soon.”

“Oh? And now?” I sucked my teeth. “Now, you are ‘Not-Marie’?”

Her jaw clenched as she considered the name. “Yes. That’s a good name for me.” Not-Marie’s smile faded.

The scent of Not-Marie filled the room. She smelled like the ocean.

Not a rotten fishy smell.

Not-Marie smelled like freedom.

I put myself back in front of Lovelie. “How did you get here?”

Not-Marie stepped toward us. I watched Not-Marie try to find the words. No. She knew them, but something about them…hurt. “Let me show you,” she whispered.

Lovelie’s nails dug into my arm as she gripped me with her whole body. Between her weight and my sweat, her nightdress was going to leave folded wrinkles in my skin. We followed Not-Marie out of our house and down the road toward the ocean. Soon the road became a trail. Fine sand mixed between the rocks, and the way forward thinned. In the dark, Not-Marie lit the way. A dull blue glow came from the once invisible markings on her flesh, adornments complementing the shape of her muscles. Dots heightened her cheekbones. Her eyes stayed black.

I shortened my steps forward. Lovelie trailed behind me like a shadow. Right before the trail gave way to the beach, Not-Marie turned sharply and started down a thin path I’d never seen before.

Watching Not-Marie as she moved, I spotted a familiar strangeness in her body. Puberty. Womanhood had arrived in me, achy, raw, and earthy. I hunched my back as my breasts grew and strained my clothing. Not-Marie stood tall and let womanhood drape itself over her with grace. I tried to walk like she did and it made my muscles ache. This creature reminded me not just of my sister, but of how my body had become a strange new vessel that housed my consciousness. I shook with effort and fear as we followed her. No, that’s a lie. The truth is, envy burned away any terror in me and curiosity pulled me forward.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Not-Marie pressed deeper into the brush. “We’re close.”

Balancing one foot directly in front of the other, we followed her through the trees. Soon we reached a cave. Not-Marie glanced back at us and then disappeared into the black. A dark hollow chamber loomed in front of us. I took the first step ahead. My feet found cool stones. I smelled the dark deep of the grotto before I saw it. Once we passed the entrance, we found that the cave wasn’t devoid of light. A hole at the top revealed a full moon. The silver rays reflected in the water. Unlike the pale blue of the ocean, these waters were so dark they were almost black. Shelves of rock carved out each layer, all the way to the bottom. Without a moment’s hesitation, Not-Marie leapt in. After our eyes adjusted, Lovelie and I approached the lip of the sinkhole.

Not-Marie wasn’t like a fish in the water, she was the water itself. The iridescent scales on her skin made her look like a trick of the light. She dove deep. I found myself counting my breaths. One. Her finned feet skillfully cut through the slow, thick currents. Two. She dipped farther down. I could barely make out her form. Three. Her red hair was the only easy bit of her to spot. Four. In the water, it seemed to glow like long embers. Five. She barely left a ripple in her wake as she propelled deeper. Six. She reached a depth of the grotto that couldn’t be pierced by moonlight. Seven. Her glow was all that was visible. Eight. If you didn’t know any better you would think she was a bit of reef. Nine. Or kelp. Ten. Waving with the current. Eleven. She dove even farther down. Twelve. A tiny bit of ember in the endless deep. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. She touched the bottom of the grotto. Seventeen. Her ember hair illuminated her face. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Not-Marie stared up at the two of us on land, and I understood. Depth. Time. Air. All that didn’t matter to her. I stopped counting.

With a few sharp, swift kicks, Not-Marie propelled her way back up. She emerged at a speed that made Lovelie and me lurch back. Slipping past the surface without a sound, she didn’t even make a splash when she reemerged.

“What are you?” I asked.

“La sirèn!” Lovelie laughed in delight. The sound scattered over the stones of the grotto. Before I could stop her, Lovelie sat on a thin ledge and dipped her feet in.

Not-Marie rested herself against the rocky shore. “Yes.” As the answer flowed out of her, she relaxed. Someone finally said what she was unable to utter before. A riddle without words solved by Lovelie. Not-Marie raised an eyebrow in premature victory. She would need to do more to prove herself to me.

“You were a few steps away for three years?” I crouched next to Lovelie, putting myself in between her and Not-Marie.

“Yes, Widi.” She said my nickname like the Americans who built a well in our village after the earthquake: her Creole sat in the front of her mouth.

“Why?”

Her face contorted like before. “She told us to give her one or she’d take all three. I didn’t know I was haggling years, not shells. I’m done tomorrow. I won’t be like this anymore, and I wanted you to know.”

I frowned. “Who took you?” Lasirèn was the lie. I knew that. But I added up all the truths in front of me and…even if a sea creature was to blame, something was missing. “Who?” I asked again. If this was another riddle I needed to be the one to find the truth in it. Lovelie always got swept away in the story.

“I—I—I…” Not-Marie looked from me to Lovelie and back. Her mouth opened and then clamped shut. She tried another way. “She is— She wants—” Her whole body convulsed so hard that, for a moment, out of concern I reached for her. I stopped when I reminded myself that she was not my sister. “She…took me and—” Not-Marie grabbed ahold of the edge of the grotto to support herself. Her eyes welled with black tears. “I can’t tell you everything.” A trail of ink fell down her face. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell, it was that she couldn’t. Her tears stained the water. While her wet face should have calmed me, it enraged me instead.

“Where’s Marie?” My voice rattled in the cave. The harsh tone made Lovelie cover her ears.

“It’s me. I was—” Not-Marie’s body convulsed again. “It hurts, Widi. Please.”

My eyes burned as I blinked back my tears. “Manman still cries every night. She thinks we can’t hear her but…” My words started to get thick from my sob. “You said you’d show us. Where is Marie!” Not-Marie reminded me of the nightmares Lovelie had. She reminded me of my mother’s unanswered prayers. The longer I looked at her the more my heart ached, not in sadness, but in rage. “Give her back!”

“Stop it,” Lovelie whined as she curled in on herself.

“It’s me!” The pitch of Not-Marie’s voice careened up like a bird. Her whistle tones pierced through me. With the word me, Not-Marie’s face contorted. The sides of her lips parted through her cheeks and back to her ears to reveal row after row of needle teeth. The wetness of her mouth made them glisten. The second lid of her eyes flipped over, turning her black eyes a foggy gray. Any familiarity I’d found with my lost sister vanished. My heart pounded in my ears. The truth of our situation hit me. My sister and I were in a cave with a monster. We listened to it. We allowed it to lure us with a story we told ourselves to make the pain of losing our sibling less. I sobbed. Snot ran from my nose and over my pursed lips. Both Lovelie and I were about to pay the price for believing the lie. Not-Marie lunged against the edge of the grotto.

“Marie, stop!” Lovelie crunched her little body against the ledge. Not-Marie didn’t listen. Her strong limbs easily propelled her out of the water and onto the land between us. I reached back to gain ground only to feel my hand latch around a stone the size of my palm. I craned back, ready to smash the stone into her face, but even with the teeth, the eyes, the scales—even though she’d agreed to her new name, Not-Marie still reminded me of my sister. Against all reason I shut my eyes to stop myself from bargaining. Marie. Not-Marie. Marie. Not-Marie. No matter what I was about to be consumed by: either the monster in front of me or the pain within me. I launched my hand forward. The stone twirled off my fingers. I opened my eyes in time to see it sail past Not-Marie’s head. She barely flinched. I braced myself.

Thunk! The sound of stone hitting flesh stopped us. We both turned just in time to see Lovelie reach for where the rock hit her forehead. Before her fingers could explore the new wound, her eyes rolled back and she tipped over the edge into the water. Unconscious, she plummeted toward the bottom. Not-Marie froze. I jumped in after my sister.

The moment I did, my feet were met by a sharp ledge of rocks. I pressed through the pain and dove. It had been three years since I’d been in the water and I nearly wept with joy as salt water bled into my clothes. My legs pumped with memory. I reached out for Lovelie with every stroke. Launching myself forward, I found a bit of grace and snagged Lovelie by the edge of her nightdress. Looking past Lovelie, the grotto seemed to sink on forever. Just below Lovelie’s feet, faint tendrils of moonlight ended and the deep dark began. Looking up, I saw the surface was impossibly far away. Not-Marie’s dark face peered down at us from the surface. She watched us, but made no move to dive in or to help. My lungs burned. My heart throbbed in effort. Propelling myself up took twice as much effort as diving down, but my need to survive, out of spite, pushed me forward. I clawed my way up with my sister clutched in my grip. When I burst to the surface I inhaled water and air. My body coughed and gagged, but I used each movement to pull Lovelie up onto the shore.

A wide red wound bled from Lovelie’s forehead. Through the blood, I saw the flash of white bone. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. I’d seen the fishermen get water out of a man’s lungs before, but I’d never done it myself. I pressed on Lovelie’s chest, hard, with both my hands. Then, I pinched her nose, placed my mouth over hers, and breathed into her lungs. I felt her chest expand. When I looked back at her face, she looked pale. I breathed for her again. Nothing. Panicked, I tapped her cheeks like I could wake her from a nightmare. A deep splash drew my focus. Not-Marie’s ember hair rippled in the water as she dove. This time when she reached the bottom, the red disappeared.

Alone, I kept trying to revive Lovelie. Press and breathe. Press and breathe. Each time she got colder in my arms, alone. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I was not going to lose another sister. As I tried to keep her with me the sounds of my efforts echoed in the empty grotto. Every second I fought against becoming what our mother warned us about: a woman alone in the water.

I was so focused, I didn’t even notice when Not-Marie returned and called to me. “Wideline?”

“Leave us alone—” My words caught in my throat. In the water behind Not-Marie was a woman. She had long, straight translucent hair and black eyes. Unlike Not-Marie, she didn’t even pretend to be human anymore. She smelled like deep waves. The kind you see only when you lose sight of land. Where you are small and infinite all at once. She slithered through the water toward us. I grabbed Lovelie.

She told us to give her one or she’d take all three.

I began to pry the riddle open. The woman hadn’t wanted the one thing we gave her, the shell. Instead she’d taken what she truly desired, Marie. All three? My heart pounded as it struggled to keep up with my mind. This was no happy reunion. Not-Marie wasn’t watching us in the water, she was watching the creature behind her. The burn of betrayal stilled me. Like a grown-up riddle, it wasn’t clever and it didn’t end well. Lovelie had assumed the woman was asking for their shells. Not-Marie thought she meant years. The woman meant us. The three of us. The woman couldn’t grab Lovelie and Marie on her own. But, with time and training, Not-Marie was all she needed to get the three of us where she wanted us.

“She can help Lovelie,” Not-Marie lied. It sounded like the truth in her mouth because the poor thing believed it. The genuine joy in her smile told me she hadn’t yet put together all she’d done. Lovelie felt cold and heavy in my arms. Terrified, but with no other choice, I let the woman approach. She pressed her ear to Lovelie’s chest. The woman’s cold hair splayed over both of us. The strands looked like tendrils of moonlight fading into the black of her skin. My breath slowed as I thought. She had us in the depths and she didn’t take us then.

“No-t th-ree,” the woman whispered. She waited, so that she could bargain. Another opportunity to trap us. “Fi-ve…” Her Creole sounded borrowed, like she was remembering phrases she knew long ago. I wondered if she ever played children’s games before she was a creature who played tricks on unsuspecting souls pulled in by her words.

“You promised to be fair.” Not-Marie’s voice sank into her chest. The woman held her unblinking stare on Not-Marie. She pressed her hand to Lovelie’s wrist.

“To save the ch-i-i-ild I’ll t-ake at least s-ix,” she croaked. “S-ix hun-dre-d.”

My stomach dropped. “People or years?” I demanded.

“FiveFive—Five years!” Not-Marie choked out as she tried to haggle. “Years! You mean years.” Her eyes widened and her breath caught as she gleaned the truth. She’d been allowed to visit us. Allowed to bring us here. The woman never meant to let her go. To a being like that, people and time were just another currency.

“Se-v-v-v-en hun-dre-d.” The woman refused to clarify. She was immovable. Not-Marie’s back curled in the shy way Marie’s would when she met someone new. Her hands shook the way Marie’s would when she couldn’t decide between sweets. Not-Marie ran through a strange set of human movements. Utterly childlike one second and a fearsome creature the next. With each one, she lingered in the human postures for as long as she could, but they made the muscles in her monstrous body ache. Not-Marie longed for land the way I did the sea. She told us to give her one or she’d take all three. The answer was in the ache.

Suddenly, my palms felt clammy and slick. It was only then that I realized that I had reached out and taken the woman’s hand.

“I’ll give.” I latched on to her slippery palm. “So you don’t have to take? If you save Lovelie, I’ll give you me.” I didn’t need to splice out time or terms because the answer was devastatingly simple. If I gave her one—if I gave her me—there was no need for her to take anything at all.

Her eyes met mine. “We h-a-a-a-ve a d-eal.” The words groaned out of her like an afterthought. She took her free hand and hovered it over Lovelie’s chest. Lovelie’s body arched toward her palm. Then the woman raced her hand up to Lovelie’s extended throat and flicked her fingers past her mouth. The water in Lovelie’s lungs flowed out. Violently full of life, Lovelie began to cough. Then, the woman wrapped a cold hand around my arm and snatched me below the surface.

I counted as we descended. One. Two. The coming morning light hit the grotto. Three. Four. Five. It revealed the truth. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Not-Marie’s scales began to fade. Ten. Her fingers and toes separated. Eleven. Her hair darkened, curled, and coiled on her head. Twelve. Though her face had lengthened, she was unmistakably Marie. My sister. Thirteen. Fourteen. With daybreak her time was done and mine began.

—

From here, I’m only able to cough out a few bitter truths and some better lies. Marie returned after three years away with no memory of where she’d been. Kidnappers must have taken her. Poor girl. Her memory folded over to protect her from the unspeakable. After a year, my mother finally let her leave the house again, but only to go to school and back. Sometimes she dreamed of strange fish and foreign shores. When Marie reached her first year of high school, the nuns discovered that she spoke perfect English, Spanish, and Italian. Fear made my mother weave a lie about my disappearance. She imagined that I’d run away with some boy, bound for an early pregnancy and the capital. When she felt brave, she whispered stories about the sea to herself as she cooked. True. Lovelie always had a scar on her head and a gap in her memory. True. Marie only ever remembered from that sunrise onward. True. I never missed my home because the memory was all I needed. That’s the lie.

For years, every full moon, my sisters snuck out to collect abalone shells from the beach. They walked to the grotto nearby. There, they held each other’s hands and dropped the shells into the water. They leaned over the edge and watched the dark rainbow hulls sink into the depths. They were always careful not to get too close to the surface or dip too far over the edge. Dangerous truth or sweet lie, the water in that cave was much deeper than it looked. It could suck them in and spit out a tale. Still, they watched and waited. And if they were patient enough, every time, right before the shells drifted beyond the reach of the moonlight, there’d be a ripple in the darkness before they disappeared.

May 1961

The silver-haired window clerk at the Tallahassee Greyhound station glared at Patricia Houston when she and her sister, Priscilla, pivoted to walk toward the shiny wooden benches in the Whites Only waiting area. They ignored the red sign pointing out colored as bright as a bloodstain, their matching skirts twirling in concert. They weren’t twins but might as well be. Pat was younger by birthdate, but far older by temperament. They came from two different directions and saw the same new world.

And they were on their way to join the Freedom Riders in Montgomery.

They both thought up the idea the same morning. Here they were, already members of the Congress of Racial Equality, already veterans of sit-ins and the bland food and thin cots at the Tallahassee jail. They’d been on a publicity tour with their mother, been featured guests at parties hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Belafonte—and the Freedom Riders promised to gain even more attention for the Movement.

Pat folded her Tallahassee Democrat under her for extra cushion on the segregated wooden bench, bracing for shouts, but the station stretched empty except for the clerk and a Negro custodian, and neither of them said a word. The mousy clerk’s glare suggested unspoken curses, but she kept her mouth shut. She would leave enforcing Jim Crow for the next shift, apparently.

“She sure looks like she’s itching to come do something about it,” Priscilla said. “If she does, she’ll wish she hadn’t.”

Pat lowered her sunglasses to stare her sister in the face. Priscilla’s own cat-eyed frames were for fashion, but Pat wore hers even indoors because her eyes were much more sensitive to light ever since that hick cop threw a tear gas canister in her face last year. I want YOU, he’d said, face red with malice. She hadn’t been able to see for hours, and her eyes had burned for a week solid.

“It’s a nonviolent protest we’re going to,” Pat said. “Remember?”

“You see where nonviolence got you.”

After all their training with CORE and the example from the Reverend on how to fall limp, with strict instructions not to fight back, Priscilla should know better. Pat didn’t subscribe to Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence like the Reverend, but she believed in the tactic. They had come too far to become a liability.

“Priscilla, you just remember—”

Pat cut herself short when a shadow appeared on the floor beside them. They both looked up to see the Negro custodian approaching with his long-handled broom, a bookish young man with round eyeglasses and a smooth, pleasant face.

“Y’all with the Freedom Riders comin’ from New York?” the man asked.

“We’re meeting them in Montgomery,” Priscilla said, although Pat would not have given so much information to a stranger no matter his color. How did he know so much about civil rights planning, anyway? For all they knew, the man might rush off to the sheriff’s office to inform on them in exchange for a meager reward.

The man was about twenty-six, only five or six years older than they were, but paternal concern locked his jaw. “You ladies are taking a bus all alone? Might be it’d be safer to drive. Montgomery’s only a few hours by car.”

“You gonna drive us, handsome?” Priscilla said, shining her bright white teeth at him. Pat gave her sister a look: Really?

But the man didn’t return her sister’s smile. “You’re the Houston sisters, right? I know y’all.”

“Look, Pat! We’re famous.”

“More like infamous,” Pat murmured.

He glanced toward the clerk, who was still glaring in their direction. “I’m with you. On what you’re doing, I mean—trying to make things better,” he said, voice low. “But those white folks up in Montgomery? They’re crazy. Knee-deep in Klan round those parts. I got a cousin there, and he says word’s out the Freedom Riders are coming. There’s lookouts for Freedom Riders all up and down the roads. I wouldn’t get tangled up in that mess ’less I wanted to get my head cracked wide open.” He looked directly at Pat, intuiting that she might be the more reasonable of the two. “Some scars don’t go away.”

The memory of tear gas made Pat blink with doubt. She hoped it wasn’t visible behind her sunglasses.

“We’re not afraid of those hoodlums,” Priscilla said. “When God and justice are on your side, you don’t need anything else.”

The stranger surveyed their faces with the consternation Pat recognized from Negroes who didn’t understand the Movement or were too scared to see that they’d have to fight for every inch. Warnings like these were usually just excuses about why they didn’t march or ride too.

“Well…if you want to make it to the bus, you need to go sit in the Colored waiting room. Only reason Miss Mary hasn’t spoken up about y’all sittin’ here is the deputies comin’ at seven o’clock.”

Pat looked up at the station’s wall clock: It was ten minutes to seven. They had planned to leave on the first bus of the day, so they had arrived early.

“We’ll wait outside, then,” Pat said.

The stranger shook his head, watching Priscilla stroll across the terminal without a care. She walked as if anyone who saw her was having their lucky day. She sparkled so much that their brother, Walter, called her Sapphire.

“Hope y’all don’t get yourselves killed,” he said.

Me and you both, Pat thought.

—

No one else was waiting at the railing outside.

The bus at lane three marked Montgomery hissed to life with a belch of smoke from its tailpipe as the driver inside put down his thermos and turned on the engine. The metallic behemoth shivered in its parking spot. The slogan painted on the side—It’s such a comfort to take the bus—made Pat chuckle.

Then she coughed. Even a whisper of smoke made her eyes and throat sting after the tear gas. Dr. Bess had said she might feel the effects of it for the rest of her life.

Two wiry deputies arrived just like the custodian said and gave them a stink eye as they climbed out of their car, even though Pat and Priscilla hadn’t had time to make protest signs. Yes, those deputies knew who they were. She and Priscilla always wore nice dresses to demonstrations—and the men wore suits and ties—but all white folks saw was black skin. Maybe that was all most of them would ever see.

One deputy moved toward them suddenly, startling Pat before he jogged past her with the scent of chewing tobacco. He knocked on the bus door, which squealed as it opened. The deputy climbed the steep bus steps to talk directly into the driver’s ear, and Pat didn’t miss the way the driver cut his eyes toward her and Priscilla. Would he refuse to drive them?

But after the deputy climbed out again, throwing a mirthless smile Pat’s way, the driver called out, “All aboard for Montgomery!” He said it into the air itself, not looking toward his only two passengers. He took their tickets without a word. His cap and white shirt seemed a bit small on him, confining the bulk of a middle-aged man who might have once been an athlete.

Inside, the bus stretched in twin rows of empty brown seats.

Priscilla started to slide into the white-only seating in the third row, but Pat tapped her shoulder and nodded for her to keep walking to the back of the bus. The deputies were watching through the windows for the first chance to put hands on them, and it was too soon. Not now, Pat told her sister with her eyes. Not yet.

Priscilla stiffened, but she walked on, her head held high. Pat followed, and they both began humming the tune to “Old Black Joe,” which they had rewritten as a protest song at the Tallahassee jail:

Gone are the days

When tradition had its say

Now is the time
for the South to integrate.

We will march on

To a better land we know

For the Constitution tells us so

March on, march on.

The bus driver wouldn’t hear the defiance in the old-timey melody they hummed—Old Black Joe her ass!—but music lifted Pat and made her feel like a part of something bigger. In Montgomery, they would not be alone in the Struggle. They just had to make it there.

By custom, Pat took the window seat. She had been a carefree college student before CORE, but now she felt like a soldier, surveying everything around her. Instead of mobs, she spotted only office buildings, shops, and early-morning drivers. The cracked-open window helped save her from the bus’s odor of cigarettes and sweat (plus the hint of urine near the bathroom). Maybe Priscilla couldn’t smell it…but Pat could. As the bus rolled out of the station, Pat took her sister’s hand.

Fatigue rocked her with the bus’s motion. She’d been so excited about the last-minute trip that she’d barely slept two or three hours. She’d hastily thrown a few clothes into the powder blue suitcase she’d nestled in the bin above her.

“Bet you’ll be the first one asleep,” Priscilla said. “You always are. And you snore.”

“You always say that, and you’re dead wrong every time.”

Priscilla fell asleep first, her head lolling against Pat’s shoulder, her breath escaping in faint whistles. Pat was smiling to herself only moments before she felt her own head bobbing, and soon she was resting her cheek against Priscilla’s warm scalp, drowsy. It might be safe to sleep as long as no other passengers were on board who might rob or menace them.

But as the bus stopped at the red light on Monroe, where morning traffic was just waking, Pat sat up straight with a thought as certain as any she’d ever had: Something will go badly wrong on this trip. She gasped so loudly that Priscilla stirred, although she didn’t wake.

Bad memories toying with her, maybe. She’d been tear-gassed on Monroe. Still humming the tune to “Old Black Joe,” Pat fought her nameless panic and joined her sister in sleep.

—

Pat woke to a feeling of being shaken, and she started with the memory of a burly policeman grabbing her arm to pull her off of her stool at the Woolworth’s. But it was only Priscilla. “Pat, where are we?”

By the brightness of the sun, it might be eight o’clock; they’d been on the road about an hour. The bus’s emptiness was more apparent in the shadows that sheltered her eyes.

Pat gazed out the windows. The bus was nearly too big for the narrow two-lane road, half dirt and half asphalt. The tires ground over bumps and gashes that made the Greyhound’s underbelly squeak. The air was noticeably muggier, like breathing in warm water. Shoulder-high marsh grasses raced by. Beyond them, craggy mangroves looked like hanging trees.

“Isn’t this Bloody Twenty-seven?” Pat said. Everyone called State Road 27 “Bloody 27” because it fed on crashed cars. The state was building an improved highway, Interstate 10, but there was nothing modern about this road.

Priscilla peered more closely at her map. “I don’t think…”

A road sign appeared—a placard of wood nailed to a pole with a careful script that was proud despite its simplicity: Route Six. Priscilla mouthed the name as she read the sign, trying to find it on her map. A second sign followed in identical script: Reclamation Swamp.

Priscilla shook her head. “Oh, hell no. This isn’t the route.”

“Sir?” Pat called to the bus driver, half rising from her seat.

Instead of answering, the driver increased his speed. Pat almost lost her balance.

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Pat said. “Is he drunk? This is ridiculous. This damn fool drove us into the swamp.” Pat grabbed the luggage bar above her to fully rise.

Ahead, a man stood in the middle of the road.

The figure looked indistinct from a distance, as if he might be a hitchhiker—but Pat was certain he wasn’t. He was planted firmly between the two lanes. He swayed ever so slightly. His clothes were dark; loose-fitting pants and a coat with its hood up.

His head was bent, prayer-like, his hands folded in front of him. Paying no attention to a bus hurtling toward him, only fifty yards away. Forty yards.

“Watch out—” Pat started, just as the tires’ scream drowned out her voice. The bus’s heft skidded, and Pat’s breath caught as she remembered Daddy Marion’s stories from driving his school bus, how he had to leave himself plenty of room to stop. Pat fell back into her seat, bumping against Priscilla, and watched as the rear end skidded a couple of feet too close to a muddy ditch before the bus lurched to a stop. The bus’s nose was no more than a few yards from the man, who apparently had not moved. Only the top of his dark hood was visible now, the bus was so close to him.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Priscilla whispered. They both leaned over to stare through their window at the grassy ravine that would have turned the bus over like a gator’s death roll.

The driver did not look back at them to see if they were okay. Like the man on the road, the driver did not move for an unnatural amount of time. The bus idled, the engine burring with uneven huffs. The army of mosquitoes outside found the open windows and began feasting on the sisters. But Pat was too flustered to swat them away.

She, Priscilla, and the mosquitoes were the only things moving in a world gone still. Pat did not share Priscilla’s vocal love for church, but she believed in God—some version of Him anyway—and she was moved to say “Amen.” She felt she needed to say much more; she should have begged for protection before the bus began its journey.

“He could’ve killed us all!” Pat said, trying to get a response from the silent driver. Sometimes a shared experience could make white people forget about color, at least for a time. Freedom Riders weren’t his biggest problem anymore.

Unless…

The hooded coat! It wasn’t a white Klan robe, but what if this man hadn’t appeared by happenstance? What if the driver had taken them on this lonely route on purpose? She remembered the deputy who’d climbed aboard and whispered in the driver’s ear, practically smirking at her as he left the bus. Pat’s tongue and cheeks went dry.

As if to answer Pat’s alarmed thoughts, the driver turned to face them, laying his arm casually across the back of his seat. “That new highway? It cuts straight through Reclamation Swamp. Good folks lived out here, Negro and white alike. They didn’t need any laws but their own. They made their own peace. Their own justice. You face your own judgment in Reclamation Swamp.”

Priscilla swatted a mosquito on her arm. “What the devil is he talking about…?”

Pat didn’t know, but she didn’t like any of it. His stare was wrong, first off: His eyes didn’t blink. And his voice! A man’s voice, yes, but as gravelly as the road, with the quality of a radio signal phasing in and out.

Pat leaned over to whisper to her sister the way the deputy had whispered to the driver. “This isn’t right,” she said. “Grab ahold of your bag. We can use the emergency—”

The front door to the bus whined open as the driver yanked on the lever. When Pat looked at the windshield again, the man wasn’t blocking the road anymore.

He was at the bus door.

Pat smelled him before she saw him: He reeked like a walking bog. His first step into the bus was so heavy that the bus shook with more weight than she would have guessed from his size. He was easily six and a half feet tall—but willowy, not solid. Still, his second step shook the bus too.

Pat fought a cough that filled her throat. She’d had a sensitivity to scents since the tear gas, and she was on the verge of vomiting from his smell. The closer he got, the more his stink cloaked the bus. The bathroom’s mild odor was a blessing by comparison. For the first time, Pat was glad to be in the Colored section.

The Rider took a seat in the first row opposite the driver. But when he’d walked into the aisle, hadn’t she seen a glimpse of brown beneath that hood? Whatever his face had looked like, he had not appeared to be white. Still, she was relieved he did not sit in the back of the bus near them.

“That figures,” Priscilla murmured. “You think he’d let a Negro get on smelling like that? And after he nearly made us crash. I swear, what’s wrong with people?”

“I don’t think he’s…”—human, she almost said, inexplicably—“white.”

Priscilla’s smile returned, their scare forgotten. “And he blocked the road like that! I love that tactic. Pretty gutsy, eh? He must be a Freedom Rider too. Let’s go up with him.”

“He’s not one of us,” Pat said. “Why’d the driver let him on? He doesn’t have a ticket.”

Priscilla’s smile vanished. Together, the sisters stared.

The man’s clothing looked rough, like burlap stitched together with yarn so stiff that it might be vines. Pat had never seen anything like it. But his clothes were only the first thing wrong with this new rider.

Looked wrong.

Smelled wrong.

All of him was wrong.

The driver too. He’d barely moved since he stopped, except for his bizarre speech and opening the bus door when he shouldn’t have.

“Sir?” Pat called to the driver. “You gonna keep driving anytime soon? Sir?” Pat had learned that she could ask white people pointed questions wreathed with “sir” and “ma’am.”

The driver’s shoulders hunched as if she’d interrupted a nap. He reached for the door lever and pulled it shut with a hiss and whomp as it closed.

The bus driver’s wide-open eyes stared back at Pat in his oversized rearview mirror. “You’ll see them in a minute, little missy,” the driver said with that same unnatural voice. “Justice comes in time, like all things.”

“What did he just call you?” Priscilla whispered, amused. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

“I’ll see who in a minute, sir?” Pat called back to the driver. She felt her heart pounding in the pads of her fingers as she clung to the seat in front of her.

The bus lurched forward and straightened in its lane, picking up speed fast.

But the driver never stopped staring at her in the mirror, saucer eyes fixed on her.

“Look!” Pat said. “He’s not even watching the road!”

Pat scooted over to stand up, with Priscilla right behind her.

“Hey!” Priscilla said, pushing past Pat to move toward the driver. She took only two steps before the bus’s motion threw her off-balance making her brace herself. “Stop this bus!”

Pat was grabbing her suitcase, noting with alarm that the bus might already be going thirty or forty miles an hour. If they could get him to slow just a bit, they could jump off from the emergency exit. The bus wouldn’t need to be going all that slowly, if it meant getting out.

“Make it stop!” the driver suddenly screamed. “Please! I’m sorry! Leave me alone! I believe in the Blood of the Lamb! I just did what they said! Route Six, they said!”

To Pat, his outburst sounded like random phrases in a string. But his voice had changed (back to his own?). The person who had speechified and called her “little missy” was gone, even if this version of him sounded like a lunatic. The driver was suddenly so red-faced that his neck flamed.

The bus driver howled, a sound like none she had heard from any person’s lips. Part from empathy, part from surprise, she and Priscilla yelled too.

The bus swerved wildly as the driver bent over the wheel, bucking in his seat.

“He’s having a seizure,” Priscilla said. “Or a heart attack.”

That would explain it. He was delirious. Explanations helped her breathe away her dread.

The bus finally was slowing the way she’d wanted, but Pat dropped her suitcase and ran the wrong way—toward the driver. She wanted to help him somehow ||even though he wouldn’t have lifted a finger for us if he’d watched us set on fire||. That last thought felt more like an invasion than inspiration, as if it had come from outside of her. But Pat could only concern herself with fighting for balance while the bus swerved; she and Priscilla steadied themselves seat by seat to move toward him.

“Sir? Try to keep calm,” Pat said, reaching for his burly shoulder, where his sweat-drenched shirt clung to him like skin. “Stop the bus, hear?”

He didn’t hear. Pat was alarmed anew to see his foot still pressed to the accelerator as the wheel wobbled beneath the heaving of his belly. She strained to grab the steering wheel over his seat back, her hands gripping it so tightly that her nails dug into the heels of her palms with bright pain. The driver’s movements obstructed her view through the windshield, but she tried to correct the bus’s path, which was straying toward the ditch on the opposite side of the road.

Her wild overcorrection made Priscilla scream behind her. As Pat lost her balance, her face slammed into the driver’s slick back, and she saw blood: She’d hurt her nose. But she couldn’t feel anything except the adrenaline flooding her.

“Shove his foot off the gas, quick!” Pat said.

Priscilla held tight to the railing to vault down into the entrance well to get a better angle on the driver’s foot, leaning out of Pat’s sight. To Pat’s relief, the bus slowed at once. Yes, they were the (in)famous Houston sisters! They acted with one mind—at a demonstration or on a runaway bus.

The driver’s weight tugged against the steering wheel as he began his slow slump out of his seat, falling to the floor. Pat climbed behind the wheel as he fell, to keep her grip.

The bus was rolling to a stop at last, but how could she shift it into park? She had ridden Daddy Marion’s bus with him many times, but this bus’s dashboard display was a mystery to her.

“That one, Pat!”

“Which?” Pat’s vision swam, and she was sorry she was wearing such dark glasses.

“Look where I’m pointing—the stick!”

There it was, miraculous: an obvious stick shift. The bus wasn’t at a standstill, but Pat tugged on the stick with both hands to maneuver it into park. The gears whined and complained. As an afterthought, she stretched out her leg and planted her foot on the clutch. Hard. Then the brake. After a last jolt that rattled her arms, the giant beast was still at last.

Pat coughed as the bus filled with the smell of smoke and tire rubber.

“I think you broke it, girl…” Priscilla murmured, but Pat barely heard her. She helped Priscilla tug on the driver to keep him from sliding down the stairs. Priscilla took his feet. They both grunted from strain as they laid him flat on the floor in the center aisle.

His eyes were still wide open. And his face! His cheeks looked as hollow as a cadaver’s. His skin was webbed with red veins popping up so high that she could trace them by touch. His lips shook as he wheezed, hyperventilating.

“It’s all right,” Pat said even though nothing was all right. He looked dead already. Up close, she saw that his eyes were green-blue. Rich was embroidered on his shirt. “Mister Rich? Just calm down now. You’re all right. We’ll get help.”

Priscilla gave her a look: How the hell will we do that?

His lips were mouthing words Pat could not hear, so she moved so close to him that his bone-dry lips grazed the lobe of her ear. His sour breath scalded her.

“Make…him…stop…” he whispered.

Make who stop—Pat started to say, but then went rigid. With her ear tilted close to Rich’s face, she was facing the empty rows of seats behind her. For a time, she had forgotten that she and Priscilla weren’t alone with the driver—had thought that the Rider had vanished. She had no memory of seeing him when she rushed to the front of the bus.

But he was still there…he had just moved in a blink. A stench like rotting fish made Pat raise her head to look directly in the row behind the driver’s seat, where she herself had just climbed from to take control of the bus.

The Rider was sitting where he had not been a moment before. Where she had been.

“What the—” Priscilla said.

Make. Him. Stop.

Pat didn’t have to ask who was inspiring Rich’s terror. Who was killing him slowly. Now that she was at the front of the bus, she saw what distance had hidden from her.

She glimpsed his profile before she made herself look away—knowing instinctively that she must look away—but it was enough to see that his brown-gray face was not made of skin. His face was knotty wood, with round gaps where his mouth and eyes should have been. What she had mistaken for clothing was a nest of leaves and debris still damp from the swamp, fashioned like a hood. Sewn by vines, as some part of her had already known.

The bus driver had stopped for him. Had let him in.

Pat backed away so quickly that she stumbled into Priscilla, who huddled with her in the narrow stairwell. Priscilla was tugging on the stubborn door, but Pat could not make herself reach close enough to the Rider for the lever, which looked miles away from where she stood.

Pat did not cry often, but tears were seeping from her eyes now. She could not name what this thing was, but knowing of its existence ended the life she might have led where a creature like this was confined to nightmares and conjure stories—and, soon, she and her sister might be choking and dying just like the driver.

Somehow, cruelly, Rich was still awake. Eyes still wide open.

“They’re waiting up ahead,” Rich said, his voice suddenly full and clear, although the static-like phasing quality had returned. “The deputies called some of their friends to say you were coming on Route Six. They got plans for you, little missy. Ugly plans.”

Pat’s ears rang. The voice came from Rich’s lips, but it was as if it also came from the air itself. From the Rider. It was Rich’s voice, Rich’s way of speaking ||but that thing is making him say those things, making him tell the truth on himself because it likes the truth to be told||.

Priscilla’s arm wrapped protectively around Pat’s waist as they both pressed against the unyielding door. The door might not open for them even if they tried ||because it wants us to stay on the bus. It isn’t finished with us yet||.

Pat felt ideas and knowledge that were not hers crowding her mind. She tried to shut out the thoughts because she believed sharing so much would bind her, but she did not want to die without understanding why.

The racket of crickets’ song filled her ears ||because it came from the swamp and will return to the swamp, its name called for generations by the swamp folk who fished and lived and died without notice of the law. Usually it sleeps until it’s called, but the machines building the highway woke it up and ravaged its bed and it won’t sleep again until||—

“Pat!”

Priscilla’s voice was so strangled and scared that Pat was sure the creature had taken her. The sound of crickets vanished, and the bus suddenly flashed bright despite her sunglasses. Her mind had been drifting somewhere, just as she feared.

Priscilla was pointing away from the creature, toward the road ahead.

Pat flung off her dark glasses so she could see whatever had wrested Priscilla’s terror away from the Rider. Fifty yards ahead, barely visible around the approaching bend, a pickup truck and two or three cars were blocking the road. White men flurried around the parked cars, and even from a distance Pat saw their sticks and shotguns. A dozen of them. Or more.

Pat had imagined dying many times, but it was different to see the moment unfold through a bus windshield. No one was here to help them. In the swamp, they would just be two more hunted creatures, no different from the unlucky prey standing too close to a gator’s jaws.

“We need to turn this bus around,” Priscilla said.

But the road was far too narrow ||built for horses and wagons, not for this monstrous machine||. When the Rider sent knowledge to her, Pat’s temples tightened with a headache. It was prodding her || because you know what must happen now and you must be ready||.

Pat climbed the steps back up to the driver’s seat. She summoned strength to reach the clutch with enough pressure to depress it. Then she yanked at the stick shift as her memories showed her a perfect image of Daddy Marion at the helm of his school bus, masterfully commanding the controls, crisp as a picture show.

She had never shut off the engine. The bus was complaining as it idled. But the complaining stopped when she yanked the bus into gear.

“You’re turning around? Is there room?” Priscilla said.

Pat shook her head. “Hang on tight.”

She gave Priscilla the glance she owed her. Without her dark glasses, she knew her sister would see everything she needed to learn written in her eyes. And Priscilla did see. Her face went slack with resignation. And yes, fear. Tears came to Priscilla’s eyes too. If there had been time, they would have hugged.

Priscilla stepped over the gasping driver to sit in the seat across the aisle from the Rider. Priscilla did not look at the creature so near her, holding tight to her railing with both hands.

Bracing. They were always, always bracing. The devil himself could be riding with them, but the Rider was no greater a devil than the ones waiting for them on the road ahead.

The bus roared.

Pat barely realized she had moved her foot from the brake to the gas, but she liked the feeling and pressed harder. Ahead, she could take in the full measure of what waited for them: the muddy tires, sunlight glaring from a shiny mirror, the knot of teenagers in the bed of the truck, the Confederate flag flying on the end of a Remington. Pat saw it all ||just as it has seen millennia, only coming when called by those who knew its name and made proper offerings||.

Until the last moment, the waiting hoodlums were certain the bus would stop.

But they didn’t know about the Rider, who rode both the bus and Pat’s traumatized heart. ||It would have been sleeping still, but the machines building the highway woke it up and ravaged its bed and it won’t sleep again until it fulfills its purpose||—

Priscilla was reciting the Lord’s Prayer with a quiet sob. But with help from the Rider, Pat did not feel her despair or fear. The grin widening her face was mostly not her own. Mostly.

The stocky man closest to the windshield, almost a snapshot, turned to run only when he saw it was Pat, not Rich, who was driving the Greyhound bus on Route 6 that day.

—||it won’t sleep again until it fulfills its purpose to protect innocents from harm||.

Screams rained across the swampland as the bus charged through the barrier on the road.

Pat finally gathered the courage to look in her rearview mirror and saw the vehicles scattered like toys. She tried not to see the blood and broken bodies.

When she ventured a glance over her shoulder, the seat behind her was empty.

Her eyes snapped back to the rearview. The Rider—behind the bus this time—was once again standing in the middle of the road.

—

Pat would forget much about the rest of that day, but she drove until the bus heaved and gasped not far over the state line, and it rolled to a stop within sight of a bus station. By then, nothing could be done for Rich, whose heart had stopped beating long before. They left him where he had fallen from the driver’s seat and hoped he would be blamed.

The Negro schoolteacher with salt-and-pepper hair who saw them hitchhiking and picked them up to drive them back toward Tallahassee—on State Route 27 this time, not Route 6—thought they were delightful company. Pat wasn’t sure no one had seen them leave the bus, or recognized them, until the news story bubbled into the Tallahassee Democrat two days later. Tragedy on Route 6, the headline said.

According to the story, bus driver Rich McClellan was on his route to Montgomery when he had a heart attack and accidentally crashed into a barricade on a forgotten road called Route 6. Local citizens, the story said, had blocked the road because of rumors that a white woman had been raped by a Negro who might be riding the bus. (False rumors, one of the survivors told the reporter.) In all, six people died on the road that day; the oldest, a supposed “pastor,” was sixty-three. The youngest was sixteen. Pat doubted that any of them would have died if they hadn’t had murder in their hearts. None of the survivors interviewed in the paper said they had seen two Negro women, or that one of them had actually been driving.

Maybe the Rider had made them see what it wanted them to see.

Other news stories that week showed plumes of smoke rising from bombed buses of Freedom Riders in Alabama. Negroes and whites were beaten within an inch of their lives, or locked inside buses set afire. Miraculously, none of them had died. Pat knew it would have been no different for her and Priscilla—or much worse in the swamp, where no cameras would capture the violence for history.

When classes started in the fall, Pat recognized the custodian on the campus and realized he was a law student named John Graham. He asked her to coffee, and she said yes.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t go on that bus,” he said without irony, and Pat agreed.

She noticed how handsome he was, how his hair curled over his brow. She’d agreed to have coffee with him, in part because she was grieving and lonely after Priscilla’s decision to leave the country. Priscilla had gone to Ghana at the invitation of post-independence President Kwame Nkrumah himself. In her first letter, she’d told Pat that every time she thought about returning to the States, her skin broke out in hives.

Pat knew she could never leave the Movement until Jim Crow was dead, but when she looked at John she could imagine a future with a house on a canal bank and three little girls whose hair she would fix in pigtails and barrettes, far from smoke and blood. Maybe one day she would tell him about the Rider and the truth about what had happened on Route 6.

But she still wasn’t sure if she had plowed through those cars on the road because of the Rider’s curse or her own courage, and maybe she never would be.

For the rest of her life, that question might lie hidden in the shadows of her heart, the way her dark glasses would always shroud her eyes.

I asked my Creator about the Collector after my freshman year of high school. I spent my summers at her Upstate New York home enjoying her vast garden. Removed from the spectators who constantly streamed—and commented on—sensory data from my neural feed, I could soak up her wisdom without intrusion.

My Creator stopped to trim a hedge that didn’t need trimming. Her garden was a circular labyrinth of zinnias, asters, pansies, and cosmos. Its middle held the prize: a long, curving wall of meticulously curated multicolored roses. Genetic modification didn’t touch the garden. Was I her only creation? I never asked.

“You take interest in the Collector?” she said.

“Is it wrong to?”

She pocketed her shears and took my hands in hers. The comfort was immediate. Her dark brown skin matched mine in tone. Not for the first time, I wondered if my reaction to her was scripted in my DNA. Not for the last time, I wondered if it mattered. “What have you heard?”

“That he’s a failed Creator who terrorizes Art he couldn’t make. That he buys organs off the White Market and sells to surgeons for VIP implants. Joey’s parents told him it’s a way for the government to dispose of faulty Art.”

“And what do you think?”

“That he’s just an excuse for evil. I don’t think it’s one person. Horrible people doing horrible things because they hate us. Hate Art. ‘The Collector’ gives it a name.”

“Sounds morbid. Are you worried?”

“I read the comments from my feed,” I said. I picked up a wilted rose, freshly trimmed. “I’m extraordinarily normal.” We moved on from the wall of roses into a clearing centered with a circular patch of mixed flowers. Here, full in the day’s light, I saw how much my Creator had aged over the last nine months.

“You’d rather I’d given you owl eyes? Or how about an unhinged jaw? You heard about that poor kid that choked on a loaf of bread off a dare?”

“That’s Art to somebody.”

“Death is not Art.” My Creator slowed. I had fallen behind in our walk. I kept the distance. “We are all born nearly the same. And there’re as many ways to die as there are people.”

“Then what is Art?”

“You are, you fool. You are my Art. And your own Art. Just from being observed, you are the Art of the universe.”

“Let’s say there is a Collector, then. What would it want with me?”

“All of you. You are anything but normal.” She stopped at a yellow rose growing among a plot of sunflowers. In fresh bloom, its leaves turned toward the sun. My Creator snipped it an inch into the stem and put it in her satchel. “Luckily, he is just legend. Besides, the world is enough of a Collector.”

—

Many years later…

After passion came disconnect. It was the only way to survive. The woman beside me leaned over to silence her phone and then slid back into the covers. Good. Let the moment bask. Blips of magic in a dull existence.

Dozing against the heaviness of her breathing, the thought of how nice this felt brought me fully awake. We met working an event. It was her skin that drew me. A dark brown like mine, the hue shifted with her mood. We quickly bonded over how normal we were compared to the other Pieces of Art. Though I was usually the one asking all the questions, she somehow got a life story out of me. I vividly remembered her touching my hand and feeling a connection I hadn’t felt since before my Creator died. How we had ended up in her studio apartment, its one window overlooking a damp alley, I wasn’t quite sure.

Sasha. That was her name. Why did one evening together feel like a lifetime? Fragments of postcoital dreams floated to the surface. Children. Happiness.

Foolish, dangerous illusions. Such thoughts never led to good places. It was time to go.

I shifted to the edge of the bed. Mature sunlight leaked around the edges of the heavy curtains; the day was under way. I tumbled into my jeans. The belt buckle clanged against the floor. Of all my Creator’s subtle edits, stealth was not one of them. Sasha stirred, then groaned. She glanced over with disoriented surprise. She wiped her mouth and propped herself up. Her skin dulled.

“You just fuck and leave?” she said.

“Yep. That’s the plan.”

“Typical.”

I expected vitriol. But this…this was disappointment. Most of my one-night stands were eager to dispose of me in the morn-ing.

She scrutinized me up and down, rolled over, and turned on her spectator app. Three pings cut the air before she silenced notifications. I started broadcasting to my spectators as well. If this was going south anyway, best to get paid for it.

“At least stay for breakfast,” Sasha said. “Perhaps your tongue performs better in conversation.”

“You got yours.”

“Did I?”

I heard the smile in her voice. She was toying with me. And succeeding. They always climaxed. I made sure of it. The skill was my own practice, no edits. I’d perfected it.

Of course she fucking came.

“Stay,” she said, her smile bordering laughter. “We’ll discuss it over breakfast.”

Yeah, stay, one spectator commented.

It’s been a while. There’s more sex in my marriage! another scaled the bottom of my vision.

I flicked off the comment reel.

“I don’t eat,” I said.

“You certainly made that clear last—”

“Food. I don’t eat food.”

She sat up, a non-carnal hunger in her gaze. “Photosynthesis?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking away. Good. She wasn’t as smart as I thought. “My Artist could have given me taste buds, at least.”

Most Pieces of Art had exceptional reflexes. My Creator had other priorities; I didn’t see the pillow careening toward my face.

“The fuck?” I said.

She laughed. Her skin darkened in joy. “I’m so fucking sorry. I thought you’d move.”

“Seriously. What the fuck?”

“Photosynthesis? Really? You think I’m stupid? If you don’t want to have a meal, then just say that. Shit.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to me, and quickly pulled on her shirt. I needed only a blip to store visual information. Not a photographic memory—I had heard of Pieces who had gone insane with such a “gift.” My Creator gave me the ability to save the sensory signals themselves. Whenever I retrieved them, I relived the experience in the context of my current state.

In other words, I had more than enough time to see the telltale sign between her third and fourth rib.

I lingered, unsure, and fumbled with my clothes.

She threw over her shoulder, “You’re not looking for payment, are you?”

“One fifty. Wait, you came. Twice. Three hundred.” I sat on the opposite corner of the bed. “How long do you have?”

“Observant for a Piece.” She smiled the kind of smile that doesn’t mean happiness. Her fingers went to her side, as if to protect it from the world. “I’m hoping for a cure. Naïve, huh?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, tasting the lie. Scientists struggled to not only understand but to also treat the cancer disastrously prevalent in this generation of POAs. Creators scrambled to push a narrative of hope to stave off complete unrest. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t take away the fun we had with some pity.”

“I fall. Hard, fast, and easily.”

“ArtLover309 just commented that. You seem to be a well-known lover boy.”

“I used to be. It’s amazing how many people will pay to see a train wreck in real time.”

“And now?”

“I’m out before the sun rises. No gain, no pain. You might not be around for long, so I won’t get attached.”

She considered me and shut off her spectators, well before the minimum ten-minute increment to garner revenue. I turned off mine as well.

“I don’t want a pity meal. And I just realized I’m too nervous to eat. The courts vote on the Right to Live Act today. You been following?”

“It’s hard to get excited about rights we can’t use.”

“Speak for yourself. I plan to have kids one day, God willing.”

The ensuing silence stung. All POAs were born sterile. Anyone who thought differently was just fooling themselves.

“You’re not a big fan of hope, I see,” she said. “You know what? No politics on the first date. Let’s say dinner. Then you have an easy out. Gives me time to run you by my therapist.”

“You going to talk to your therapist about me? Wow. Now I have to take you out to dinner.”

“Stop.” She shrugged. “I like you. I don’t know why. Yet. It’s something I can’t put my finger on. You feel it?”

I did. And before I could say so, she looked up at me and that was enough.

She stood and straightened her shirt. “Meet here. Whatever time, come find me, I’ll be ready. Or not. I won’t hold it against you.”

—

“So, you met someone?” Dr. Ochoa leaned into her camera, blocking out the rose painting ever present in her background. I sat up and looked around the stalled subway train, as if anyone cared. Protests in anticipation of the Right to Live decision clogged the city. All the other passengers were buried in their devices. Likely half were on their own therapy sessions and the other half were tuned in as spectators, living vicariously in the world of Art. Four so far observed my session with Dr. Ochoa. Regular broadcast was a mandatory part of our therapy agreement. “How did you know?” I said.

“You just told me.” Dr. Ochoa smiled. Light wrinkles curved around her mouth. “Aren’t you glad you went?”

“Yeah, yeah. You were right. It was a nice venue. Wait, did you set us up?”

“That would be crossing a line. Even for me. Tell me about her. Them?”

“Her. She’s Art, like me. Her skin is beautiful, you should see it.”

“Sounds like you like her.”

“I do. But…she has cancer.”

“Oh. She shared that with you?”

“She has the port, right in her side. I’ve seen enough of them to know. She thinks she’s got it beat.” I leaned back and searched the off-white ceiling for answers. “My Creator taught me to be more realistic.”

“Maybe her Creator taught her some hope.” When I said nothing, Dr. Ochoa continued. “That’s quite a first date. What are you thinking? Too much baggage? Less of a commitment?”

I love Dr. Ochoa, came a scrolling comment. Almost makes me want to get back into therapy. Almost.

I laughed. “That’s what I told her, that at least I know it’ll be short-term.” I thought about bringing up the dream, the one with the family, but decided against it.

“A little love and loss may be good for you. And I’ll be here to help work out the pesky emotions.”

“I saved a memory of her. Against my better judgment.”

“Her face?”

“No. Thank God.”

Dr. Ochoa nodded in a way that implied she was thanking God, too. Our eight years of therapy, brought on by my Creator’s sudden death, included navigating several difficult relationships. My spectators had plummeted since I chose to “focus on myself.” I was surprised Dr. Ochoa kept me on.

“Speaking of love, you see they came out with a verdict?”

“Seems I’m the only one who hasn’t been paying attention.”

“It’s a big deal. The courts knocked it down. There will probably be appeals, but it’s not looking good.”

“ ‘Right to Live.’ I read the kid they’re fighting for won’t even be able to feed himself. What’s the end goal? So that Creators can turn human reproduction into another display? Just another thing to make money?”

That’s sad. He’s too far gone. You should have the right to have kids.

Art needs to be regulated, like everything else, a longtime spectator commented. I swear, we’ll engineer our own extinction wrapped in a bow if it’ll make some money. #RightToBeHuman

“A first step is a first step,” Dr. Ochoa said.

“That’s what Sasha said.”

“I like her already.”

“So,” I said, happy to change the subject, “should I see her again?”

—

I closed the link a few minutes out from the venue. The tram passed over a crowd of protestors spilling into an intersection. A headline scrolled over their heads: SCOTUS Throws Out Right to Live Act. Hansel, First Ever Art-Born Baby, to Be Taken Off Life Support. Fate of Art-Based Reproduction Hangs in the Balance. I turned off the enhanced view. As a Piece of Art, I wasn’t allowed to protest. Even Hansel’s parents couldn’t speak publicly. The privilege of voice lay with our allies.

My pod broke off from the tram, descended to ground level, turned down a small street, and dropped me at the venue. Back-alley entrance, one-story building, on the outskirts of town. A small event. Money to be made, but with some effort.

“This is a private affair,” the security woman said. Standing at eight feet tall, she had sunset braids long enough to wrap around her waist.

“I know. I’m working it.”

She looked me over. I was different. I was older than most POAs and lacked the telltale signs of genetic modification. At the same time, if I was trying to get one over on her, I was doing a terrible job. She decided to check my ID without much fuss.

“Your spectator app is out of date,” she said. Her voice melted to a soothing velvet. She shrunk a half foot. Her eyes went from blue to a soft brown. “You should get it updated. With that Hansel case there’ve been a lot of neuroattacks from Right to Be Human extremists. You have to turn it off to enter. For security reasons.”

“If I had people watching, I wouldn’t need to be here.”

Once inside, I floated the perimeter. Some type of fundraiser for a politician. I’d started working the circuit after estate lawyers blocked my Creator’s unorthodox will and my personal spectator money dried up.

I kept my head low, observant. A non-binary POA—four feet tall in heels—serenaded a tight group with otherworldly vocals. A POA man wearing only a thin cloth over his privates showed off the chameleon quality of his skin. A wheelchair-using POA briefly removed her oxygen mask to sip a carbonated drink. She then twisted her elbow back over her head. Surely her elastic ligaments filled her youth with wealthy, eager spectators. But every modification had its costs.

I found a middle-aged spectator looking at best uncomfortable and at worst disinterested standing by the hors d’oeuvres. He wore his casual richness like a coat. My Creator described this type of man as the first “customers” for genetically engineered humans. Some wanted the experience of being a single father. Others wanted another pair of trainable hands.

“You look bored,” I said.

Slight amusement. What was my trick? What fringe part of human anatomy did I have to offer? His engagement with this anticipation lowered his guard to the power of conversation.

He told me much more than I wanted to know. After making his fortune on a DNA-based dating app, he spent his early retirement exploring the Earth’s outer orbit with his private spaceship. He dabbled in creation and almost lost his fortune after his botched attempt at Art died by suicide at the age of nine. Much earlier, when my spectator was twelve, he would watch his mother undress through a crack in the door. It was in the retelling of this piece that he took my hand.

“Your skin. It’s magnificent. And your hair…”

I stilled his hand. The few spectators who paid enough attention were always fascinated by the two. Dark umber that shifted with the room’s light. Tight curls that hugged my head. Adopted to a White family who wanted an ethnic addition, I grew up thinking these attributes were unique to POAs. My genetically engineered classmates—all shades of brown—also had vanilla parents with straight hair. Imagine my shock when I saw just a little more of the world. Resentment followed. I wasn’t Black. I wasn’t White, either. Some regarded my skin, my very DNA, as a type of “appropriation.” Western culture hadn’t only conquered my skin: in its eyes, it had perfected it.

The billionaire asked me to the back rooms without actually asking. I declined. He went alone.

I drifted. A storyteller entertained an intimate crowd. Her name tag said she originated from Quantum Lane. I’d heard of their rise and fall from my Creator, who made sure I was well educated on the Art-related failures my schooling didn’t bother to teach. Quantum’s twenty-year promise to rear the world’s next great generation of storytellers was one they ultimately couldn’t keep. The funds dried up well before their progeny reached puberty. Without contracts, the POAs were left to navigate the world on their own.

Despite missing much of the story, I didn’t feel lost. A love story, woven with many characters, bodies, blood, and lust, centered on two who found each other in an unfit world. I wiped my eyes, suddenly aware of my emotions. The fear, the passion, the warmth. The false promise of comfort, of a future. Thunderous applause broke my mental dam to these emotions. I tilted off-balance, physically steadied myself on the nearby counter, and mentally fell into her memory. The flicker of her skin in conversation with the tone of her voice. The chill morning air. The fading smell of lust-spent passion. Colors popped and blended and overlapped the dark gray interior. The storyteller now sat on the edge of Sasha’s bed. Her back to me. I noticed the light line of stitches between her ribs and wondered again how long she had. The spectators around her applauded.

“She’s not waiting for death.” The billionaire—returned from pleasuring himself, his top button undone, his hair in slight disarray—stood back beside me. He turned away, as Sasha had. A ragged-edged red spot appeared on his right side. The blood shone clear, even through his black shirt. “She just wants a chance at life.”

I bit my tongue. Sharp pain ripped through the illusion. Sasha’s room fell away.

The story finished, the spectators all looked at me. “She wants kids. She’ll make another Hansel,” one said. “She’s naïve,” said another. “That cancer will tear her apart.”

“The goal is to cure. Right? Right?”

I made for the exit. I didn’t stop for the woman who had checked me in, didn’t care about the stares. I slowed only when I was far enough away that the venue and its visions were only memories. I walked another block, found an alley, opened my mobile, and called my psychiatrist.

—

Dr. Ochoa didn’t answer. I tried again. Nothing.

I’ll be your psychiatrist.

I thought I’d closed that damn app. I responded fuck you and logged off.

I arrived disgustingly early for dinner.

I scrolled through the building’s directory. Sasha…Sasha…I didn’t know her last name. There was no search. What use were the intricate, intimate details stored in my cortex if I couldn’t even remember if she was on the fourth floor or the fifth. “Lost?”

The woman exiting the building eyed me with amused caution. Her thin neck and dilated nostrils left little to speculation: a Piece of Art. “High Art,” and she knew it. Her lips barely moved when she spoke, giving the illusion of telepathy. These once-popular variants—dubbed the Lithes—were beautiful in their youth. But the strain of their biology lengthened with age. I put her in her early thirties, in that transition from bliss to desperately clinging on to mortality.

“I’m here to see a friend,” I said.

She cocked her head. “Who’s your Artist?”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

She shrugged, her interest lost. I shifted to holding the door open and she fell away. “To some. Have a good one.”

“You, too.” But she was already gone.

I called for the elevator, paced a bit, and then took the stairs. Bits of the night came back to me: We’d also taken the long way up to Sasha’s apartment because of the lazy elevator. I remembered the cold of the banister I gripped as her body leaned into mine. I remembered her excitement, and my own. These memories took me up to her floor.

But I couldn’t enjoy them, not fully. The venue experience continued to cloud my mind. I’d gone over what happened there many times in that last hour. The distinction wasn’t in the biology but rather in the anatomy. Hallucinations were uncontrolled, unwelcome, and ultimately a warning. A hack? Your spectator app is out of date. I had nothing worth taking. Some kind of tumor?

I was so caught in these thoughts that I nearly walked right into Sasha’s apartment. And I could have: Her door was slightly open.

I checked my sensorium. Present reality. I looked down the long, quiet hallway, dimly lit. Beyond, darkness. But not empty. “Sasha?”

A silhouette, etched in the dark? I blinked, leaned closer. Just my imagination.

I stepped inside Sasha’s unit. Soft evening lights oversaw stone-still dining and living rooms. Water dripped from the few dishes in the sink. I called her name. Nothing. Complete silence. Her bedroom seemed untouched since that morning. I pulled back the covers, feeling foolish.

Sasha wasn’t home.

She could have stepped outside to the store and accidentally left the door open. Or she could be in the bathroom. There were many probable, rational explanations. And yet…

There, tucked under the pillow, was a letter. The space inside my chest shrunk. I couldn’t help but laugh. I turned on my spectator. Hundreds more followers than before.

She ghosted me, I posted.

I could almost see the words as I unfolded the handwritten note. But as I read what was actually there, I looked around, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I was. The bathroom door, slightly ajar with darkness beyond. Under the bed. In the closet.

The note read:

Sasha’s with me now.

—Collector

My spectator beeped. I yelped, started, and nearly lost my balance.

I ducked back out of the unit and into the complex hallway. The silhouette was back. This time, I couldn’t blink it away. “Sasha?”

I leaned closer. The silhouette expanded to fill the empty space. A foul wind of cursed memories and regret clogged my senses. The silhouette floated closer.

I left, as fast as I could.

—

I collected myself before entering my own complex across town. Once upstairs, I checked every room and closet, locked the doors, and secured the windows. During my shower I replayed Sasha’s room, comparing the scene between the morning and the afternoon, looking for differences, looking for clues. Not everything was the same as I had first observed. That morning, a blue hoodie jacket with its single word beholder on the back hung neatly off her bedroom door. Later, it was gone.

I knew what she was wearing, at least.

I studied the note from the relative safety of my bed. The sheets cleared my thoughts. Sasha was fucking with me. That had been her in the shadows. I’d left before she could come out and have her laugh.

A notification sang. Reluctantly, I opened the app. There was a single message from AestheticOne1, a lifelong spectator who had witnessed my birth. For all I knew, AestheticOne1 had seen more of me than anyone. And had never sent a message, never liked a moment.

Until now. A link to a news article. I clicked on it. “White Market Buzzing with POA Organs: What This means for Creators and Their Creations.”

Another link came through, this one to download Palm, an app that connected specialty doctors to POAs. I’d heard of it as a last resort for POAs desperate for money or desperate for a cure.

Why did you send me these? I typed. An indicator told me that whoever was on the other side read it.

Then, nothing. They signed off.

—

My mobile vibrating against the wood jolted me out of sleep. I answered the call.

“Hey. It’s Dr. Ochoa. Just checking in about our session right now.”

Session? What time was it? Midmorning, from the slant of the light through the blinds. Things began to click. One hundred spectators waited for us to start. I was late. Odd there were so many. I let the comments scroll against the ceiling as I turned onto my back.

“Is now still a good time?”

“Yeah.” I propped myself up on one arm and massaged sleep out of my eyes. “Yes. Just, just give me a second. I’ll log on.”

I paused halfway off the bed. There, on the opposite side of where I slept, was an indentation in the mattress. I examined it with caution, as if I might disturb whatever memory lingered there. The incision in her side: It spoke.

“Do you see this?” I asked, out loud.

The bed?

This POAss high af rn.

I think he’s doing a flashback, of that girl. No, we can’t see her.

Trying to ignore it, I settled into my “therapy corner” and expanded my mobile.

“Just a second. Closing out some stuff.”

“Take your time,” Dr. Ochoa said.

I minimized the White Market article still open in the background but paused on my pending request on Palm. I hovered over the button, sent the message off to a cohort of doctors, and closed that, too.

Dr. Ochoa’s smiling face came into view.

“I missed your call yesterday. I’m sorry, I was in with another patient.”

“It was about the person I met. But something else happened since then.”

“I’m all ears.”

I relayed the details of the night before. Dr. Ochoa, even after all these years, gave me her full attention. I could almost forget the transactional nature of our relationship. Almost. She paid to be my therapist. A portion of the service fee went to my Creator’s estate. There had been a whole generation of mass-produced “Art” utilized for medical experimentation. The increased metabolism and expanded cellular regenerative properties likely contributed to the high incidence of cancer. The novelty of being able to treat POAs was lost on me.

“She was gone.” I stopped short of telling her about the note, contemplated, then sat back.

“You think she ghosted you?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. No, I don’t think so. I think she wants me to come after her.”

Past Dr. Ochoa, past the mobile, the divot in the bed deepened. I scooched the screen to block it.

“She wants to be pursued? Or do you need to pursue?”

“I’m always in pursuit. But this time’s different. I could really get hurt.”

I didn’t hear Dr. Ochoa’s next words. The divot in the bed had somehow expanded to once again reach my vision. I jumped up—knocking over my mobile—and crossed the room in two long strides. I touched the bed. Firm. Cold. Empty. Of course.

I froze. Held my air. Breathing. Faint, undeniable, not my own. A soft rattle at the end, the very beginning of labor. My skin warmed to the heat of sex and passion and then prickled at the unpleasant scent of coconut conditioner. I hated coconut. I would have noticed it on Sasha, right? Her breath, on my neck. I whirled around. No one was there.

Back to the bed. There, on the edge, to the right of the divot. A spot of blood. I touched it. Still wet. Still warm. The feeling lingered. I expected it to fade. It didn’t.

I couldn’t inventory my thoughts. That edit was banned before my creation. A line of POAs given the ability to catalog their thoughts, emotions, and memories like computer files all died of brain tumors before hitting puberty. But I could differentiate stored sensory retrieval versus current interaction with environment. This vision registered as real.

The warmth of Sasha’s body reached up through my mattress and into my still hand. I yanked it away, stumbled backward, and rolled my ankle against the table.

“Shit, fuck!”

“You okay?” asked Dr. Ochoa. “What’s going on?”

The divot, gone. The heat, gone. The smell of her, gone. I settled into my chair, took two breaths, remounted my mobile, and slid back into therapy.

“You’re hallucinating, aren’t you?” Dr. Ochoa said. In the bottom left of the screen, I saw what she saw: I looked like shit.

“Possibly.”

“When’s the last time you had a neural update?”

“Too long ago, apparently.” Spectator stats scrolled my vision. Hundreds watched. Hundreds judged. I shut it all off.

Dr. Ochoa shifted in her chair, uneasy. “You should have told me you wanted a private session.”

“I want all of them to be private. What is want for a piece of ass?” I got to the meat of it before the silence could become uncomfortable enough for Dr. Ochoa to fill it with the reminder of how much she disliked me using that phrase. “I have a good reason.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Tell me, have you heard of the Collector?”

—

Dr. Josiah Kelly’s Palm profile showed four-star reviews across the board. Patients lauded his bedside manner, his expertise, and the efficacy of his surgeries. But it wasn’t the cancer removals, the organ transplants, or the heroics I sought.

“Your health records are clean,” Dr. Kelly said. “No broken bones, no emergency room visits, not even a single case of white coat syndrome. It looks like you also made it through the pandemic untouched?”

I nodded. Unheard of, even for POAs with well-crafted immune systems.

His assistant—a four-armed creation with large ears and translucent skin—handed him my body scans.

“How’s my brain looking?”

“Normal. You worried about something?”

“No. Just some headaches. Here or there. I think I’m due for a neural update. Can you do that while I’m under?”

“Sure.” Dr. Kelly waved his hand and, as he scrutinized another slide, said, “Do you have any children?”

The question threw me so much that I laughed. “Several. No. I’m sterile. Like all Art.”

“Do you know your modifications?”

“My Art worth is up here.” I pointed to my head. “At least, that’s what my Creator said.”

The surgeon’s mouth parted and then closed. He eyed the scans one last time and then put them aside. I took mental note.

“Not everyone gets cancer these days. There are many lifestyle, nonsurgical options. This procedure’s usually for people already in the danger zone.”

“The danger zone is too late. Cancer is in our DNA.” We stared at each other. I moved to leave. “Fine. You’re not the only surgeon in town.”

He held up a hand. I sat. “You know the details of the procedure?”

“You put something in my…liver?”

“Kidney.”

“Right. Little computers that snuff out the cancer. The kidney filters out the bad stuff and keeps the bots in circulation.”

“That’s more or less correct. It’s not curative—”

“But it can prevent. Right?”

He nodded as he considered me, weighing his options. Unlike Dr. Ochoa, Dr. Kelly did nothing to hide his hunger. He’d shaped his career around broken, desperate POAs. Ones who wouldn’t care if they woke up with something missing. They were just happy for a chance, for hope. Some would proclaim themselves so in debt to the great doctor that they chose to work for him indefinitely. I was healthy. I had a lot to lose.

Which is what made me so appealing.

I rewound his facial expression to when I had joked about how “normal” my anatomy was. The rebuttal on his tongue. The restraint. I went back further. The question about if I’d had kids. Somehow related. He’d seen something. Something my Creator had put in me. Something that made me desirable.

Doubt leaked in. It wore Sasha’s face.

“Let’s get started,” he said.

—

No spectators saw my surgery. From what I learned later, there were only two others in the room, a scrub nurse and a technician.

“That went beautifully,” the nurse said, checking the wound on my side.

I winced, but not from any present pain. That was minimal. I reviewed the sensory input I’d automatically stored while under anesthesia. In line with the nurse’s probes, I dipped into saved nerve clusters firing during different parts of the surgery. A small incision in my stomach, far to the right. Hot fire sparked. And then, an hour or so into it, the real reason Dr. Kelly had taken me on as a patient. The sudden, lower pain originated right beneath my testicles. My eyes popped open. A soft, mewling wail escaped.

The nurse frowned, then quickly smiled. “The pain will get better. Trust me, I know.” They lifted their scrub shirt just enough to show their own healed belly incision. I noticed now how large their eyes were.

Back to the present. No pain from my groin. I imagined not even a scar. It should have been long after the surgery before I noticed anything. And by then what case would I have?

The nurse went over the aftercare plan, which involved frequent in-person wound checks, and removed the intravenous line from my right arm. That done, I made my move.

“I want to talk with Dr. Kelly,” I said.

“The recovery schedule seems daunting, I know, but it’s important to keep calibrated. It’s all in the paperwork you signed.”

“It’s not that. I need to ask him something.”

“Why don’t you run it by me first?”

“Sure. I can have kids. That’s what he saw on my scans, right? I might be the only POA in the world with a working pair of nuts.”

“I can’t discuss the details of the case.”

“Did he take both or did he leave me one? And how much are POA nuts going for on the White Market these days? You’ve heard of the White Market, haven’t you?”

The nurse’s eye twitched. Red and orange cascaded through their locks, now more visible through the hair cap. Their gaze flicked to my arm, where just minutes ago they would have been able to pump me full of quieting medications and chart it as still part of the procedure.

Sasha sat, cold and listening, on the neighboring bed behind the nurse, turned away from me. Real or not real? I couldn’t tell. Did it matter?

“I’ll call Dr. Kelly.”

The nurse rushed off. I sat back and waited.

“Perfect.”

—

Dr. Kelly reluctantly confirmed my suspicions. My scans showed functional sperm with mutation-resistant DNA. He’d taken one of my testicles to profit off my Creator’s design. Though he scoffed at the notion of a “Collector,” he agreed to work with me on the White Market. He confirmed his disdain by discharging me with all of three pain pills.

I lay in my bed the next day, in and out of consciousness. My back ached; my groin throbbed with loss.

I waited for Sasha. She didn’t come. I conjured up her sensorium and expected it to take flight in my mind. Nothing. Frustrated, I took all three pills and drifted off.

The night brought sweat-soaked sheets that turned to ice on my skin. I struggled to find comfort. It didn’t come. Sasha was ever quiet. Did she not care? She did nothing to comfort me.

I reached out in a moment of delirium. My fingertips froze at the touch. Finally, she turned to me. I stifled a scream. Her face was a horrible distortion. A hole opened in the middle of the void. Words came out that didn’t match the vibration of what had been her lips.

“What in God’s name?”

I didn’t expect that.

“Dr. Ochoa?”

Sasha dissolved into the air. The bed still held her shape. I scrambled for my mobile and brought up the feed. My loyal psychiatrist stared back at me.

“I told you to never, ever go to a surgeon.”

“How’d you know?” I said.

“I got a notification that you’d been hacked. It looks like Right to Be Human. As your mental health professional, it gave me access to your system.”

“Bonus content for you, huh?”

“What?”

I rolled onto my back and played my favorite memories against the ceiling. “I need to find the Collector. She needs me.”

“Who?” Dr. Ochoa said. “Who needs you?”

“Her!” I pointed to the ceiling; Sasha’s faceless projection ignored me. “Who the fuck else?”

“Pause. Regroup. We’re spiraling. Bottom line: I’m worried about you. Come see me in person. We can figure this out together.”

I turned to the mobile. Dr. Ochoa’s face almost broke me. She’d aged in her worry. Had that eroded my Creator, too? Worry over my well-being?

What was I doing? Where was I going with this?

Still, there was something I needed to know. “Why do you keep seeing me?”

“What? We don’t have time for this.”

She was annoyed. I could tell. But it was my session, dammit, and in that moment no question was more important. I asked again.

“Because I’m invested in you. I’ve been your therapist for what, eight, nine years?”

“What bullshit.” I moved to turn off the mobile.

“Wait. You’re right, that was bullshit. I don’t know why I still see you. That’s the truth. I…I feel complete when I’m your doctor.”

I searched her face for honesty.

“Which is why I want you to come in person,” she said. “We can figure this out. Together.”

A message broke through the long silence, before truth could surface.

Found a buyer. Will confirm address when I have it. I ran my finger over the text.

“Okay. I’ll come.”

—

My ride waited outside the apartment.

“What’s your angle?” the driver said when I was settled in. I raised an eyebrow through the mirror. He explained. “The city’s going to shit with the protests. Anyone out right now is either looking for trouble or for escape.”

“I’m just looking for a ride.”

Fireworks lit the night, an unsettling visual to the staccato of gunshots. The main street was inaccessible. We jumped the curb, took an empty piece of sidewalk down the block, and found a relatively quiet side road.

“For what it’s worth, I’m Team Hansel,” my driver said. He kept both hands on the wheel and didn’t take his eyes off the road for more than a second’s glance. I appreciated that, especially amid the chaos. “I’ve got three children myself. Art should be able to be just as miserable as the rest of us.”

I nodded and scrolled through my mobile. I ran my finger over the address Dr. Kelly had sent me. A deep chill started at the base of my neck, went down my spine, and buried itself in a dull, aching back pain. I tried to put things together from the last few hours, the last several days, the last decade, my life. My Creator’s death eight years ago had thrown everything into chaos. More than I’d realized. I looked at the passenger seat, half expecting (wanting) to see Sasha. But my mind was clear, for better or for worse. I brought up her living memory instead. She was forever turned away. Was that part of it? Was life unlivable with that image of her being my last? I needed more memories. I needed to know if that feeling of her hand on mine was a fluke or…something more.

It’s something I can’t put my finger on. You feel it?

I do, Sasha, I do.

I pulled up my spectator settings, hesitated, and opened the feed. Hundreds of viewers came on. Angry comments flooded in. I silenced them.

The ride stopped. I looked up; the night was bathed in red. A small office that could have been a home stood isolated on a triangular corner. The driver turned fully toward me. He wore a blue jacket. Under his full beard, his face was young and soft. My eyes searched his features and build and quickly determined he wasn’t Art.

“Therapy session?” When I looked at him sideways, he added, “I’m a viewer. A very loyal one, actually. Ignore the negative comments. We’re all rooting for you.”

It took a while for me to respond. “Is this the right thing?”

“Does it feel right?”

“I think she might be my soul mate. I know that sounds weird because it feels weird to say.”

“Some might say Art can’t have soul mates because they don’t have souls.” The young man’s eyes seemed to be looking into me. “But who cares what people think. If it feels right, that’s all that matters. Did the article help?”

I hesitated, then nodded. He smiled.

“I’m glad.”

Headlights lit the night. A white autonomous car pulled up in front of us, facing the opposite direction. My driver turned on the dampening shades and we both sat in silence. The front door to the office opened. High beams disguised whoever came out of the car: a woman’s silhouette disappeared into the light.

“Looks like a special delivery,” my driver said.

He was right. A dull throb in my groin confirmed that an intimate piece of me had just passed hands. The woman walked quickly back up to the office as the delivery vehicle pulled away. Her stilted, paranoid gait was anything but casual. A small package was tucked under one arm. She shot a glance at us right before disappearing through the front door. I saw enough to know it wasn’t Sasha.

“Can you wait here for me?” I said. “I shouldn’t be long.”

“Of course.”

My mobile rang as I got out. Dr. Ochoa. I let it go. I looked up at the corner office. The modest rose garden. The sign hanging in the door. The off-white fence.

The gate hung open. I went in.

—

Sasha’s blue jacket hung on the waiting room coatrack. I touched it but didn’t need the formal check against reality. There was a new detail I’d missed before: the “o” in beholder was made into an eye. It was real. She was here.

A long white couch and two comfy chairs furnished the space. Large POA portraits, each painted in vivid detail, stared at me from the walls. From somewhere unseen, white noise filled the room. A paper bag sat on an accent table beside one of the couches, directly underneath a smiling Lithe, still naïve in her youth. I opened it and quickly closed it again. Warm rage coated my throat.

I placed a hand on the door (whispers, from inside) and pushed into Dr. Ochoa’s office.

“Oh.”

They both turned to me. Sasha on the couch, legs crossed, one arm draped over the top. Dr. Ochoa sat a few feet opposite, leaning forward in attention. I took mental note of the moment. The office decor from a career of deception. Sasha’s surprise. Dr. Ochoa’s wearied expectation. The hint of coconut conditioner on the air.

Dr. Ochoa stood. I gasped as the fullness of her features registered in real time. I long suspected my path would lead back to her; I’d made peace, if not understanding, on the short ride over. I hadn’t, however, prepared for the cognitive dissonance her appearance caused. Deep lines cut where I had seen only smooth skin before. Her eyes sagged at the corners. Age had shifted one cheek higher than the other.

My longtime psychiatrist had somehow aged forty years in the hour since I’d last seen her.

“A filter?” I said. “All this time?”

Dr. Ochoa touched her own face, thought for a moment, then cursed. “I know this is a lot,” she said. “I needed to get you here. So we can talk. Do you recognize the handle ‘AestheticOne1’?”

“I trusted you. With everything.”

“I think you’ve been the victim of a neural attack. Someone who knows your modifications.”

I turned to Sasha. She was all that mattered.

“We don’t have to stay. We don’t have to do anything she says. Let’s get out of here.”

Instead of taking my hand, Sasha pulled away. Doubt flooded me. There was no injury, no distress, no discernible harm. Only confusion. Had she come willingly? Did she even know the danger she was in?

“Dr. Ochoa. She’s the Collector,” I said. “She brought you here. She brought us here. I don’t know what she wants to do to us, but it’s not good.”

Sasha, eyes wide, turned to Dr. Ochoa. “What’s he talking about?”

“She wants to Collect us, Sasha. We have to go.”

“Please,” Dr. Ochoa said. “Listen to yourself. You’re not thinking straight. I’m your doctor. Nothing else.”

“Then why the filter? Why come off to me as something you’re not?”

“Your Creator insisted on it. I was her therapist and I promised I’d look after you—the both of you—after she died. She made you to be together. You said you felt something, right? And Sasha, you told me the same.”

I looked around. The office was small and intimate. Dr. Ochoa’s mobile was mounted atop her desk. Behind it, the background framed image of a rose I’d seen through her camera over the years. My eyes passed over her open door and the bag still on the table just outside of it. I hardened.

Dr. Ochoa caught my gaze. She grabbed the bag and held it out for me. I snatched it.

“I don’t know who sent that to me,” she said. “But whoever did, they’re setting you up. It’s a very dangerous place right now for a POA. And with what you and Sasha could create—”

I ignored my psychiatrist, ignored the thought of my testicle impossibly pressed up against my chest, sat beside Sasha, and took her hand in mine. She didn’t recoil this time. “Do you trust me?” A lot went unsaid. She did trust me, as I did her, even though neither of us had any logical reason to. My skin on hers, I was suddenly back in that Upstate New York garden. Through the years I’d concluded that I had been designed to bond with my Creator. That same feeling was present now, with Sasha. We were made for each other.

I stood. Sasha stood with me.

“Don’t do this,” Dr. Ochoa said. “I’m not the enemy. I’m supposed to save you.”

“You’ve done enough.” To Sasha, I said, “We’re going to be okay.” And with that, we left. Dr. Ochoa didn’t follow. The car waited, engine humming.

“Is that her?” the driver said, craning his neck as he readied the car. “Standing in the doorway. The Collector? Whoa, you two okay?”

“Just drive. Please.”

He did. With haste.

“I’m shaking,” Sasha said. “This is crazy. I trust you, but I don’t know why. Maybe because—no, I know it’s this: I dreamed of you that night. Of us. We had a family.”

“I had the same dream. Did you know your Creator?”

“What? I didn’t. She died when I was young. Dr. Ochoa knew her. Said I was made special.” Sasha’s hand went to her belly as she trailed off.

“Upstate New York?” I said.

Her eyes searched mine. “Yes, but how—”

“We were made to be together. Made to fall in love. To…create. Dr. Ochoa—whatever her name really is—she wants to use that. She wants to make us her Art. Do you understand?”

“I want to,” Sasha said. She looked back, out the window. “She’s been my therapist for almost ten years now.”

“I know. She had us both fooled.”

I checked the contents of the bag just to be sure, grimaced as I set it aside on the seat, and opened my mobile to put the updated destination into the ride app. I froze at the pending notification. I tried to mentally backtrack an hour or so. Only I hadn’t thought to save the memory.

What was real?

“What’s wrong?” Sasha said, leaning over to see my mobile screen. “What is it?”

Your ride could not wait any longer and was canceled. Please try again. The starting location was still my apartment. The ride I’d taken was not the one I’d scheduled.

I leaned forward to talk to the driver, but he’d put his divider up.

“You hear that?” Sasha said.

A faint hiss. The air smelled of coconut.

“Get out,” I said. “Get the fuck out!”

The panic in my voice demanded action and Sasha listened. She struggled against the door. “It’s locked!”

She was right. My side, too. I leaned over her and yanked at the handle. Nothing. I banged on the divider. The car accelerated in response.

I sat back, suddenly exhausted from the effort. Each heaving breath was full of coconut. Blurred colors swirled overhead. Sounds became distant. Memories became strings of consciousness. Laughter burst out of me. Sasha giggled, too. Her eyes watered.

“This is Art,” I said. “This is fucking beautiful.” I wished my Creator could see me. I hoped, somehow, she could. I turned on my spectator app and put the camera to see what I saw. The colors. The peace.

A pause. Someone entered the virtual space. AestheticOne1. The lifelong spectator who had sent me the article. I recognized his avatar now, hidden from me before, as the bearded man with the soft face who now chauffeured the ultimate moving Art piece. A quote under his handle read To be human is to BE human! #RightToBeHuman

Beautiful, he wrote. I liked his comment.

I took Sasha’s hand as I closed my eyes and took in the moment. She didn’t squeeze back. Enraptured in the Art of it, too. Beautiful.

Yes. It truly was.

Your ears still haven’t popped since this morning’s flight. You’ve been trying to unplug them every few minutes by swallowing with your mouth open wide. Seven hours later, with still no relief, the act has evolved into an involuntary tic. It’s a ridiculous sight that’s already become a running family joke, but you miss half the barbs because your hearing remains muffled.

As distracting as it is, it’s a minor discomfort given how dangerous air travel has become. This afternoon’s event hardly warranted your presence, but you suspect this may be the last time you’ll be able to travel to your hometown with any faith that your plane won’t be snatched out of the sky by a flash storm, fire whirl, or pressure pocket.

Your aunt’s house hasn’t changed since you were last here, but you’ll have to wait until morning to see how the years have changed her. It’s completely in character for her to have insisted you sleep here tonight and then leave it entirely to her daughter, Katy, to play host. Though it’s only a little past eight in the evening, you’ve been forewarned of Aunt Libby’s abuse of what happens to be the cheapest and most effective coping strategy for existential anxiety: sleep.

The living room of this big house is an island of light. Now that you’re here, the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” as your uncle Ted long ago playfully dubbed this generation of only-child cousins, are reunited for the first time in almost ten years. You feel the time, but quickly fall into a familiar dynamic: You resume the role you once imagined as that of the “quiet observer,” but what others saw, Katy would reveal to you years later, as the “pretentious loner.”

You’ve stayed in better touch with some of your family members than others, but none more naturally than Katy. She’s the gay cousin, and you’re the Black cousin (mixed, to be clear, but Black-reading) in a branch of the Vance family that otherwise perfectly resembles the cast of a silver-age television sitcom.

The two of you bonded early in your otherness, but where you took your second-class status as a challenge to disprove every negative expectation chained to your ankle, Katy rejected the very concept of “expectation.” She rebelled as a small-town teen does: colorful hair, T-shirts with provocative slogans, and piercings bold enough to draw eyes on the street, but easily concealed with a down hairstyle. Though Uncle Ted diplomatically never officially declared which cousin he meant paired with which adjective, it was understood this phase was what earned Katy the moniker of “the Bad.”

You were the first person in the family Katy came out to. She was fourteen and you were sixteen. And she was the only other person who heard the oldest of the three, Andrew, call you a nigger at your seventh birthday party. Andrew was eight and Katy was five. She still brings it up during every one of your semiannual catch-up phone calls. Always with a deep sigh and a shaking head you can’t see, but can somehow hear.

Katy, being the youngest cousin, strongly protested your plan to get the fuck outta this shithole town the day you turned eighteen (to paraphrase your own words). But that’s exactly what you did. With you gone, that left just her and Andrew, who then sporadically attended a local community college, as the “kids” in the family. As Katy explored and became more comfortable in her sexuality, Andrew explored and became more comfortable in his homophobia.

Those two years before Katy got the fuck outta this shithole town herself, while you were off gleefully making your first adult mistakes in the Big City, were a dark spot in your correspondence. It was during this time that Katy pushed into real rebellion, which you only learned of secondhand, and long after the fact. House calls from police, weeklong disappearances, a physical altercation with her mom. She found comfort in food, and gained so much weight in such a short amount of time she had a mini-stroke at the age of seventeen. The family became very careful not to refer to her as the Bad in her presence.

You still regret not being there for her during this time, but yours is a family that prefers not to embolden past pains by speaking of them: You’ve all moved on. Let’s not jinx it. Katy has settled into a fulfilling career at a local nonprofit that aims to convert vacant land into long-term villages for climate refugees. You feel close enough to Katy to take vicarious pride in her work, but with as few victories as she’s had, it’s debatable whether she accomplishes anything more than stirring the ire of those irrationally still concerned with “immigrant crime waves” or “American jobs.” People like Andrew, frankly.

Neither you nor Katy looked forward to seeing Andrew again. Not that you expected a confrontation; Andrew just is who he is, and that is difficult. You never held a grudge over the birthday party incident. You were all just kids. And whatever specifically occurred between him and Katy that resulted in her briefly refusing to attend any family function at which he would be present is none of your business. He’s family, and besides, he’s mellowed in adulthood. Still, he’s never been more than a syllable away from raising your blood pressure.

For instance: Once, during a family game of Taboo, Andrew got the card “American,” and, for a clue, said, “We’re not just white, we’re…” Whenever you recall this, and the obliviousness it seemed to spontaneously manifest in the room, you feel certain this was the instant you adopted the “pretentious loner” role in the family.

Andrew wants you to know he has a mild sinus headache tonight. That may be why he’s been more or less tolerable, despite repeatedly derailing the conversation with tasteless innuendos, failing to address, silence, or stow his constantly vibrating phone, and generally just talking too loudly (remember, Katy’s mom is asleep upstairs).

Andrew always had a way of dominating a space, but as he talks, you find yourself absently scanning the room like a disengaged partygoer. It’s not superior conversation you’re looking for, but a cat named Scamper. Katy’s childhood pet must be almost twenty years old now. You don’t know if she’s alive anymore, but you hope. In fact, in this particular precarious moment, you feel that news of her death would utterly devastate you.

Scamper was your entire support network in the years that your alienation first began to feel specific and namable. She would enviably hide for the duration of every family gathering hosted in this house. In a bedroom when she was annoyed or bored, or under the couch when she felt threatened (the better for keeping an eye on the threat). When, as a teen, you felt the first terrifying pinches of a now-familiar tightness in your chest, you would instinctively retreat from Katy’s dad’s famous hot dog platters by absconding into the quiet depths of this very house, in search of Scamper.

You would probably find her in Katy’s room, curled up at the foot of the bed. You would slip in, lie on the floor, and Scamper, curious, would hop down and alternately press her cheek against your face and lick your long, kinky hair. While you have no desire to return to the sullen and neurotic teen you once were, you sometimes desperately miss this freedom to unceremoniously bow out of any social interaction, at any moment, for any reason.

These days, you manage to keep your anxiety mostly under control. What that means in practice is that you’ve honed a keen ability to perceive and mimic the energy around you. In other words, you fake it. So with a smile, you follow Andrew and Katy’s lead in raucously recounting years of relationship drama, shit jobs, and your impending thirties. Andrew’s tales of failure are the most dramatic, with more than one climaxing in an honest-to-god fistfight. Recounting these incidents has him red-faced and agitated as if he were living them again, so you avoid pointing out where he was clearly in the wrong. Conspicuously, all of Andrew’s failures are rooted in his distaste for being told what to do, and none to date have resulted in any real consequences.

Though it’s dimmed over the years, you can still see the sparkle of invincibility in Andrew’s eye. In the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, he was almost certainly meant to embody the Good. Andrew resembles the sanctioned vision of success in every way: His voice booms and his chest puffs. His smile is big, straight, and unreserved. His broad shoulders, square jaw, and sun-kissed pink skin are reflected in every movie, TV show, and advertisement since time as the physical traits of a hero. A leader. A boss.

Andrew never had any ambition other than to have everything he wanted, despite never really excelling at, or working hard for, anything. Luckily for men like him, the world has been configured to accommodate that ambition. While you can’t recall his job title, and have no desire to be reminded, you understand he has inexplicably but steadily risen in his company’s ranks.

His presentation this afternoon was the culmination of his meteoric five-year rise at one of the countless start-ups materializing with cynically shortsighted Hail Mary bids to capitalize on the fall of mankind. From what you could glean from the PowerPoint accompanying his keynote, this one is a crackpot promise of “localized weather stabilization via manipulation of atmospheric pressure” targeted toward the very same ag industry that until only recently had defiantly rolled out the red carpet for the end of days.

As Andrew showered buzzwords over an impressive crowd, every pair of eyes was focused several yards to his left. There, under a spotlight behind a reinforced-glass blast shield, stood a hatchback-sized, lollipop-shaped rocket. He pressed a comically large ceremonial button, and whoever was actually in control of the rocket fired it into the sky. It rose up slowly on a tube of smoke and flame and disappeared behind dense, dark cloud cover. A soft, glowing green orb appeared and hovered in the sky. The heavy clouds then parted to reveal a sparkling canopy of neon-green chemical reactions in the stratosphere. Andrew beamed as the sun shone down on an exuberant crowd.

Just as Andrew pinched off a final, celebratory nugget of jargon, a deafening crack of thunder rematerialized the cloud cover in an uncanny instant. These resurrected clouds were heavier, iridescent in color, and roiled like a blanket of softly churning oil. The rain that fell as a floor dropping from above was slick, and smelled of methane. No one knew what the rocket was supposed to do except Andrew and his colleagues, but his beet-red face was confirmation that a panic-driven crowd fleeing for cover was not on the agenda.

Now here he is licking his wounds in the quiet safety of Aunt Libby’s house, instead of commiserating with his colleagues at a strip club, or sports bar, or wherever. Honestly, you could not care less about any of this. You’ve long since hollowed out your own safe place in a singular, selfish focus on making art. Your presence this weekend was largely a misguided reciprocation of support that you always suspected was disingenuous to begin with: Andrew seemed to go out of his way to “like” every one of your baldly self-promoting social media posts, and every notification ding, likely by design, struck a notch on your indefensible and entirely one-sided guilt tally.

It’s not hard to imagine the cystic jealousy behind Andrew’s insistent invitation. After all, the deck was stacked so profoundly against you. You, the memento of an affair between an upstanding middle-class white housewife and a mysterious home-wrecking Black man just passing through town on his way someplace better. You’ve never admitted to anyone how much of your drive is rooted in a desire to prove to the family that they chose the wrong one as their golden child. If Andrew takes your success as a personal insult, maybe he’s right to.

You’re not the most financially successful of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but until this weekend, your successes have been the most public. Even though $1.25 street tacos remain the foundation of your diet, a recent New York Times review of your first solo show at a major gallery has irrevocably convinced your family, all the way down to distant nieces and nephews, that you’re a big shot. Any attempt to correct them is simply your oh-gosh Midwestern humility.

You slide your duffel bag out from behind your overstuffed chair. Inside is a small stack of catalogs from your show. You pridefully pass out copies to oohs and aahs—souvenirs from an exhibition no member of your family attended. Even in the convenient form of a hand-delivered, image-heavy booklet, you doubt anyone here will actually engage with the work. In a way, you hope they don’t. There would most certainly be drama if anyone in this room recognized an unflattering reflection of themself in one of your pieces. Of which there most certainly was.

You begin to answer a question about the piece on the cover with an anecdote no one really wants to hear. You don’t even think about your duffel bag being open and your stuff out on full display until Andrew, squirming with restlessness just a few words into your story, pulls your cocoa-butter-scented shaving cream off the top. You brace yourself. It’s the expensive stuff, which you’ve committed to only after years of costly and painful trial and error. It comes in an old-fashioned metal can, and the label has an outsider design quality. It begs to be handled.

You’re not surprised Andrew has never heard of cocoa butter but you are surprised by the earnest tone in which he asks you about it. What once would’ve spawned a half-baked joke hinged on your otherness—“Like, cocoa ’cause your skin is brown?”—instead has piqued simple, honest interest.

You generously give Andrew permission to squirt some. He presses a crackling little white cloud into the palm of his hand and brings it to his flared nostrils. He tells you it smells really good. You know it does. He rubs the cream into both sides of his neck, which is the last thing you would think to do with it. It fills the room with a sweet, creamy scent that everyone inhales serenely. It’s a small moment of connection that you feel grateful for, both because it didn’t become more of a thing, and because the distraction was enough to get everyone off the topic of your work. The latter, certainly, was Andrew’s goal, conscious or not.

You slip the cream back into your bag, pushing it deeper inside this time, under a layer of clothes, out of sight. You zip the bag up and slide it back behind your chair. No more of that. Katy’s indulgent tangent about her own skin-care regimen peters out as she becomes distracted by a sound she describes as a tinny whine. You perk your ears, pointlessly; even if there is a tinny whine, your ears are still too plugged to pick up anything subtler than an inside voice. Andrew hears it, though, and in the next few moments, it becomes a challenge: Find the source of the tinny whine. You join in, though you don’t expect to be of any help.

After a fun half minute or so of pacing the room with your heads tilted one way and then the other, the whine has grown loud enough for even you to hear: the desperate scream of a tiny teakettle. As it increases in volume, it rises in pitch. It’s too loud now to ignore. The game of find-the-noise is no longer just a playful respite from strained conversation, but a serious task with potentially harmful implications. Is it an alarm? A burst gas line?

Andrew approaches the mystery as a competition to be won by brute force. He tears indiscriminately through the room, inspecting objects from which the sound could not possibly emit, like couch pillows and picture frames. Perhaps inspired by his thoroughness, you check around the chair you were just sitting in. In the same moment you realize the sound is coming from your own bag, it inflates with a gunshot-like pop. Gasps and yelps abound before everyone catches themselves—don’t forget, Katy’s mom is asleep upstairs.

Shock graduates to adrenalized giggles as Katy urges you to look inside. You poke the bag and it deflates. You carefully unzip it and find the contents slathered in whipped cocoa butter shaving cream. All your clothes. Your books. You throw your hands in to rescue your laptop but yank them back when your finger is pricked by a shard of the flayed metal can. You put the finger in your mouth reflexively and suck. The blood is tinged with cream, which tastes more bitter than you expect. The aroma of cocoa butter in the room is now overwhelming and saccharine. You zip the bag back up.

A dozen theories flap around your head, but they all start with Andrew somehow sabotaging your expensive shaving cream. You accuse him, only half serious, but his furiously defensive reaction—furious even for Andrew—dissolves any connection you’d made in the hours prior. Katy diplomatically suggests the can became overpressurized on the flight. The idea more or less jibes with your layperson’s understanding of physics, and Andrew emphatically supports this theory. It’s a good thing it exploded in your bag, you all agree, and not in someone’s hand.

Katy excuses herself to check on her mom. The ruckus must have roused her. Your mind drifts to worry that the smell of cocoa butter will now forever conjure memories of this evening, rather than those of early-college nights up late with the first real Black friends you’d ever had, learning about all the stuff you’d missed out on being raised by a white mom, in a white house, in a white family, in a white town.

The silence doesn’t feel awkward until Andrew interrupts it to tell you he’s proud of you. The statement feels forced, like when, as children, his dad made him apologize for hitting you or Katy. His somber finality makes you wonder if he’s in an anger-management or addiction program with the assignment: Make peace with those you’ve hurt. He leans in close as if to tell you an important secret. His face flushes and his eyes water as he struggles for the words. You feel bad for him in a way. He’s been rigorously ill-equipped to navigate this modern world of emotional candor.

You catch a small, dark movement from the corner of your eye, and you cut Andrew off with a squeal. It’s Scamper, here to save you as she always has, and you could cry. Her long gray fur is dreaded into cotton balls under her belly, and she’s wet around the eyes, but you can’t judge the old girl. She’s a survivor. You coo and coax and you sense Andrew’s hurt feelings that you didn’t extend the patience required for him to express whatever had him all in a way.

You snatch Scamper off the floor as she attempts, offensively, to slip by you toward Andrew on the couch. It’s true Andrew has seen her more regularly in the past ten years than you, but she’s your special little buddy, not his. You confine her squirming and grimly bony body to your lap, confident she’ll recognize you any moment and press her cheek against yours with a nostalgic mew. You stroke her dusty fur, mindful of the still-bleeding cut on your finger.

Katy comes back down the plush stairs and smiles when she sees you reunited with Scamper. Don’t worry, her mom was not disturbed; she hadn’t even stirred. Katy yawns good night herself, and you, probably too-eagerly, express your intent to follow her lead. You have no desire to let Andrew corner you again with his amends. You kiss the top of Scamper’s head and set her gently on the floor. She slips directly under the couch. You say good night to Andrew and Katy, and Andrew just nods.

You slide into bed and kick the blankets untucked as the day replays in your tired head. You recall the event photographer’s flattering determination to capture your face from every conceivable angle, and with a snap, the true motive behind Andrew’s oddly insistent invitation reveals itself to you. Funny how these things only ever dawn on you once a confrontation, even a thoroughly passive-aggressive one, is no longer convenient.

You did in fact notice there was only one person of color other than yourself in the standing-room crowd—a tall, stylish Southeast Asian woman who stuck close to the side of one of the male execs. She stood out, and you even felt a tinge of jealousy when the photographer drifted over to hover around her once he was through with you. You shake your head to yourself, confident that every single photo published from the event will prominently feature either you or her. Photographic proof of the diverse appeal of the company’s technology.

Accustomed as you are to being the only person of color in any given space, this tokenism still takes you by surprise. It’s particularly hurtful to be tokenized by someone close to you (even a family member you can stand less and less by the hour), but it’s also so rare for you to be photographed by a professional that you have to admit you’re eager to see the shots. You did look good today.

Thankfully, this betrayal wasn’t surprising enough to cost you sleep. You rest hard on the old, worn-in guest mattress you’ve jumped and slept on dozens of times over the years. You dream of drowning, your head held underwater by a small but powerful hand. You hold your breath until it hurts. Finally, you inhale, expecting your lungs to fill with water and end your suffering, but it’s just air. In your dream, you can breathe underwater.

It feels like you’ve been asleep for only a few minutes when you’re slapped conscious by an explosion of shattering glass. You sit up, your heart pounding so hard it knocks the wind out of you with each beat. You creep to the door and listen, but hear nothing. Your ears still haven’t popped. You open your mouth and swallow and an electric, blinding pain shoots through your skull. Your ears have never been plugged this badly before. You wonder if it would be an overreaction to go to the ER as you carefully open the door.

From here you can see directly into the kitchen, where Katy stands, in shock. You make eye contact and her lips warn you not to move; there’s glass everywhere. You notice a blue plastic lid on the counter, the jagged remnants of a glass jar jutting out from under it in a pool of white slime. The rest of the jar is sprayed all over the kitchen.

Katy holds a hot dog bun in one hand and a spreading knife in the other. The white specks on her shirt are mayonnaise. She half laughs an excuse that she couldn’t sleep because of a headache. She stumbles through her words, mortified. This is a Katy you’ve never met before. You slip your shoes onto bare, clammy feet and notice that your entire hand is tacky with blood. The cut on your finger has bled through the night, this little cut you never gave a second thought.

You shuffle toward Katy, collecting every visible piece of glass along the way. She describes a late-night snack and a mayonnaise jar that exploded all by itself on the counter. This much you can glean from her expressive, apologetic hand gestures. Keeping conscious of your speaking volume, you empathize that you’ve never seen anything like it, right before you realize you have. Katy presumably theorizes about the physics of how this could happen, twice in one night no less, but you can’t hear a word she says. You don’t dare swallow again.

You carefully set mayonnaise-slicked glass shards into the flip-top trash can, and the kitchen goes dark with a flash. Katy flinches violently, and you feel a soft trickle onto your head. You touch delicate pieces of glass in your hair; the lightbulb in the ceiling above you has exploded.

You now experience a fear you haven’t felt since childhood—that of ghosts and demons, of extraterrestrials and evil witches. It’s a fear of the irrational. A suspicion that your understanding of the world is fatally flawed.

Katy’s lips move through the darkness, instructing you to open the windows. You think about the uncomfortable, wobbly vibrations you feel in a car when the windows are rolled down just right, and the car is going just the right speed. There is something like that feeling in the air here, but sharper, and heavier. Katy fumbles with the crank on the big window behind the couch and you turn to the small one in the kitchen. You slide it open and a wave of thick, hot air pushes right through you. Outside, the sky is a deep, solid hunter green. The trees in the forest past the backyard lie on top of one another like pickup sticks, pushed down by some great but gentle force from above.

A nauseating vision of a forested refugee village is mercifully interrupted by the blink of a small rectangle of light on the coffee table. It’s Andrew’s phone, still obnoxiously crying out for attention. You lean down to read the message on the screen:

Chris from engineering: get your family and go.

Your stomach drops. You just hope it won’t hurt.

Katy sits on the floor, mouthing words you can’t read. In your fugue, your thoughts focus on Scamper. You stalk the living room. You look behind furniture and down hallways. The room flashes then grows darker with each lightbulb that explodes in its socket. You take a knee at the couch, praying you won’t find Scamper underneath. You’ve irrationally pinned your hopes on this cat being unfazed, or demonstrating some animal instinct that might guide you.

You lower your head to the floor. The plush carpet depresses against the side of your face, a poor substitute for Scamper’s cheek. You look under the couch and see a furry lump of cat. You can’t tell which end is her head, and she doesn’t twitch when you click your tongue at her.

You wish you could go back to sleep.

The rumble of a stumbling body draws your eyes to the stairs and there you see Andrew, in a daze. His bloodshot eyes bulge uncannily, yet he moves blindly. His booming voice rattles with a tone you can feel more than hear, but his words are impossibly crisp: “It wasn’t my fault.”

A response vibrates involuntarily past your vocal cords. Is it words? A scream? Or something new: a song of hysteria? Your unintelligible voice draws Andrew toward you, a wilting bloom toward the heat of the sun.

Katy, too, gravitates toward the voice you can neither hear nor stop. In the heavy, hot room lit by nothing but the sick haze of a nightmare sky, Andrew and Katy crawl toward you heavily, as if returning to a form of primordial mud. The pain growing behind your eyes and inside your ears is unbearable.

You wish you were near a high ledge from which you could dive out of your misery.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly hold one another like you did as toddlers in staged family photos. Your vision collapses to a pinpoint. Unable to hear or see, you breathe in as deeply as you can, and your remaining senses are consumed by the residue of cocoa butter on Andrew’s neck. It takes you back to a hopeful time, and you feel a wisp of gratitude. You hold your mouth open wide, and you swallow.

How interesting, you think: The end isn’t a fade to black. It’s a scalding flash of white.

I couldn’t let go. I didn’t want to let go. It didn’t matter how crazy shit got; I was ready to stop time if I could. In my mind, that day, I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t. That’s why I did something foolish—something deeply, deeply selfish; I refused to let go. But when you hang on like that, sometimes things hang on to you.

The day I decided to hang on was windy and hot. The blue tents were getting blown about, and there was no sun to make them necessary anyway. The gray skies churning with clouds were unusual this time of year in Isiekenesi. People were muttering under their breaths that this type of day was a strange omen, certainly not a good day to see a Big Man off to the spirit world, ala mmụọ. Regardless, I knelt at his white casket, staring at my father’s face through stinging red eyes as I wailed and wailed. I grasped at the soft white petals of the flowers braided around him. They smelled sweet and heady. The loose ones were blowing away.

My father’s rough hands were crossed over his chest and my eye fell on the bronze ring on his right middle finger. It had been there my entire life. It had the frowning face of an eagle on it. It was still here, but he…he wasn’t. I wailed some more. My throat was raw, and I could taste blood and salt from my tears and the dust from the heavy humid air. I felt someone pull me away. Then my auntie was hugging me, and I was pressing my face to her shoulder. She was wearing a Nigerian black lace blouse, and she was drenched with sweat. Everyone was. I added my tears to her sweat, the lace scratching against my face.

All of Isiekenesi had come out to see my father’s homegoing, and that was a beautiful surprise. All the relatives had gotten together and made it happen. The tents, the dancers, the food, the music. There were both Nigerian flags and Isiekenesi village flags hanging from tent poles. My father’s gorgeous village home had been made to look like new, the mud-stained walls washed, the floors polished, new furniture brought in for people to sit on, new beds in all the bedrooms. The house was now like a small palace. But the fact was that my father had died, and none of this made things better.

My mother had passed when I was nine years old in a horrible car accident during a violent storm one night in Phoenix, Arizona. Three decades ago, but it felt like yesterday. She’d been working at the restaurant with my father and left early because she hated driving in thunderstorms. The storm that was not supposed to arrive for another hour had changed directions and wound up right over her when she was on the highway. And then, according to people who were there, the storm “had gone mad.” A microburst, they call it. It flipped mom’s car, and when it landed it crushed every bone in her body. It had been just me and my dad ever since.

My dad was my confidant, my best friend, my closest family. My parents owned a restaurant called Chief Jollof, and it was one of the most popular restaurants in Phoenix among the city’s darker, more “cultured” residents. My father was well-known, and when my mother passed, plenty of women came around, many of whom my father dated. When we visited Nigeria, they paraded before my father, too. He’d had fun with his dalliances, but my mother was his One. After she passed, I became the center of his life and he the center of mine.

“What do I do now?” I muttered. My auntie helped me sit down in a white plastic chair. We were among my father’s relations in the house, across from where my father lay. I glanced around and looked right back at the ground, to avoid making eye contact with anyone. The house was packed with so many people.

“What do you do today?” Auntie asked. “Just breathe. See your father home. When you fly back to the States, keep his restaurant going. That is his legacy.”

I stared into space when she stepped away for a moment. Somehow, I couldn’t have felt more alone. The haunted lyrics of a song that had been in my head since it all happened drifted into my mind yet again: “Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” I hummed the song under my breath and more tears squeezed from my eyes.

My auntie returned to me and pushed a cold bottle of Fanta into my hand. The feel of it brought me back to myself a bit. A line had formed in front of my father’s body now. People were buffeted about by the winds, but they held steady to say their goodbyes. Part of the shrine of flowers built around him would be trampled. Not with malicious intent, but because people would want to get close to him. I understood, but I frowned at the destruction anyway.

—

By the time night fell, I was exhausted. Everyone had left my father and moved inside. I wanted to go back out there and be with him. The wind had finally died down, and now it was quiet. Why was his body still even out there? I sighed at the realization that the mosquitoes would leave him alone.

I went to my room and changed into something more comfortable, a mostly black Ankara dress with flat sandals. No one seemed to notice. The later it got, the drunker people got. Children had been sent to bed hours ago. Some had even pushed the furniture in the main room aside to create a dance floor. The music was loud. There was laughter, and some were still eating. My father would have loved it. If there was one thing that made him happy, it was when people gathered and had a good time. His restaurant was a lot like this on the last Friday night of every month, when he’d bring in a DJ and stay open until ten. Yeah, my dad would have enjoyed this, even if I didn’t. But I couldn’t stop thinking of his body lying out there. In the dark. Alone. I whimpered to myself, feeling a ripple of grief as I leaned against the wall watching people dance.

Everyone around me was speaking loudly in Igbo. I understood some, but it was mostly like blurred speech to me: familiar, but imprecise understanding. Maybe that’s why the tock, tock, tock of stick against stick, so crisp and clear, reached my ears despite all the noise. It was simple in what it was conveying. After a minute or two, others began to notice it, too. Someone cut the music. Everyone froze. Listening.

Tock.

Tock.

Tock.

A steady hollow beat. It paused, as if whoever was creating the beat realized we were all finally listening. Someone began playing a flute. A faraway melody, though it was right outside. Light. Sweet. Playful. Warning.

“Heeeeeey!” one of my older uncles exclaimed. Those around him chuckled nervously, looking at one another.

People began to slowly move to the front door and the front windows. No, only the men. My aunties, cousins, family friends, friends and acquaintances of my father’s—all these women scurried to the other side of the room. I moved forward with the men. I wasn’t paying attention. Dad is outside was all I was thinking. With that sound. And then I was the only one who opened the front door and stepped outside into the darkness. Hello, darkness, my old friend, I thought. I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of smoke.

“Nwokolo, get back in here,” my father’s younger brother, Jekwu, shouted at me. “Go and stand with the women! Where is your brain, eh? Don’t you know what that is out there?”

Oh, I knew what it was. I was in southeastern Nigeria, deep in the village, and a titled Big Man had died. Everyone knew what was coming, even the one Naijamerican in the group. But I wasn’t in my right mind. Dad had died. He was lying in his casket right out there in the dark, beyond the circular driveway, at the wall on the plot of land where he would be buried. Alone.

Earlier, my aunties had pulled me away so that I could come back to myself. I’d been screaming and wailing. And now it washed over me again. I swayed, turning to my uncle Jekwu and the other men around him. The flute started to play. The tock, tock, tock of sticks graduated to the beat of a drum, and now it was already in the compound. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them moving toward where my father lay.

I blinked in the light shining from inside the house. Alone, I thought, frantically. I can’t leave him alone! I can’t leave him! It’s not right! Dad! I turned. I ran. I held my black dress above my ankles as I raced across the compound. I could barely see where I was going in the dark. I didn’t think about tripping over a stone protruding from the dirt, or a root, or the edge of the concrete driveway, or a bush growing in the dirt on the other side of the driveway.

My uncles shouted for me to come back, but no one followed me into the dark. They all stayed in the doorway of the house built long before I was born. Where it was safe. Some probably watched me from windows on the upper and lower floors, too. Mostly men, but maybe some of the women, as well. The women whose curiosity got the better of them. What I was doing would assure that I’d be talked about for years. My uncle probably said, “She is a stupid, stupid woman.” I’ve heard him say this about others, always women, for lesser reasons.

I knelt on the trampled flowers beside my father’s body, the music of the haunted flute filling my mind. I was weeping again as I looked at my dad in the dark, seeing him in my mind. Laughing as he stood near the front door of Chief Jollof, watching people walk in. Sitting in his office at the house, smoking a cigar as he always did on his birthday. Dancing to the music I blasted in my car when I pulled up to the restaurant.

Someone shrieked, and I looked up. The compound was filling with people holding candles. Men. All wearing the same type of shirt and pants. I couldn’t see exactly what the pattern was or even what color because it was too dark. However, I could tell they were all the same. Ten men, then twenty, then maybe thirty. They walked in silence, stopping some twenty feet from me.

One of them approached with a staff made of black wood with three cowbells attached to the bottom half and palm fronds braided into a bunch at the top. He raised the staff up high and with all his might, stabbed it into the dirt beside the trampled flowers on the other side of where my father lay. The cowbells clanged and the staff vibrated and then stood on its own. He stepped aside to let the drummer and the flute player through. These two men came closer, but they, too, stopped yards from me. The flute player’s tune slowed, lowered, then quieted. I saw why and pressed closer to my father.

It stood ten feet tall and was wide as a van. Dark and looming, it was a great mound of black palm tree raffia. Rotted animal furs hung from its midsection. Leather tassels with cowry shells at their ends clicked and clacked as it shimmied then bounced toward me. Black feathers with white stripes protruded from the top, and oily white smoke dribbled from between them. It smelled sweet and camphoraceous like cedar.

“Ajofia has arrived,” the flute player announced. “It will pay its respects.”

Ajofia swayed and softly bounced forward.

“Get away from it,” I heard my auntie shout from the house.

“Leave your father!” my uncle Jekwu snapped. “Biko, come over here! Come now!”

When a Big Man who is titled dies in Igboland, the big spirits come to see him home. Ajofia was deep Igbo culture and it did not often come to see a man off. I did not get out of the way. Unheard of for a woman. I was not crying anymore. My face was itchy. That quickly, my tears had dried and left only salt and sorrow.

It moved closer, and the man had begun playing his tune again. Ajofia was swaying to the melody. Bouncing. The smell of smoke, forests burning. It shivered, dust and dirt puffing from it. It was a higher spirit. A great honor for my father, who was inches from me, dead. Ajofia blocked out the world behind it. I could not see my relatives in the light of the house or the men who’d accompanied Ajofia in the night. I could only smell thick smoke and dirt and the dust it shook at me. The breath of something. My eyes and throat stung.

I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I couldn’t let go of Dad. Maybe it was the eagle’s head bouncing against its chest. Were those eagle feathers on the top, near where the smoke was dribbling? I reached over and grabbed my father’s hand. Stiff, cold, everything in my body was repulsed. Still, I pulled off his ring.

“You will not,” I screamed. “He’s my father! This is his land!”

Its voice came from all around me. Close to me. Far from me. Beside me. Above me. Below me. Like smoke. It was sharp and harsh and hot. I heard it in Igbo, yet somehow I understood it completely. How could that be when I don’t fluently speak it? “Nye m ya kita!” Those words slapped my soul!

I stared at it full on, a thousand possible actions flying through my mind. The sight of it made my eyes burn and twitch. Then…I fled.

—

When I returned to the house, the women consoled me, while the men looked at me like I was the stupidest woman on Earth. Ajofia stayed there, dancing, the men who’d accompanied it, chanting. I knew nothing about secret societies, but apparently my father had been in one. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hear about any of it. I just wanted to go home.

I told no one that Ajofia had spoken to me, of course. Who was I going to tell? My aunts and uncles and cousins who were all near-fanatical Christians? They’d have forced me to spend the rest of my time in Nigeria shouting and shaking at some church or revival tent. I couldn’t tell any of my few local friends, whom I rarely ever got to see in person either; you simply don’t speak of that kind of thing to any Nigerian.

To most Nigerians, I was all wrong: I’m a forty-year-old woman, unmarried, own my own house, have no children, own a restaurant, and now my only living parent had died. And I’d stood in the way of Ajofia when it had come to honor my father’s body and see him past death into the spirit world.

I wasn’t going to find any answers or comfort here. Best to just stay quiet, try to enjoy some delicious food, being around relatives, and the vibe of the village. And when it was all said and done, just go back home to Phoenix and put the incident behind me.

—

Nine days later, I stepped out of the airport into the hot, dry Arizona air. “Ah! That feels sooooo good!” I said. It was nearly midnight and no one was out on the curb with me and that felt good, too. I inhaled the air; the distant scent of creosote told me it must have been raining somewhere nearby. After nearly twenty-four hours of travel, breathing that air was like coming back to life. I paused for a moment, feeling Nigeria still on my back. The hulking figure of Ajofia popped into my mind, yet again. It had been haunting me since that night.

“Ajofia,” I muttered to myself and shook my head. Thousands and thousands of miles away. Thank goodness.

The Arizona heat was a dry one, not heavy and humid. The ghosts and spirits of these lands had different histories and intents. Now that I had a moment, I checked my phone. No security alerts at my house. Good.

A few minutes later a red Mustang pulled up. I dumped my suitcase in the back and collapsed into the passenger seat.

“How was the flight?” my boyfriend, Tony, asked.

“Boring.”

“Good,” he laughed. “Looks like you got some sleep, too.”

“The entire flight.”

“In economy? That is a hell of a superpower.”

He wasn’t wrong. I could sleep through any international flight, even with the worst turbulence. This time, though, I didn’t mention the fact that I’d had nightmares the entire flight where Ajofia smothered me with its girth. Where I kept waking up hearing the flute as if the guy playing it sat on the plane’s wing.

Tony didn’t need to know all that. We’d been dating for only two months. He had yet to tell me much about his family in Mississippi. And I hadn’t told him about my family in Nigeria. I wasn’t about to tell him about my confrontation with a big Igbo misogynist monster of the dead.

I’d been with Tony a month when I got the news of my father’s passing. We’d been outside in a grocery store parking lot, our cars parked side by side, as we leaned on his and looked up at the sky. It was a clear night and we were gazing at the TV Towers flashing on South Mountain, which was nice. We were laughing. Then my phone buzzed. I answered it, listened to what was said, and then suddenly I was destroyed. My father had been with a group of friends at his condo in Phoenix, smoking cigars and talking shit, when he’d suddenly collapsed. A heart attack.

Tony stayed with me that entire night. He’d even helped me make arrangements to transport my father’s body to the morgue. It was a lot of emotional baggage for him to carry for a relationship that hadn’t really gotten started yet. Tony took it in stride, though.

“You need anything?” he asked when we pulled up to my house.

“Just a shower,” I said, getting out.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you tonight? This is Scottsdale. You’re back to being the only black person in the neighborhood.”

I laughed hard, pulling my suitcase out of the back. He wasn’t lying. In my cul-de-sac, I literally was the only black person living there. “You’ve got a flight in the morning,” I said. “You need to rock that speech tomorrow. Don’t worry about me, you did what I needed.”

He smiled. “Okay. Hate that this conference is happening right when you got home.”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

I ran around his car, leaned in, and gave him a long kiss. He played at pulling me into the car with him, and I nearly let him.

“When you get back,” I said, drawing back and laughing.

“Welcome home,” he said.

I watched him speed off. I glanced at my neighbor’s house just in time to see a curtain close. I rolled my eyes. So nosy, always watching. “Whatever,” I muttered, looking at my phone.

I opened the app for my house robot and checked on Biko-nu, my five-year-old corgi. He was waiting for me at the door. I turned on all the lights. I checked the thermostat and lowered it to seventy-five. I had the stereo start playing some smooth jazz. I switched on the diffuser so I’d enter the house to the smell of sweet tobacco. And lastly, I alerted my smart doorbell that I was about to enter the house so it didn’t need to record, turned off the security alarm, and went inside.

“Biko-nu!” I shouted as I walked in. His name meant the equivalent of “Pretty please” in Igbo. A good name for a friendly, loving dog. He shook his ass with delight. I laughed as he wiggled and jumped on me. He sniffed at my father’s ring for a long time, and I wondered if he smelled my father on it. I shivered with a sting of grief. My father had bought Biko-nu for me for my thirty-fifth birthday. I’d never told anyone that I wanted a corgi, or that I even wanted a dog. This was how well my father knew me. He wasn’t a pet person. I hadn’t grown up with pets. But I’d always always, always wanted specifically a corgi. My father had found a breeder, paid the two thousand dollars, and everything. “Just to see the look on your face right now,” he’d said. My dog was a tangible manifestation of just how close I was to my father and how much he loved me.

One of the managers at Chief Jollof had offered to not only babysit Biko-nu while I was in Nigeria, but drop him off for me when I returned, which obviously he’d done. Biko-nu followed me to my room as I lugged my suitcase up the flight of stairs. “Ah, it’s good to be home,” I said, dumping it on my bedroom floor. I shed my dirty airport clothes and fell onto the bed, where I promptly fell asleep for three hours.

—

I was adrift, deep in the cosmos. Distant stars around me shined with cold, dead light. So very cold. As I floated along in the darkness, I knew I was dying. My heartbeat was slowing. Slowing. I was slipping, dissolving. I couldn’t remember the warmth of Earth. I moaned deep in my chest. The vibration broke the ice that had formed around me. I stirred, moaning again. Louder. My body was sluggish; I couldn’t get up. I opened my eyes, shivering. It was freezing.

I could practically see my breath. “What the fuck?” I muttered, sitting up. I glanced out the window and gasped, adrenaline flooding my body. My hands shook as I grabbed my phone. With a swipe and two clicks, I turned on the security light I had set up on this side of the house. Outside, the lights lit up the tree that for a moment had looked like…I shook my head. “Ugh, stop it,” I muttered, rubbing my cold hands together.

Biko-nu was in his hidey-hole across the room. Probably shivering, too. “Biko babe,” I called. I heard him snuffle and then poke his head out. “Come here, sweetie.” He rushed over and threw his furry sable body on my lap. I sighed at the warmth. “What the hell is going on?” I said. It was so cold that I was dreaming of dying. I grabbed my phone again and checked the thermostat. The AC was at sixty degrees with the fan on high.

“What the hell? How did this happen?”

Biko-nu flinched at the pitch of my voice, but he stayed on my lap. Poor boy was that cold. I switched on the heat and we sat there for the next twenty minutes as the room warmed back up. I took a shower, made myself some curry rice with shrimp, and cooked a chicken breast for Biko-nu. By the time I sat down to eat, I felt better. And then I remembered that I couldn’t call up my dad to tell him about this, and the despair hit me yet again.

I crawled back into bed around two a.m., despite my jet lag. Travel itself is exhausting. Most people only pay attention to the internal spinning clock, but I’ve always felt jet lag is a combination of time and space displacement. There’s something that traveling across giant swaths of the Earth in a short period of time does to you.

As I lay there trying to fall asleep, I was thinking about the Ajofia masquerade, my father, how alone I felt, and how weird life had become. I considered calling Tony, but decided against it. He would be preparing for his trip and his presentation. Let me have some self-control and not interrupt that.

I kept looking at the window. The light was still on, but the image of Ajofia right at my window, shaking, shuddering, focused on me…I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I sat up. I’d officially freaked myself out. Again, I considered calling Tony. I didn’t. Instead, I grabbed my phone to look at the security camera in the front door. It was something I did every night right before bed. Seeing nothing there always assured me. I’d curl up in my bed and sigh with relief as I put my phone down for the night. I even did this when I was in Nigeria. “All is well,” the banal image of the path to the front door told me.

I clicked open the app, maximized the image, and nearly shrieked. The image flickered and, just for a moment, it went black and white, and then turned back to color with a weird click.

And there was something on the path.

A shadow? Too far away to tell.

Then—suddenly—it was gone. I stared at the window on my phone. Nothing out of the ordinary now, like it had never been there. But it had been there. Maybe. I groaned.

I tried to go back to sleep after that, but three hours later, I still couldn’t manage it. Every little sound in my house brought me back to what I’d seen at the front door. I had motion detectors out there, in my living room, in my upstairs hallway. They’d pick up anything and loudly announce that someone was at the door. Once in a while, even a tiny moth fluttering in just the right spot would set it off. It had said nothing when I saw what I saw. Get a grip, I thought. Just then, Biko-nu, who had been sleeping on my feet, got up and plopped himself beside my head. I smiled, relaxing. A few minutes later, I finally fell asleep.

—

Tony called me in the morning on his way to the airport. I felt like I was talking to him through a mixture of mud and honey. I’d been so deep in jet-lag-heavy sleep. “Sorry,” was the first thing he said.

“It’s fine,” I said. I glanced at the window. It was light outside. “What time’s it?”

“Seven.”

I rolled onto my side. Biko-nu was sprawled out, taking up the entire half of the bed. I laughed. “Glad I took the day off,” I said into the phone. “You ready for your talk?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, ready or not…”

“Here I come,” he said. “Yeah.”

“You’re gonna crush it, Tony.”

Home Boty, my house robot, rolled up to the bed. It’s the size of a small dog and covered in sensors and cameras with a touch screen for a head. It always came rushing up to me when I was getting a phone call. Someone was video-calling me from a Nigerian phone number. I frowned. “Hey, I have to go,” I said. “Call me when you get to New York, if you can. If you can’t, call me after.”

“Will do. Get some more sleep. Like my grandma would say, ‘Who knows what you brought home with you. That needs to settle in, too.’ ”

“What?”

But he’d already hung up.

I touched Home Boty’s face screen. However, the call had been ringing for too long and I was too late. I checked the number; I didn’t recognize it. A notification popped up on both my phone and my house robot’s screen. “Someone is detected at your front door,” one of my speakers announced. But when I checked the door camera: nothing.

“Ugh, fuck this,” I said. I got up, but then paused and instead went back to bed. Whoever it was could wait.

—

When I woke up, it was hours later. Jet lag was a beast.

Tony had called twice. I immediately called him back. His talk had gone okay, “Nothing to write home about,” he said. He sounded disappointed, and I was glad he wasn’t pissed at me for not immediately answering. Yet when I got off the phone, I thought, I don’t like him very much. Where did that come from? I pushed the thought away. Not dealing with that now.

I dressed and went to the grocery store, where I bought a bunch of ingredients for a feast. I was going to make curried shrimp rice, fried plantain, jollof rice, fresh stew, sautéed portabella mushrooms, and savory chicken. As I walked through the parking lot to my car, pushing my cart, I could already imagine it being done and sitting down with a heaping bowl of it as I watched a bunch of episodes of something not too deep on Netflix while Biko-nu slept on the rug.

But then my father’s face flashed into my mind. Lying in his casket among the trampled flowers. Fresh grief slammed into me so hard that I stumbled. I stood there beside my car, grasping my cart. I was in Nigeria again. The soft sound of my auntie crying, the sad faces of my uncles, my cousins just staring and staring at my father.

And Ajofia.

Swaying.

Shimmying toward me.

Its black, dried, crackling raffia.

The clicking cowries.

The pelts of dead rabbits and grasscutters.

And the smoke.

I whimpered, riding the wave of sorrow, suddenly unable to breathe.

My phone buzzed. It was telling me someone was at my front door again. But when I checked the camera there was no one there. “Geez, stop glitching,” I muttered, then checked the house alarm. It was armed, and Home Boty was patrolling. It showed Biko-nu asleep on my bed upstairs. He didn’t seem to have heard anything. I shook my head, forced myself to take a deep breath, and started loading the groceries into my car.

I blasted some sigilkore rap music (which I always find soothing, don’t ask me why) on the drive home and, by the time I parked my car in my garage, I felt a little better. I brought out my phone to turn on the lights. But the app said, “Your smart plug is off-line. Please connect to Wi-Fi.” I checked my router’s app on my phone. It was down. I checked if there was an internet outage. There wasn’t.

I paused, pressing my fists to my face. “Fuck,” I hissed. I took a deep breath and then pushed myself to get out of the car. “Entering a dark home is normal,” I whispered. “Biko-nu?” I called, opening the door. I was carrying too much to switch on the light. I listened. I didn’t hear his nails on the hardwood. Thoughts of strangers, monsters, and masquerades in the dark tried to crowd my mind. I paused. Is someone upstairs? “Biko-nu, baby? Come down.”

I dumped my groceries on the floor and flipped a light switch. There he was, rushing from the living room. I glanced at the stairs. “Home Boty,” I called. “Come to me.” The house robot was bumping down the stairs. “Ah, that’s what I heard up there.” It couldn’t transmit images or alerts unless it was on Wi-Fi, but it could still obey orders if it could hear you. It stopped three feet away and made a friendly boop sound. “What can I do for you?” it asked.

“Play ‘Deaths Revenge’ by 3foolz, slowed version.”

I put the groceries away as the dark acidic beats filled my home. A soft reboot got the Wi-Fi back and, as soon as it came on, that strange phone number called again. I didn’t answer it. Instead, I put WhatsApp on DND. Then I put my whole phone on DND and Home Boty, too, for good measure. “Shut up for a while. All of you,” I grumbled.

I spent the next three hours cooking, then ate, washed the smell of curry and onions from my ’fro, and fell into bed.

—

The restaurant was fine while I was away. I’d been gone for two weeks, but the managers, Oladipo and Okigbo, were brilliant businesspeople who prided themselves on keeping everything in perfect order. “You didn’t need to come in today,” Okigbo said, giving me a tight hug.

“I know,” I said, looking over the restaurant.

“Your dog was a joy, by the way.”

“I’m glad,” I said, pressing my face into his shoulder. “Ah, man, I missed you guys. Plus, work helps.”

Okigbo nodded. “It’s your father’s space.”

I nearly started weeping, but instead, I stepped back, smiled, and said, “Exactly.” There was a framed photo of my father behind the host podium in the front. It was the first thing you saw when you entered.

The restaurant was at near full capacity, the people at the tables ranging from many parts of the diaspora with a few of Phoenix’s more adventurous white people. The place was clean, smelled wonderful, and was filled with happy faces. I stayed the entire day, working the front, welcoming customers. I told everyone I was okay and working through it and blah blah blah.

When I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I escaped to the small office in the back. I shut the door behind me. When I looked up, I saw my father’s worn-out leather chair behind his wooden desk. The stacks of papers he always kept on it were gone, and the room didn’t even smell like him anymore. I sank down into a crouch, holding my head.

The door opened, hitting me on the butt. I quickly stood up. “Ah, Kolo,” Okigbo said, entering. “Sorry, o. I just need to get—”

“It’s fine,” I quickly said, wiping my face.

“Are you okay?”

I shrugged.

“We miss him here so much, too,” he said. “When you were gone, me, Oladipo, we felt lost. Your father guided everything. A chief in his chiefdom.” He gave me a tight hug and we stood there for a while. He smelled good, even if his cologne was mixed with the smell of curry and onions from checking on how things were going in the kitchen. I sighed, more tears coming. I held up my hand. “I took this.” I stepped back from him and showed him my father’s ring.

His eyes widened. “Chineke! You took that?”

“I did. Was an odd moment, but…I just wanted it with me. Is that weird?”

“That’s his society ring!”

“What?”

He looked at me for several moments, pinching his beard.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“It’s not for you to know.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes, “Uuuuugh, miss me with that traditional Igbo man crap.”

“Okay, o,” he said, chuckling. “He’s gone beyond, anyway…Your father wasn’t just titled, he was in a society, too.”

I cocked my head. “One of those secret traditional societies?”

He nodded.

I leaned against the back office doorway, my arms across my chest. “I guess I can imagine that.” I held up my hand, looking at the ring on my thumb. “I’m actually glad I took it.”

“You need to take that thing back.”

“Back where?”

“Isiekenesi.”

“Ha ha, funny.”

“I’m not joking,” he said, looking hard at me. “Get a ticket tonight and take that back. You can’t even mail it. You have to take it there yourself. It’s not yours.”

His words made me shiver, but I rolled my eyes. “My God, stop being so dramatic. Come on.”

“I know a ticket’s expensive…I mean, it would be—”

I’d had enough. “Are you serious!” I shouted. “I’m not…I’m not flying all the way back there, going through all that just to…to what? Put it in my father’s grave? What the fuck are you even saying?” I didn’t want to be, but I was shaking with rage, tears welling in my eyes.

“Not in his grave, you have to give it back to his society, Kolo,” Okigbo insisted.

“Okay, enough. Stop it!” I snapped, holding up a hand. A tear dribbled down my cheek. “Jesus,” I breathed. I closed my eyes, the sight of my father’s fresh grave, the jet bridge to an airplane, and just being back there again in my mind all at the same time. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Kolo, I know it sounds crazy, but you—”

“Please! Just stop!”

He looked like he was going to say more, but then put up his hands, shook his head, and began to leave the room. He stopped and turned to me. “You have lost your father; it’s terrible. But your pain, your grief does not come before…” He made a motion with his hand. There was no word for them, but I knew what he spoke of, who he spoke of. “You may be Igbo and have a Nigerian passport, but you’re very American—selfish and individualistic.” He laughed to himself. “You can’t understand what that means. But I am here telling you…Take. It. Back.”

“Fuck off,” I hissed. He looked at me with disgust, kissed his teeth, muttered something in Igbo as he left. Then he said it again, “Take it back.”

On the drive home, I sped down the highway. It was a ten-minute drive and there was rarely much traffic, so it was a drive I usually enjoyed. This day I just stared ahead and barely heard the music I played. I was about a third of the way home when my phone began to screech.

“Ah, come on. Not today.”

I knew what it said, but I glanced at the message anyway. National Weather Service: Dust Storm Warning for your area! Pull Aside, Stay Alive! Every Arizonan was familiar with these alerts. Pull over when it gets bad, turn off your lights, keep your foot on the brake, and so on.

The wall of dust was just ahead of me. No chance to even get off the highway. Sometimes these dust storms moved fast; this was one of those. I pulled over onto the shoulder just before it hit. As the dust began to softly pelt my car, I slowly drove as far off the road as I could without getting stuck. Others around me did the same. Then, in moments, it went from sunset to the middle of the night.

This was a bad one. I thought about my mother for a moment. The storm that had picked up and flipped her car was one of water, not dust. I wondered if she’d hated these, too, though. Storms were unpredictable and they quickly changed everything from calm to chaos.

“Mommy, please protect me.”

The car gently rocked as the storm showered and pelted it with dust. It wasn’t my first time being caught in such a storm. You just wait it out, then get a car wash the next day. This was the desert—and desert’s gonna desert. That said, sitting through a dust storm always felt a little claustrophobic and mildly hopeless. I knew that if I were to foolishly step outside the car, I’d be doomed. And this part of the world was only going to get hotter and dustier, no matter how much I loved it. A couple of decades from now it might be uninhabitable.

As the storm raged, I grew restless and looked at the ring on my thumb. I ran my fingertip over the frowning eagle face. “Dad, I miss you.” I picked up my phone and checked on the house. I checked the weather in the area. The dust would reach my house any minute, if it hadn’t already. The power was still on and the internet was still working. Home Boty’s battery was low and it was heading back to its charger. From what I could see as it made its way to the charging pad beside my bed, everything was fine in my bedroom.

I turned on the camera downstairs. It was very dark, a combination of dusk and dust. But I could still see with the camera’s night vision. Biko-nu was sitting right beside the camera, practically on it. I frowned. He was breathing so heavily that I could hear it through the camera. And whimpering…why was he whimpering? I leaned closer to my phone. Biko-nu was looking at something, but it was too dark, and the camera’s night vision didn’t extend that far.

“Hey! Is someone there?” I shouted through the camera. Biko-nu jumped, startled by my voice. Then he pressed closer to the camera. There was a snuffling sound and more of his whimpering. “It’s okay, baby,” I said. I looked up for a moment and saw the storm was still raging. I stared back at the camera. Biko-nu was shaking. “Shhh, shhh, calm down, sweetie.” I exited the app and switched to the house robot’s view. It was upstairs and only had 2 percent charge. “Shit.” I asked it to go downstairs, but as it started leaving my room the image turned off and said, “Off-line.”

“Oh, come on!” I screamed. I was sweating now.

I went back to the security camera. Biko-nu was whining again. Something was definitely in my house, and he was clearly terrified of it. I checked the house alarm, the outside cameras, the upstairs camera. I turned on all the lights. I switched back to the downstairs camera. There was Biko-nu, still cowering. I could only see his furry side as he crouched practically on top of the camera. Then I heard something. A voice? There was more noise as the arriving dust storm began to pelt the house. The same storm was still raging around me. I pressed my hands to my wet face, now in total helpless panic. Tears streamed from my eyes. “Dad,” I said through hands pressed to my face. “Help me.” If anything happened to Biko-nu, I would break.

After a while I just went into a sort of mental paralysis, holding my head and rocking forward and backward, tears dribbling down my face.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered. “Dunno what this is, what this is, what this is. Don’t hurt him…don’t take him, please please please.”

Fifteen minutes later, the storm finally began to lift. I turned on my car and sped off as quickly as I could, leaving a wake of dust as I drove. I pulled into my garage and jumped out. I hesitated for only a moment, choosing to first grab the baseball bat I kept beside the door. I also kept two in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs.

Grasping the baseball bat, I turned the doorknob, listening with every part of my body. The alarm started counting down. After thirty seconds, it sounded. Let it keep screaming. I called my dog. “Biko-nu! Biko-nu!” Nothing. I moaned, holding up the bat. I took a few more steps down the hallway, blinking tears from my eyes. “Who the fuck is in here?” I said. “Show yourself!” Tappity tappity tap, I heard. Something was running toward me.

Biko-nu came around the corner. The sight of him was such a relief that I felt dizzy for a moment. “Oh, thank goodness!” I knelt, put the bat down, and rubbed his soft head as he pushed himself against me. I wiped my face with my hands. “Oh, thank goodness, thank goodness, oh my God, thank goodness!”

I turned off the alarm and answered my phone to tell my service not to send the police, but I kept the bat with me. I checked the entire house. Relaxing more and more as I found nothing. Twenty minutes later, I stood in the middle of the living room, my hands on my hips, the bat resting against the chair, wondering what the hell had happened. Biko-nu seemed fine now. There was no sign that anyone had been in my home.

“Fuck it all,” I hissed. I was relieved, but I was starting to get angry, too.

I kicked off my shoes, took off my socks, and plopped onto the couch and stared across the room at the camera on the floor that Biko-nu had cowered beside. What had been his problem? The dust storm? He was used to those. Things had been too weird since I’d gotten home. I’d have called my father and told him all about it, and he would have said something like, “For the tenth time, abeg. Get rid of all that internet stuff! The government probably knows how often you pick your nose!”

I got up and was about to head to the kitchen to get something to eat when I stepped on something hard. I raised my foot. “What the…” I picked it up.

A cowrie shell.

I held it to my face. I had jewelry with them. I kept them in most of my jacket pockets; when I got anxious, they were nice to fiddle with. And almost every corner of my house had a cowrie shell or three occupying it. It was my own ritual. Biko-nu was never interested in them. Why was this one in the middle of the living room? I narrowed my eyes and looked around. I went to the kitchen, putting it in my pocket. I squeezed it hard between my fingers. There was a satisfying crack and then it crumbled.

Tony called me an hour later and we talked well into the night like two teens. Okay, maybe I actually did like him. I told him all about the dust storm; he’d still been in the air, an hour from landing when it happened. By the time I got off the phone it was past midnight. Everything that had happened earlier seemed so far away. I took a shower and went to bed.

“Someone is at your front door.”

My eyes shot open. It was 3:48 a.m. I sat up and grabbed my phone. I clicked open the camera. I nearly dropped my phone when Home Boty slowly rolled toward me from across the room showing the image from the front-door camera. The speakers suddenly started playing. “Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again…” That Simon and Garfunkel song I’d been thinking about at my father’s wake keeping. I looked from my phone to the larger image of the same thing on the face of the house robot. In the darkness, it shimmied and shook out clouds of dust. Had it been here for the storm? Had it caused the storm? It stood nearly as tall as the palm tree near the road. Suddenly the music got cranked to max volume, and the song filled the house.

“What do you want!” I shouted. I got up, shaky but also so fed up that I didn’t care anymore. I’d had enough.

All the signs were there. I knew they were. Especially after Okigbo said what he said. I knew what he was talking about; I’m Nigerian American, born and raised here, but I knew. No matter how dumb I played. I pressed my fingertips to my temples. “Dad,” I whispered.

Technology is technology. It’s as capable of being affected and manipulated by…the mysterious as any object. Tech runs on electricity, radio waves, energy. Everything is energy, right? That’s where the connection is. Dogs can see and sense those things that the human eye cannot. I’d known since I had gotten back to the States. I wasn’t alone. There has never been a time when I went to Nigeria, to my parents’ ancestral lands, and returned the same person as I had been when I left.

When you hang on like that, sometimes things hang on to you. I was a fool to not leave my father to his homegoing with Ajofia. I was even more of a fool to look upon Ajofia, woman or not. You do not do that. You step away, you let go. Instead, I took that ring. Because I couldn’t let go. You’re supposed to let go. For your own sake. For everyone’s sake. There are consequences when you don’t.

“Give it back!” Ajofia had demanded of me that night in Isiekenesi. It spoke in a voice that cut. Sharp and harsh and hot. “It is not yours.” This was why Okigbo telling me to take it back to Nigeria angered me so much. He’d even used Ajofia’s words: “It is not yours.”

The ring was heavy and scratchy on my thumb. I didn’t take it off, though. Instead, I opened the door. Home Boty positioned itself in the center of the living room, playing the Simon and Garfunkel song. I’d listened to that song over and over again on the plane back from Nigeria. It had just gotten under my skin for some reason. I looked back. Biko-nu was standing there, looking up at me. He whined softly. “Biko-nu, don’t follow me.” I sighed. I went outside.

It wasn’t just my father out there. I stepped over the threshold of my front door and immediately I could smell its smoke. My eyes began to water. “Oh,” I whispered. My legs felt weak. She looked different, much taller, shimmery, but her eyes and smile were the same. She was wearing a dress made of pink-orange coral beads. It clicked and clacked as she walked toward me. I stopped on the steps to my house, and she stopped on the street.

We stood looking at each other. There seemed to be dust in the air because I couldn’t quite see her. Behind her stood my father, and he stood directly in front of Ajofia. And Ajofia was taller, too. Much taller. Bigger. It stood in the street, and it wasn’t dust that was making it hard to see—it was smoke.

“Mommy,” I whispered. I could feel my child self as I spoke the word. It was all I’d ever called her when she was alive. She had passed when I was so young. She seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. And as I stood there in front of my home, in the hot night, not a car on the road, my mother shook her head in what looked like frustration, then turned and started to walk away. She walked toward Ajofia and kept going. I clenched my fists tightly, but this time, I didn’t move. My father did the same, though he did not bother trying to speak. I couldn’t see his face at all. I held myself there. I let them go. I did not insist. I did not follow. Even as they left me alone in this world.

Ajofia. It remained.

“Excuse me! What are you doing?”

I blinked, confused. I was there, then this voice brought me here. I swayed on my feet. Kate, who lived two houses away, was striding down her driveway. She’d wrapped herself in a jacket, despite the fact that it was probably well over a hundred degrees outside. “What is that?” she shouted. “Is this some kind of, of performance art?”

“Looks like it!” This was Candy, my next-door neighbor. “Damn thing is stinking up the entire neighborhood! At least put it out!”

“Oh dear God, why are you both even…awake?” I asked. I glanced at Ajofia. It was still there. Standing there. In the road. Quiet. Unmoving. I’d just seen both of my parents who’d passed on; the last thing I needed was to deal with my neighbors.

“Do you have a permit? You don’t even have an audience to see it,” Kate said. She rubbed her face, and her shoulder-length brown hair was half out of its ponytail. The woman was barely awake.

“Fuck that, just get it out of here!” Candy shouted. She wore a long Arizona Coyotes night shirt and yellow Nikes, no socks. A light went on in the upstairs window of the house across the street.

“This isn’t…just calm down, man.” I wrung my hands, trying to force my mind to manage the ridiculous situation. “I don’t…” But I was out of breath. I glanced at Ajofia again. These women didn’t even bat an eye at it. How? How were they not terrified? How were their eyes not stinging from the smoke? How were they not coughing?”

“Kolo, come on!” Candy said. “It’s not even Halloween!”

“We should totally call the police.”

“Both of you just…shut the fuck up!” I shouted at them. “This is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!”

“Oh, yes, it is,” Kate said. “We live here. We—”

I was looking at the women, but I saw Ajofia with my peripheral vision. It rose up and bounced down, creating a great puff of smoke, dust, and dirt. Everything grew still. Kate and Candy moaned, backing away, finally seeing Ajofia for what it was. They whimpered with dread and scurried away and then rushed into their homes. I watched them go, marveling at the absurd meeting of my two worlds.

I turned to Ajofia just in time for a puff of its smoke to hit me in the face. I coughed hard, my eyes filling with tears as I understood with stark clarity that both of my parents were gone. I gasped, processing it, finally. The world around me swam. I shut my eyes, catching my breath. “How are you here?” I breathed in a shaky voice. I slowly opened my eyes.

It didn’t move.

“Aren’t you bound to the land? The men of the society?”

It said nothing. Menacing. Stinking of smoke. Rotten animals. Black raffia. Eagle feathers. A custodian of death from across the seas. I clasped my hands together. I scratched my thumb, looked down at my father’s ring.

Ajofia still didn’t move.

I glanced toward my neighbors’ homes. Several of them were peeking through their windows at me. At us. This was all being witnessed by them. They could see Ajofia. These white people of Scottsdale, Arizona. Had such a thing ever happened? What did they see? What dreams would they have this night? How would they be changed?

I looked at my father’s ring on my thumb, running a finger over the beak of the eagle. What did it mean? Where was it from? Had my mother known? I would never know any of these things. What I did know was that my parents had come to convince me. So I took it off. And Ajofia finally moved. It lengthened, its girth narrowing, reaching higher than the tall, lean palm trees.

“Fuck you!” I shouted as I threw the ring at it. The ring flew at its forest of black raffia and a tendril…or something reached out and snatched it from the air. It disappeared back into its bulk.

“What the fuck,” I whispered.

Another tendril shot out from it again, hitting me in the arm. Whatever it was clamped down hard and then withdrew. I shrieked, stumbling back, my hand instinctively grasping my arm where I’d been struck. When I peeked under my hand, I saw an oval-shaped wound about the size of a penny, and it was welling up with blood.

Ajofia began to dance, bouncing away from me now, down the street. As it moved, it became more and more insubstantial. Then it was sinking into the concrete, its raffia becoming wet and then oozing and melting into it. Smoke dribbled and gathered in water-like pools around Ajofia as it sank back to wherever it came from. The dead animals hanging from it liquified, drained, and dried up. The cowrie shells fell off and tumbled to the ground like tiny crabs, scattering and disappearing like flies. And finally, the eagle feathers blew away in the hot breeze.

All that was left was a single brown-and-white eagle feather. After staring at the spot for several minutes, wincing with pain and still holding my arm, I approached the place where Ajofia had disappeared. I stood a moment, looking at the feather, then bent down and picked it up, the blood from my wound dribbling down to my wrist. I rushed inside where Biko-nu was waiting for me.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I passed the threshold of my house. I was about to use my unwounded shoulder to close the door and go disinfect my arm, but I stopped. What am I doing? I thought. I threw the feather back outside. Then I shut the door, locked it, and used my phone to activate all of my alarms and security lights.

TWENTY-ONE SECONDS

“One or two? One. Two.”

Kamara sighed indecision while her brother flicked the lens options back and forth between blurry and slightly-less-blurry-sort-of.

“Two?”

“If you say so.” The phoropter swung away as the lights came back on, and Jay pushed himself to a side counter in his rolling chair to make his notes in her chart.

“How’d I do?” she asked him.

“Better than you think you did. We really don’t have to do these visits this frequently. You wouldn’t feel like your vision was deteriorating so rapidly if you actually wore your glasses.”

Kam waved him off. “Ah, maybe I just like seeing you.”

She’d needed glasses since she was eight, so having a brother who’d landed in optometry had its perks. She stared at the elegantly framed ocular dissection poster on the wall, vaguely aware of the buzzing fluorescent light overhead and the subtle rumbling beginning in her stomach.

“Hey, what’s it called when your vision fades out for like a half a second?”

He stared at her quizzically a moment, as if trying to head off whatever corny joke she was about to tell. Which was valid because she did that a lot.

“A…blink?” He raised an eyebrow.

“No, Dr. Smart-ass. Your eyes are wide open and you can just be sitting there and things just go dark. Like the quickest power surge.”

Jay flipped through her chart again. “All your tests here are clear. How’s your blood pressure? Is this thing…painful? Distracting when it happens?”

“Barely noticeable but…you know, I notice. I think of it like déjà vu. Something that happens sometimes but you can’t tell if it’s really…happening.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure it’s happening?”

“This is why people go to WebMD.”

“Don’t start.” He gave her his Doctor Eyes, the ones that said he had a legal and ethical obligation to not roast her in the moment. “Look, I’ll take this as seriously as you want me to take it. So, are you good? We can look into it.”

Her phone buzzed in the chair across the room, and she hopped up to answer it. “It’s fine, I was just curious if there was a word for it.”

“All right, then.” He escorted her back out into the hallway toward reception. The office was quaint and clean and warmly decorated and criminally expensive, in the heart of the city. And it was all his. He was flourishing, and she was proud of him. She meant what she’d said about just wanting to see him sometimes.

He handed her chart off to the receptionist and the two of them took in the bright and busy afternoon happening outside the front windows. “What are you about to get into?”

“Meeting up with Wolf and Ami in the park for lunch.” She pointed to where she thought she could see their friends on the far side of a broad stretch of green across the street.

“Oh, tell them I said ‘what’s up.’ ”

“You know that’s a question, right? Like I’d have to say, ‘Jay says what’s up’ and then it’s implied I’d have to run back what they tell m—”

“Oh my god, bye.” He held open the door and waved her out with a clipboard.

She stood on her toes and stretched upward to kiss his cheek. “Just saying, it would take the pressure off me if you just said ‘hi.’ ”

“Bye, Kam.”

She stepped out on the sidewalk laughing and jogged across the parkway at Sixth Street to where a line of trees and low, wrought-iron fences shielded dogs and wobbly toddlers and extreme Frisbee people from workday traffic. Remote work had done wonders for people getting outside during daylight. In Kam’s case, so had being unemployed. It was fine, she’d told herself. Starving artists had always been a thing and she was in her underappreciated phase.

Wolfgang Carver and Ami Sebastien had been grossly in love since the three of them were in college together. Now they were both Sebastien-Carvers and stretched out over a gingham blanket in the grass in front of a coffee shop. He designed games; she was a nature photographer. Ami yanked her foot out of Wolf’s massaging hands to jump up and flag her down. With her glasses actually on, Kam noticed even at this distance the disappointing lack of anything that wasn’t fruit in their picnic offerings. This time of year, they were experimenting vegans, which meant that the free food was now only marginally preferable to no food.

“Mushroom burgers!” Ami called excitedly, pointing at the picnic basket as if that gem couldn’t wait until she closed the fifty-foot gap.

“Oh boy!” Kam called back.

And then the lights went out. All of them. Sun, too. Nothing gradual. A sudden flick of a switch somewhere in the universe cast a dark so thick a flashlight couldn’t escape.

Kam checked her other senses. Touched thumb to finger. Her arms were still there and so was the ground beneath her. It was the air that was weird, like when the power goes out and the fans stop circulating you can tell it’s stale. The car exhaust still hung heavy. It was the wind that was gone. There was a flattening of sensation. She could hear the confused murmurs, the crashes and car horns, the grass underfoot. But the rumble of the world, the electric hum of everything, could only be heard, not felt.

The screams told her this wasn’t just her.

Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty-one.

And just like that the sun was back on and the wind was back up, bringing with it the roar of an airplane that could have been dropped into the sky for all the announcement it gave itself, low enough to knock over the streetlights on Fifth and roll through the buildings on Twelfth.

Jay’s office was a crater.

THREE MINUTES

It had been three months and it was all anyone talked about anymore because nothing else mattered. There was simply no one who hadn’t experienced the sudden dark, Lights Out, the Blip, the Void, the Vantablack. Every conspiracy theory now had legs; every religion with an end-times fetish was somehow right all at the same time. Satellites, deep state programming, vaccines, aliens.

Wolf and Ami moved Kam into their third-story walk-up where she cycled through coverage from every source and white-knuckled twenty-four-hour news reports looking for answers. They’d never found Jay’s body, but when planes everywhere had dropped out of the sky, recovery efforts were thin to begin with.

Night seemed to come quickly now, and terror with it. Because for every ten people experiencing dread, there was someone who was gleeful in the chaos. Sounds of breaking glass and gunfire inched closer to their cozy neighborhood every day. The sirens behind them had stopped at least a month ago.

Ami brought Kam tea and they sat in the glow of a newscast waiting for Wolf to get home.

“Anything new?” Ami asked, gently smoothing the edges of Kam’s unwashed hair with warm, soft fingers. She’d done this before, when Kam’s mother passed and Kam became catatonic. In better days she’d chided herself for being so easily destroyed and beholden to the compassion of people who tolerated her.

Tonight, she just shook her head.

“Wolf will be back soon. Anything in mind for dinner?”

Kam shook her head again.

“Can you look at me? Just for a second.”

It took effort for Kam to turn her head and Ami offered her a strained smile, scrunching the brown freckles bridging her nose into tight, thin lines beneath her eyes.

“I think we can take a break from this, yeah? Let’s have you shower and eat something and then maybe we can talk a bit? I think you’ll feel better. And it would help me, too, you know. Please?”

Kam swallowed hard. It all sounded like so much work compared to sitting and staring and letting voices flow into and out of her head again until it was time to sleep. Behind Ami, the apartment was half packed into boxes standing in small towers around the room. With the end days allegedly upon them, it was time to get someplace less populated. Where that was exactly, Kam hadn’t been paying attention. But the stress was wearing visibly on her usually spirited friend. The least Kam could do was shower.

“Meat,” Kam croaked. Her throat felt as if she hadn’t spoken since all the screaming she did the day of the Void. “For dinner. I’m begging.”

“Ha!” Ami’s laugh startled them both and Kam noticed a tear escape before they gripped each other in a desperate hug. “You got it.”

Wolf burst through the door panting, sweat glistening on his dark brow and his car keys gripped in a trembling fist.

“Babe?” Ami stood up.

“There’s something going on up the block. We need to get out of here now.” He scanned stacks of boxes, assessing their priority.

“Something like what?” Kam asked, now standing herself.

“The fucking Purge, I don’t know. Come on. They’re shooting and shit’s on fire. Let’s go.”

Kam retreated hurriedly to the guest bedroom she hadn’t slept in yet to retrieve all she owned in the world—a duffel bag of clothes and a backpack with a notebook, laptop, and some headphones in it.

“K-Kam, uh, Babe? It’s…it’s floating,” Ami stuttered in the living room.

“What?” Kam called, but stopped when she noticed the bedside alarm clock had risen some inches from the nightstand. Books, too. Balled socks were no longer on the floor. Small things everywhere were rising in a low hover.

The sudden dark came back and Kam slammed her shin into the corner of the bed frame. Her cry came out as a squeak. Wolfgang shushed them forcefully and all stood still in the apartment.

In the sounds of the muted world around them, menacing whispers were distinct out in the hallway, as were the footsteps of a small group of people approaching doors on the floor below. The fine hairs on Kam’s arms rose in the moments a door was forced open. There was shrieking and then pops of uncertain gunfire, laughter, a series of thuds. And then another door was forced open. And more stairs creaked.

“Hide.”

It was Ami’s voice, wet and shaking in Kam’s ear, but she couldn’t feel her presence in the room.

Kam shuffled her feet along the floor, feeling for obstacles as she reached for the bedroom closet and placed herself in it.

This was so much longer than twenty-one seconds.

The kicking-in of their front door was so much louder than all the others. The vibrating in her nerves threatened to make her throw up as footsteps entered the front room. She could hear hands running along walls to orient their users. A stack of boxes toppled over and two pops rang out. Kam slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her yelp.

It’s just boxes. Just boxes. They shot at the boxes. No one’s hurt. Just boxes, she told herself even as tears streamed over her clamping fingers. She began praying silently that the light wouldn’t come back at all.

Someone whistled. A taunt. A dare for someone to breathe. A light thump and a nearby “Fuck!” told her someone had entered the bedroom and took out their own shin on the bed frame. They fired off two rounds before being interrupted by the sound of choking back in the living room. First one person, then two, maybe three, followed by a frantic scramble of objects being knocked or tripped over. Low and desperate thrashing on the living room floor grew in its intensity before dying off completely, only to be followed by intense silence and a few seconds of dark before the light came back.

Newscasters continued a muffled rambling in the front room and Kam emerged slowly from the closet. The objects that had been floating had found their place on surfaces again. The only thing out of place seemed to be the feet of a collapsed person in the bedroom doorway.

“What the f— Oh my god!” Ami shrieked. Kam bolted to the doorway and followed Ami’s eyes to the floor.

It was a man. Black clad, pistol in his hand. And there was a head, but no face. It was all olive-toned skin, smooth, hairless, and featureless as an egg.

None of them had faces.

Ami’s screams came out clipped like hiccups as Wolf took her hands and guided her in stepping over the bodies. He gave Kam a serious look.

“Kam, you good? I need you to be good right now.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” she assured him, still staring at the blank head before her.

“Grab what you can; we’re getting in the car.”

She nodded, repeating the words to herself and reaching for whatever felt useful for the end of the world.

Screaming started in the hallway, presumably as other residents made their own discoveries. Wolf led the sobbing and shaking Ami to the door and waited impatiently for Kam to join them.

“Look at me. Look at me.” He held Ami’s chin. “It’s you and me, right?”

“Yeah, you and me,” she replied.

He kissed her forehead. “Remember that cabin we got for Christmas that one year? It’s an hour and a half away. We get there, nobody bothers us with this shit, right? Right, Kam?”

“Right.” Kam nodded, having no idea what he was talking about. She stared at the body of the neighbor from across the hall, slumped against her open door, also with no face.

“See? Kam’s coming.” Wolf smiled at his wife. “We’re all good, baby. Keep your eyes on me, okay?”

Kam followed the two of them down the three flights of stairs. Ami gasped and lurched as they passed a neighbor who had a face but who’d been shot and bloodied in their foyer. While Wolf loaded Ami into the passenger seat of his truck, Kam’s attention went to a crowd gathering around a lamppost across the street. She piled the bags into the backseat of the truck and went to investigate, despite herself.

A man pushed his way out of the crowd to go vomit off the curb and left an opening for her to step in.

A young woman had been impaled through the back on the lamppost, her vacant eyes wide open to the sky. There were no viscera slicking down the sides of it. No signs she had fallen from some great height and ended up far enough down it a crowd could obscure her with their own bodies. It was as if she’d simply appeared there with the lamppost at the exact same time.

“Kam!” Wolf barked and startled her out of her trance. He’d turned the engine over and was ready to go.

Kam placed herself in the backseat with the bags.

“What was it?” Ami asked her quietly.

Kam shook her head, unable to describe it. Even if she wanted to, Ami didn’t need to hear it.

“Never understood why you had a truck in the city,” she remarked instead. It seemed an odd observation as they were surrounded by panic and small fires, but it seemed she’d left her body now anyway.

“You’ll see when we have to clear some shit to get out of here,” he replied.

ONE HOUR

They hadn’t been the first people to escape to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Steering clear of the swarms who’d abandoned the city meant getting farther and higher into them.

“Simulation hypothesis.” Wolf breathed heavily as they carried firewood up the steep driveway to a small but posh rental cabin overlooking the Chattahoochee. The truck was left parked in front of a massive boulder, proving that some shit was just too big to clear. “It indicates that our reality is a computer simulation. The flattening of the human experience in the last…I don’t know, fifty years, can point to the simulation winding down.”

“Flattening?” Kam asked.

“Has it seemed at all like shit’s just kind of run its course? Problems are obvious and no one’s that invested in fixing them? No new discoveries, no new ideas. All the new arguments are the same as the old arguments. Lost the plot with art and entertainment. Everything’s AI or a remix or remaster or expansion of the same five IPs.”

“That’s just capitalism,” Kam offered.

“That’s just him not liking Star Wars,” Ami chuckled. She looked better, even if a little tired, since they got out of the city.

“Could be something else, too,” he shrugged, dropping wood on the pile. They all sat next to it to take a break. “Look. You’re building a video game. One of those immersive, hyperrealistic, Game of the Year bad boys. You need what? Design, mechanics, a concept. When you build the world the game is set in, entire engines are needed to run the physics, create atmosphere, the detail in the visuals, the dynamic lighting. Now unbuild the game. Piece by piece, element by element, engine by engine. What do you get?”

“Failed gravity. Lo-def people with no faces,” Ami answered absently.

“Shut down the light engine and everything goes dark,” Kam added.

Wolf pointed at her with a lit cigarillo. “Bingo.”

The three of them sat in silence for a moment and Kam embraced the sounds of birds and musical breezes through thin, reedy trees.

“So who’s running the simulation?” she asked.

“Does it matter?” he countered. “Kind of sucks knowing there’s no congressman you can write to make it stop, huh?”

If this was a simulation ending, then there was nowhere to really be, was there? No sense of when the next Void would be or how long it would last or which of them would end up a decommissioned, faceless chunk of inert matter.

They made dinner in the cabin—BLCs because Kam hated tomato—and sat around a bonfire out front when night fell. The moon was high and bright through the thin canopy. She stared into the fire mostly, thinking about her brother, how none of this end-of-the-world shit stopped her from missing him or wishing he was here to not survive it with her.

“I told Jay I used to have these…flickering moments where light would fade from my eyes,” Kam told them. “Just barely noticeable split-second dimming, like I was blinking but with my eyes open.”

“What did he say it was?” Ami asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing. I told him it wasn’t a big deal. What if it was this? The shortest possible version of this and we’ve been experiencing it too subtly to notice? A split second and then twenty seconds and then…what, five minutes? An hour? A day?”

They said nothing.

“Did I tell y’all he said ‘what’s up’?” She chuckled. “That day when I told him I was going to meet you in the park. It’s like the last thing we talked about.”

Wolf smiled and wrapped his arm tighter around Ami.

“Tell him I said ‘what’s up,’ ” he replied.

“I will.”

She slouched in an Adirondack chair and pulled a quilt up to her chin, gazing up at the sky until she noticed segments of it going black.

Large, square patches of stars were blinking out until only the moon was left. She glanced at Ami who’d noticed, wide-eyed, that sticks and debris on the wooded ground had begun to hover, including pieces of logs from the fire.

Kam breathed deeply, as if preparing for a dive, and glanced up at the moon when it, too, disappeared and the sudden dark was around them again.

“What if we stay where we are?” Ami whispered loudly. “Just don’t move and wait for the light to come back.”

The air had taken on that stale ozone quality again. They may as well have been on the moon. But in it was the sound of crunching leaves and something new.

The growl of a large animal. Nearby or far off, she couldn’t be sure.

Bears. If the sense of smell still existed in the Void, the bear didn’t need to see them.

The spit was suddenly gone from Kam’s mouth. Whatever lingered there now was something metallic. Concentrated fear, perhaps. It was the sensation of the unknown becoming more than some abstract thought. It was present and tangible and clammy to the touch, burrowed so viscerally inside of and surrounding her she was sure she could see it if only she had some fucking light.

A fallen branch crunched too close beside her and she jumped to her feet.

“Get inside!” Wolf yelled, but when Kam turned toward the sound of his voice, she met a wall. She pressed her fingers to the wood of the side of the house, hoping for a seam, a door, the outline of a window. But she knew the creature could hear every muttered plea, every stammered step on old leaves. It still huffed and grunted somewhere behind her.

Her nerves shattered and when she reached a corner, she took off into the forest. There was no wind to carry her scent anyway. She stretched her arms out in front of her to keep herself from slamming into the sides of trees, but skidded to a halt when she tripped and pressed herself into the ground, barely daring to breathe in case she’d been chased.

She began to count seconds, trying to get some idea of how long this one was lasting. She nearly drifted off at two thousand seconds if not for the distant sounds of explosions back near the town. At around three thousand, the leaves crunched nearby again.

“Kam?”

Ami. They’d come looking for her.

“Ami?” Kam whispered loudly.

“Kam!” Ami called again.

Kam got to her feet and crouched against a tree trunk, hoping for a sense of direction.

“Where are you?” Kam called.

“Kam!”

Kam stepped toward Ami’s voice carefully, wanting to reach her before the bear did.

“Oh, Kam,” Ami said. Her voice was near and clear. But something was wrong. There was a wetness to it. A phlegmy quality that made the words seem garbled up close.

The fine hairs on her arms stood again as Kam reached out toward Ami’s voice. Somewhere beyond them, a large tree groaned as if swaying beneath a great weight.

“Are you hurt?” Kam asked.

A growl responded along with moist and gamey breath creating a dew on her outstretched fingers.

The light came back and Kam screamed in the face of an abnormally large black bear, its face covered in poorly healed scars and fur matted with moss. It lumbered, reared onto its back legs, and stuck between two ancient trees, itself somehow combined with a fallen log the way the girl had been with the lamppost. Its mouth hung slack and when it wheezed its exhales it sounded exactly like Ami.

“Kam!”

Oh god, had it killed them?

Kam raced back up the mountain to where she knew she could find the cabin. The bear’s chilling cries called after her.

She circled the cabin and then burst through the front door.

“Ami? Wolf?” She panted. There was no answer and no sign of them in any of the rooms.

She grabbed a flashlight and made her way carefully down the driveway to the truck, dropping it when the light caught the boulder.

It was them.

The rock itself had grown two new formations in the shape of Wolf’s and Ami’s bodies, their hands and faces well-defined, fingers intertwined as they sat against the back of it. Only one of Ami’s big brown eyes remained flesh and gazed into Wolf’s face. The truck keys had been dropped off to the side.

Kam knelt in the dirt and stared at her friends, tears falling silently. The bonfire still crackled in the distance behind her. She looked around at the forest. The peaceful refuge they didn’t have the chance to make of it.

The night was cool and the moon provided what light it could on a dying world.

The back of her neck grew warm and damp. “Oh, Kam,” Ami’s voice sighed cheerily behind her.

There had never been anywhere to go.

From the minute Yenderil jumped into that brackish blue hole water, she started out on a journey that could have no good end. She knew from the preacher’s sermons every Sunday that Hell was down below her feet, but down is the direction she was determined to go anyway, straight to Perdition if she had to. For the beast she was hunting had to be a creation of the Devil’s, so downwards was where she would find it.

Yenderil had had to watch and wait for days until there was no one near enough to the blue hole to spy what she was up to. That was the thing about a bussa-rassa small village so poor you could scarcely find two rockstones to rub together to make fire; ongle a few hundred people living in Trentwall, and everybody up into everybody’s business. But today she finally had her chance.

Truth to tell, though: In that moment of sinking into the saltish water, Yenderil wasn’t studying her future any at all. She felt like she was all in pieces, couldn’t hold herself together in her head.

The soul case that was her body was feeling the wet splash of blue hole water rising up, rolling from her feet to her head-top. How the water was cool and sky blue, but getting colder as she sank down from sky blue to indigo blue to navy blue till it was blue-black like blood, but still she kept sinking down lower.

It was so dark she wasn’t sure her y’eye-them were open. Her lungs were studying how long they could let her keep holding her breath before they would open out like bellows and make her suck in whatever they could, be it life-giving air or death-dealing water. Her two girlchild arms, young and strong as new branches, were studying whether to let go the boulder-stone they were wrapped around, ascording to how the weight of it was pulling her down blue-black down and downer even farther to where girlchildren with lungs instead of gills had no business finding themselves. Her skin was turning to gooseflesh ’cause of how cold the water was this far into the depths of the blue hole. She never knew say cold could burn like fire. Her eyes in her head were looking, looking, twisting her head as far round to either side as they could, seeing nothing but black. Her ears were trying to hear, but the ongle sound in that silence was Yenderil’s own heart pounding on her rib cage, trying to find a way out to freedom come.

The leather belt the obeah man had given her to clasp around her middle was thinking the ongle one thing a belt could think: cinchcinchstaytightmydarling. The cutlass the obeah man had told her to slip into the belt was singing itself a song about chopping and cutting. And the knot in the hem of Yenderil’s dress was studying one single thing: keeping the dress close and decent around Yenderil’s knees. For Yenderil was a good girl. Rather die than expose herself, even to the rahtid devil she had come to kill. And Yenderil herself? She was only studying on finding the blue hole devil that had taken her mother and father and the family’s one nanny goat with a sweep of its ten devil snake arms three years before. She wasn’t paying no mind to what might come after. She had been living with no “after” for three years already.

Three years before, in the space of four terrified Yenderil breaths, that blue hole devil had flung its long arms out of the water and made Yenderil an orphan, without even a she-goat to give her and its kid warm milk to drink in the cool of morning. Yenderil had given the kid to the obeah man, since it now had no mam to nurse it, and he had agreed to train her in return so she could get her own back at the fish devil.

Three years later, as she dropped down inna that blue hole water this day, Yenderil was ongle studying the words of the obeah man who had taught her how to make that fish devil dead:

—

You haffe slice that devil, you hear me? You going to be him bait, and that is how you will catch him. Wait till him grab you and hold you good, then take out your cutlass and chop him anywhere you could reach. Chop the arms holding you till him let you go. Then follow him down and jook your cutlass into him eye. Jook it deep, you understand me? Deep into him brain. That will kill him dead.

—

Some days, Yenderil wondered how he knew how to kill a devil. But he was an obeah man. He knew plenty more than she.

There. Far down below Yenderil. A glowing, flowering green of arms like aloe bush, ten of them, reaching for her, getting long and longing for her, rising fast till she could see they were plenty longer than she. Her heart had found her throat-hole and was trying to jump out that way. Her scared arms let go the boulder-stone right away. The knot in her skirt was so frightened, it expired. Slipped loose and then her skirt was billowing round her head and she couldn’t see the green devil good.

It came to Yenderil that what she was doing was pure foolishness and her lungs were burning. She tried to kick her way up to the surface, quickquickquick to get away.

But then the devil snatched her and held her fast. Its green arms wrapped around her like rope, and Yenderil realized one thing the obeah man hadn’t told her: how to chop the devil if she couldn’t get an arm free to reach for her cutlass.

Squashed up close to her like that, the devil’s flesh was like wet, clenching rubber. The side of Yenderil’s face was pressed into it. Deep inside the soft, bright green she could see black forms moving, linked together. Coils of gut. A pulsing heart, bigger than her head. Two smaller hearts, too. Who could kill a thing with three hearts?

The devil squeezed. Pressure built in Yenderil’s chest and pushed upwards till she thought her head was going to burst. She couldn’t help it; she opened her mouth to scream. She sucked water in, salt as sweat and cold as death. It burned down the back of her throat, and her whole body began to spasm, caught fast in glowing green.

A bubble of air rising out of her mouth. The gasping, stopping. The pain feeling far away. The arms around her getting loose, holding her away from the body of the devil. Two eyes in its middle, big around as wagon wheels, looking at her. And her floating in that endless black, legs kicking out. Whether head up or head down, she didn’t know. And her fading, fading away as she reached weakly for the cutlass.

—

“Hold ’im good, Gregory.”

Her friend struggled to keep the insect still in the cage of his fingers. “I ’fraid I break off a leg.”

“That won’t hurt it. It will still be able to fly.” Yenderil worked the length of some of Ma’s waste thread between Gregory’s fingers, around the middle of the peenie wally. The steady green light in its batty made it difficult to see what she was doing in the darkening day. It took her three tries, while Gregory wriggled and tittered that the peenie wally was tickling his hand. Finally she had the knot tied. “Good,” she said to Gregory. “Let ’im go.”

The peenie wally rose into the air, fluttering to get away. But Yenderil held fast to the other end of the string. The best the insect could manage was a few feet above their heads. Yenderil held her hand high, and she and Gregory wandered along the roadside at dusk, following the peenie wally’s unblinking glow. The sun wasn’t all the way down yet. The top of the peenie wally’s body glowed with it, while its underbeneath was dark, except for the light in its tail. Dust had painted red shoes on both her and Gregory’s feet. Straggly jasmine bushes bracketing the roadside were releasing the perfume of their white flowers into the air. Trentwall village was laid out on their right. It ended in a low-walled cliff, with the sea below. The waves crashed onto the beach and threw salt smell up into the air. On their left, the garden plots of the people of Trentwall village. Beyond those, bush; bamboo, ebony, live oak, and mahogany trees. And filling all the air, the croaking and scraping of thousands of little frogs and crickets, calling out for wives for the night.

“Gregory?”

“Yeah?”

“What you going to do when you finish school?”

“You mean, four long years from now?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I going to make a cart. Pick green coconuts every week from the trees on the beach down the cliff, load them into my cart, and pull it into town. Borrow Daddy’s cutlass to cut them open with. Sell coconut water right from my cart to the town people.”

She could imagine him doing just that, running to town and back between the traces of his cart. “Is a good idea. Your two brothers and a sister can help your mama and papa grow the cassava and breadfruit for market. So you could do something else.” Yenderil grinned into the not-yet-dark. “You going to need a donkey for your cart.”

“Maybe I can afford one with the money I make from the coconuts.”

“I can help you out there. You know what I’m going to do when school finish?”

Gregory stopped dead on the path. The peenie wally flitted above them in a sad, desperate circle. “Not the Mandeville thing again, Yenderil!”

Yenderil grinned into the darkness. “Of course. I going to Mandeville. More than that, I going to find the Iron Donkey and tame him for you, so you will have a donkey for the rest of your days, and you could pass it on to your children when you too old to be a coconut cart man.”

“You mad to rass. This is our life. Right here. This is real.”

“It don’t have to be!” Old argument between the two of them. “Plenty more out there in the world. We could see the Golden Table in Spanish Town. Or the big ships coming into the docks over by Kingston. And you could come with me!”

Gregory shook his head. “Yenderil, you know I not going to do that. You have nobody here to look after. I not free like you, to just ups and go anywhere I want.”

Yenderil felt her blood heating up. She stopped and scowled at him. He said, “I sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that.”

From above, the peenie wally caught her eye. “Never mind.” They started walking again. She looked up at the peenie wally. “What you think it could see from up there?”

He shrugged. “Same as when we climb the alligator pear tree outside your house. Houses. The road. The rum shop. The church. The sea.”

“I know,” she replied, irritated. “But it must be different, nah true? To see it and fly same time? To go fast-fast to what it could see in the distance? To fly up to the moon and back, even right out of Trentwall?”

“I suppose. You want to go look for that dead hog we saw in the bush this morning?”

“Yes. It was so stink!”

“It had maggots moving under the skin.”

“And it was swelled up big. Dare you to poke it with a stick!” They turned off the road and into the bush. The peenie wally right away got snagged in a tree branch, and Yenderil had to leave it behind, fluttering in a circle around the branch. From the trail of its batty light, Yenderil could tell it was winding the piece of thread shorter and shorter.

—

Chop he. You have to chop he. Yenderil had practised with the cutlass all these years, preparing for this day, till the obeah man had told her she was strong enough. She knew what to do. So she must have done it, nah true? In her almost-drowned moments she must have pulled out the cutlass from her belt and slashed at the blue hole devil. But after, she couldn’t remember.

Moving through the water again, gulping it in but not dying, not dying, not going to heaven to see Ma and Pa. Not yet. Instead, moving through water that shifted from black to navy to indigo to sky blue. Going up.

She broke through into the air, the pit of her belly heavy. Coughed the water out her lungs. Her legs didn’t feel like hers, but she managed to kick herself through the water to the bank of the blue hole. She dragged herself out. The cutlass was long gone, sunk into the depths sometime during the battle. Had she killed the fish devil?

Yenderil collapsed on the bank, not just from fatigue, but because she was heavy now. So heavy. More than when she went into the water. But everything was all right now. She had killed it, nah must?

Then she looked down at her body.

—

Yenderil walked for she didn’t know how long. Stumbling. The left foot flopping, catching at rockstones, guinea-grass. Brackish water dripping down from her hair, her dress. She dried off quick in the tropical heat, but dry skin felt wrong. The sun too bright. The heat too hot. Sound too loud. And her y’eye-them, trying to look every which way, like she had never seen Trentwall before. She passed one-two villagers. Some called out cheerfully to her, but then they looked at her leg and ran away.

She found herself standing in front of the calabash tree at the edge of Auntie’s plot. Then she was rubbing her cheek against the bark, surprised to find it rough. There were round, green calabashes hanging from the trunk of the tree, like a big ’ooman’s bubbies. Why was she running her tongue on one? Why was she trying to bite into it? What was this weight upon her, dragging her down? She remembered where she was going. Forced herself into a heavy, slow run. Light too bright! Skin too hot!

She reached her aunt’s house, opened the door. A scream came from inside.

—

Daddy Pa, the village’s obeah man, was on his knees behind the hibiscus bush in his backyard, retching. Yenderil made a face at the sound. Same sound she had made when she first saw what the fish devil had done to her. She waited, sitting on the wooden dining table that Daddy Pa kept outside under the awning and kicking her legs over the side; the one good Yenderil leg, bare-footed with five little piggy toes, and the one new devil leg, fat and boneless and tall for so; taller more than her by two-three times. It had suckers on the backside of it from the tip all the way up to high on her leg back. It kept curling around things, touching things. The table leg. Yenderil’s hair, the plaits tangled now and coming down. Her face.

The table rocked little bit, creaking with each swing of Yenderil’s legs; the pavestones under it were cracked and uneven from the patches of grass pushing up between them. Daddy Pa’s back was heaving. Yenderil could hear the splatter of his breakfast hitting the ground. She could smell the sourness of it, too. An interesting smell that would have made her feel sick a few days ago. Seemed like she could smell everything since coming up out of that blue hole. More interesting than Daddy Pa’s spewed-up breakfast was the fleshy scent of the white hen in a wire cage on the table beside her. Yenderil’s belly rumbled. The hen opened and closed its beak in the heat of the morning sun.

Yenderil had rolled her dress up over her tummy, holding it against her chest with one hand so Daddy Pa could see what had happened to her. Her devil leg filled out one leg of her draws, pushing at the seams. With her belly outside like that, she could watch Daddy Pa with her old Yenderil eyes, and at the same time watch the chicken with her new devil eye. Made her dizzy, seeing two different things in different places like that.

The table groaned. Before Yenderil could understand what was about to happen, the table sagged in the middle and snapped in two beneath her, with a crack like a rifle shot. Yenderil landed hard on her bumbo, the squawking chicken on its back in its cage on her lap. Out in the village, dogs had started barking at the sound of the table breaking. That one out by Mickle Road was the hoarse yelp of Mister Pertwee’s old red hound, Horseface. From down by Main Street came the quarrelsome yipping of Mister Chong’s two black-and-brown sister bitches. Yenderil didn’t know their real names or if they had real names. She and the other pickneys just called them Ping and Pong. Ping and Pong and Mister Chong, who sold dry goods the whole day long. Ma used to tell her not to sing that song, that it was wicked to make joke ’pon Mister Chong.

When he heard the table break, Daddy Pa leapt up from behind the hibiscus bush. He ran over, heavy on his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He towered over her, smelling like vomit and grown man. Smelling like supper. His big body blocked the sun and threw a cooling shadow over Yenderil. “Get up,” he said. “And put your dress back down. Nobody want to see that.”

Yenderil smoothed the dress over the wriggling lumps on her belly, covering the devil eye with the fabric. The eye shut, or she shut it her own self, like shutting her own Yenderil eyes. She wasn’t sure which, but now she could ongle see with the two Yenderil eyes in her face.

Clucking and scolding, the chicken fought itself back onto its feet. Yenderil handed the chicken cage up to Daddy Pa, when what she really wanted to do was rip the cage open for the sweet meat inside. Daddy Pa took the cage from her, still staring at the place on her belly that she’d covered up with her dress. “What do you?” he asked hoarsely. “How you end up like that?”

Horseface, Ping, and Pong had stopped barking. The hen eyed her suspiciously.

Daddy Pa had asked her a question. Yenderil replied, “Is nuh your obeah do this? I wanted to kill the devil, not stick it to me. Take it off me please, Daddy Pa?”

His mouth dropped open. “My obeah…? Is not me make this happen.”

“But is you taught me to go after the devil!”

“Ongle because you were forever bothering out my soul case about it! And…and that thing in the blue hole kill too much people and livestock in Trentwall already. I thought maybe if you could manage to get rid of it…Plus, to tell the God’s truth, you give me your last kid goat. Your ma and pa gone, and you scarcely ten years old back then, without two quatties to rub together. Eating yourself up with grief. I thought say coming and training with me might take your mind off it…” He was babbling, different reasons coming out his mouth. He stuttered to a halt and stepped out of reach of her twitching devil leg. “I too sorry, Yenderil. I didn’t know you would really go and do it.”

He thought she was fool-fool for believing him all this time. But he didn’t deserve to die for that. With her hands and her good foot she pressed down on the devil foot, stilling it. It was like holding back a cow that didn’t want to go where she were leading it. “I sorry I break your table,” she said. She didn’t know how she was going to pay for a new one. Tears started to spring from her eyes, all three of them. A trail of eye water wormed down the front of her dress, her ongle dress, hem torn and coming down from her battle. “But people saying I’m a devil now too, that I had no business in that blue hole. Auntie Mabel won’t mek me stay in her house anymore. She tell me I must go back and live in my old house. She say is not for her sake, but I frightening her pickney-them, and her man. How I going to live, Daddy Pa? You must take this thing off me.”

Daddy Pa took a step back. His fear smelled like dog shit. “But you don’t even have a left leg no more. You don’t see? You have a devil foot. Is part of you. How I supposed to fix this?”

Fury blinded her. She reached out and pulled. Not with her arms, but with her devil leg. She hooked it around Daddy Pa’s ankle and yanked his foot out from under him. With a yell he crashed to the ground, crushing the hen cage under his solid self. Poor hen didn’t even have time to squawk. In one quick movement, Yenderil pulled Daddy Pa close to her. He shook, his eyes staring wide and terrified into hers. She hadn’t known she could frighten a grown man like that. But she was too vexed to wonder at it right now. “You going to mend me,” she growled at him. “Or else—”

“All right, all right,” Daddy Pa babbled. “I will do something to fix you. But”—he swallowed bravely—“how you going to pay me?”

The fight went out of Yenderil. He hadn’t demanded to be paid before this. “I don’t know. I don’t have no money.” The tears were coming again, and all she wanted to do was bend and lick up the chicken blood trickling over the broken pavement stones from under Daddy Pa’s body.

“Hmm,” was all Daddy Pa said. Yenderil made the devil foot let go his ankle. There was a space of silence between them, which time Yenderil smelled and heard the village more clear than ever before. Hot cassava scent of fresh bammie bread baking in coal pot from outside Mistress Cadogan’s hut near the beach. That meant the fishermen had had a second catch that day, and she was making bammie to sell with fried fish. The shouting and taunting of boys up on the cliff a mile away, jumping or pushing each off the side into the sea below. Earthen smell of fresh-turned soil from the plots up on the hill, where people gossiped and sang as they tended their gungo peas, dasheen, bananas.

Daddy Pa cleared his throat. He sat up, scowled at the flattened cage and compressed hen inside it. He held the bloodied back of his shirt away from his body. He grunted. “Going to owe me for the fowl, too. And for my shirt.”

“Owe you?” said Yenderil. “So I can pay you back likkle-mickle?”

He nodded. “Something so.” He pushed himself to his feet, then held out a hand to help Yenderil up, watching her devil leg the whole time.

She didn’t take the hand. She remembered the length and thickness of the green arms coming for her inside the blue hole. She was wearing those arms on her belly now. Even though they’d smalled up themselves to fit, Yenderil was probably heavier plenty more than even Daddy Pa. She scrambled to her feet. Daddy Pa said, “I will work an obeah to clean the devil out of you. Come back tomorrow. I will have the obeah ready for you.”

Tomorrow? So long?

But she didn’t have no choice. “Yes, Daddy Pa. I could have the hen?”

He looked confused. “What?”

“I will pay you back, Daddy Pa. But I could please have the hen? I so hungry.”

“Well, waste not, want not, I suppose.” He picked the crushed cage up by one clean corner and held it out to her. Inside it, the hen was a mess of blood, bone, and feathers. “She would likely make good soup.”

Yenderil agreed. But she had a feeling what she most wanted was to drink the still-hot blood out from the raw hen.

Daddy Pa saw her looking hungrily at the crushed chicken. He swallowed. “Ah, why don’t you go and fix yourself some supper with it?” he suggested. “Come by early tomorrow. Fore-day morning.”

In the darkness before sunup. So nobody wouldn’t see her. “Yes, Daddy Pa.”

He watched her all the way to the gate of his compound. When she got around to the front of the house, Daddy Pa’s grown son, Stephen, was out there, pretending to sweep the verandah steps with a coconut broom. But really he was staring at her and her devil foot. Yenderil wished horseflies would fly into his foolish open mouth. As she let herself out the gate, she saw one of the front jalousie windows on Daddy Pa’s house slam shut. Next thing, the front door opened a mickle, and Daddy Pa’s wife called out to her son, “Stephen! You come inside this house this minute!” Like her son was still some young pickney. Fear-smell was blowing out of the woman’s mouth, too. Yenderil could taste it from all the way over by the front gate.

She put her head down and made haste along the road that led to the bush, praying the whole while she wouldn’t bump into anybody. She didn’t intend to go home. Her belly was growling so loud in her ears she almost feared the dogs would hear it and start barking again. Yes, she could pluck the hen and make soup with it, but her belly turned when she thought of eating cooked food. And she used to love chicken, too. She couldn’t even give the smashed hen to Auntie Mabel. She was forbidden from going back into her aunt’s house.

She didn’t reach all the way to the bush. Ongle as far as her Aunt Mabel’s gungo peas patch. The rankness of the raw hen flesh was making her mouth water. She managed to push her way in among the waist-high plants before hunger pangs dropped her to her knees and she put the cage to her mouth and sucked salty porridge-thick blood from the chicken carcass like she was sucking on a sweetie. She pried open one corner of the cage, stuck both hands inside, and pulled the body out. She gnawed on raw flesh, paying no mind to the feathers in her mouth. She swallowed them down and all. She slurped up slippery entrails full of half-digested matter, and chewy pee-tasting kidneys, and fibrous gizzard. She sucked marrow out of bones. She spit out the cracked-open bones, together with claws and a beak. She belched. Her belly was clenching at what she’d just eaten, but she had never felt so satisfied by food in her life.

No, not her. Wasn’t she feeling that. There was another mind growing inside her head. Faint, but it had been getting louder. Yenderil could feel how restless it was. It wanted her to go and do something else, anything else. It didn’t know what it wanted. Something.

Yenderil was weary to her bones. She sighed and dropped the cage right there so in the gungo peas patch, on top of what was left of the hen. If somebody found all that nastiness and was frightened, then let them be frightened. She needed rest. She started on the road towards the bush.

On the way, she passed Gregory’s daddy, carrying a tied bundle of long sticks of sugarcane on his shoulder. He jumped when he saw her, and cussed, then crossed himself for good measure. He put his head down and scurried on his ways.

Yenderil realized that she hadn’t wiped her mouth. There was a bright red ring of blood all around it. That, and her twisty devil leg, and the wriggling lump on her belly under her dress; she must really look like the Devil in truth. She could just imagine what Gregory’s daddy would tell Gregory about her. But she didn’t want to face her friend just yet.

It was full dark now, cooler than the day, and blessedly restful on Yenderil’s eyes. If she held up her dress so the fish devil could see, she had no problems walking in the dark. The fish devil liked darkness. She just prayed nobody would see her holding her dress up so scandalous.

She climbed a live oak and wove some of its branches, still attached to the tree, into a nest. She climbed into it and lay in a crouch. The devil leg wrapped itself around her and wound its tip around the tree’s trunk. Dimly, Yenderil sensed the fish devil noticing that the swish and switch of the night breeze were much like floating in its home’s deep water. The creaking of frogs and crickets were like the underwater sounds, though much louder. All Yenderil’s eyes closed, and she slept.

—

Yenderil had heard the story one evening when she went to fetch Pa from the rum shop. The men were drinking and talking old-time story. Seem a bounty hunter named Champagnie had made the Iron Donkey long time back, to help him find escaped slaves. More than fifty years ago, before the freedom times. Him make it out of plate iron, held together with nails from the coffins of hanged black men. Carved its jaws from the thigh bones of those men. Put a terrible engine inside its chest to give it life and wits. The way the story go, once Champagnie sic the Iron Donkey on you, it would never cease chasing you till it sink its jaws into your flesh. “But,” said one of the men, “I thought that Champagnie man dead long time ago?”

The one telling the story replied, “Ah-true. But he dead before he could shut down the Iron Donkey. It still out there hunting down black people, never mind we not slaves no more.”

Since then, Yenderil had been mad to go look for the Iron Donkey, take it apart to see how the engine inside worked. She wanted to find the Golden Table in the Rio Cobre in Spanish Town. Did it really rise up to the surface at noon every day, float for seven seconds, then sink back down again? And she wanted to go to another country! In a real ship! She wanted to find a duppy and make the ghost talk to her. She wanted Gregory to come with her on her adventures, but he wanted to stay in bussa-rassa Trentwall. Maybe she could get Daddy Pa to make some kind of a “come follow me” powder for her to put in Gregory’s food. Gregory would enjoy travelling with her, if ongle she could get him out of Trentwall.

But first she had to repay Daddy Pa for taking the fish devil off her. Then she would see.

—

When Yenderil got to Daddy Pa’s house early the next morning, son Stephen was putting a rickety little table out back, to replace the one that Yenderil had broken. Then he and his mother peered at her and Daddy Pa through the half-closed back door, not even trying to pretend they were minding their own business. There was a short bench, too. Daddy Pa was sitting on it. So Yenderil stood beside the table in silence. The devil leg twitched back and forth. She let it. Let Daddy Pa remember what it could do.

It was fore-day morning, still dark. The sun was just beginning to leak bluing across the black sky. Breeze tickled a blessed coolness over Yenderil’s skin. Even so, the devil kept trickling messages through their combined blood about being too hot. Quietly, Yenderil muttered, “Go back home then, nuh? I would be happy to take you.”

In reply, the devil sent some rudeness that Yenderil couldn’t understand. But it smelled like the kind of facety thing a devil would probably say.

Daddy Pa stood. “Sit on the bench,” he said. “We nail some more wood to it last night, so it could hold you.”

Crickets kreeked in the darkness all around. On the table, the kerosene lamp flame danced to their music.

Flame. The blue hole devil had never seen it before, flowing like water, but not water. Yenderil refused the devil’s urging her to stick her hand down the throat of the lamp to touch the pretty orange water. As she wouldn’t, it kept trying to raise up the twisty devil foot to do the task. Yenderil would push the foot back down before it reached more than a few inches. She must have looked impatient, or like she needed to wee-wee.

Daddy Pa cleared his throat, and Yenderil came back from contemplating the strangeness of fire.

“Tell me something,” said Daddy Pa. “That thing stick up onto you—if I jook it with a knife, you would feel anything?”

She had already found out the answer to that. “It would hurt. Like if you doing it to me.”

Daddy Pa scrunched up his face at that thought. He looked at the ground for a second. Sighed. Looked up again. “Yenderil, I have some things to try. I think I could take the face of that thing off your front, but I don’t know what to do about the leg. It might have to stay that way.”

Hope sank into the pit of her stomach. But maybe with the face gone, the fish devil thoughts would stop. “All right, Daddy Pa.”

He frowned. “I want you to understand what could become of you. If I remove the devil face, the leg might stay healthy, or it might stop working. And then it would be just hanging there.”

Dragging after her, weighing her down. A spectacle everywhere she went.

Daddy Pa’s two eyes made four with hers. “Hear me good, now. It could be even worse. If the leg die, it could rot and pass the rot to you. It could kill you. We would have to send you to the hospital in town to amputate it before that could happen. So tell me true; you ready for all this?”

She wasn’t. But— “I not going to stay this way,” she said. “Do it. Work your obeah.”

“Very well.”

First was the healing bath, with herbs floating in the water. It was Mommy Pa who washed Yenderil, with Daddy Pa standing outside the door and shouting hymns. The fish devil liked the bath. It kept drinking the water through its beak. Mommy Pa shuddered and wouldn’t touch that part of Yenderil’s belly. “Jesus Lord,” she whispered. She filled a small tin with the bathwater and poured it onto the fish devil from high up. She dried Yenderil off with a cloth. Told her to put her draws back on and gave her a loose white flour sack dress to wear. Sent her back outside to Daddy Pa.

Daddy Pa had three plates on the table: What look like herbs mixed together in one; charcoal in another; and a kind of black oil in the third one. Some little twigs lying beside the plates. And a big, sharp knife. When Yenderil see the knife, her breath catch in her throat. Daddy Pa noticed. “Going to smoke it,” he told her, “like a beehive. Make it sleepy so it don’t feel anything. If it can’t feel, you shouldn’t feel, either.”

Yenderil wasn’t so sure, but she lay down on the bench like Daddy Pa showed her, and pulled the robe up to expose the fish devil. Daddy Pa pulled back in surprise. “It have skin like yours now?”

“It can change its skin.”

“Awoa. I know some fish like that.”

He dipped one of the twigs in the oil, lit it from the fire under the coal pot. Black smoke started to pour out the end of the twig. He brought the smoky end close to the fish devil’s face. Its eyes blinked. It thought the smoke was funny, that it was trying to look like…something. Yenderil didn’t understand what it was saying. Pretty soon, its eyes shut. “It sleeping?” Daddy Pa asked.

“I think so.”

“Pinch the devil leg for me. Hard.”

She did. She didn’t feel anything. Hope blossomed out through her body again.

Daddy Pa picked up the knife and touched the tip of it against one edge of the devil fish face, between it and Yenderil’s skin. His hand was shaking. “Anything?”

“Nothing.”

Daddy Pa gulped and pushed in a little deeper. Yenderil wanted to shut her y’eye-them, but she wanted to see, too.

Daddy Pa said, “Lord help me, I never do anything like this before. Lance a boil, yes. Sometimes even stitch up a deep cut. This is something else.”

“Keep going.”

“Yes.” He began to saw the knife around the edge of the fish devil’s face, very gently. One stroke. Two. A trickle of blood came out. He stopped, leaving the knife in. “Anything?” His voice squeaked at the end of the word.

“Nothing. I could feel the knife, but not the pain.”

Three strokes. Four. Daddy Pa was saying the Lord’s Prayer, tripping over the words. But he continued cutting.

Five strokes. “Easy,” he said. “Just like getting an oyster out the shell.” He didn’t sound sure.

Six strokes, and aiee! A stabbing, catching pain shot through Yenderil’s middle. “Stop!” she cried out. He stopped right away, but same time, a trickle of blood ran into the fish devil’s free eye. The face shuddered, and Yenderil felt it all through her, right to the devil leg.

It happened so fast. The fish devil’s eye opened. It glared at Daddy Pa. A hole opened below and one side of its beak. A purple, sticky juice flew out of the hole, all over Daddy Pa’s face and his knife hand. The devil leg pushed Yenderil off the bench and sent her flying through the air. She came crashing down onto her side a few yards away. Daddy Pa had dropped the knife. He was hissing, trying to wipe the purple juice out of his eyes. And his wife and son were rushing out the house to help him.

They turned the bench back over and sat Daddy Pa on it. They got a damp cloth and wiped his face and hand. He kept saying he was all right, but he seemed confused. He asked if a snake bite him. Wife and son took him into the house. Stephen came back out with Yenderil’s clothes. “Go,” he said, throwing them at her. “Please.”

“He going to be all right?”

Stephen pointed at the gate. “We will see to him. Just please to go. Don’t hurt us anymore.”

Yenderil didn’t want to hurt them. She just wanted to be fixed. “All right.”

As she stumbled along the path, her skin came out in goose bumps when a voice inside her, not like her own at all, said, **I haven’t had to do that trick in a very long time.** It sounded pleased with itself.

The fish devil was growing stronger inside her.

She didn’t want to go back into the bush again. She couldn’t go to her aunt’s. Sobbing, sneaking along side paths so nobody wouldn’t see her, she went to the only place she knew would let her in.

—

In her parents’ old home there was a bucket of tepid water on the table. It was her aunt’s bucket. Auntie must have brought it from the well for her. Some bammie bread and ackee on a plate beside it.

Yenderil sat to eat on the corncob bed with its single thinning flour bag sheet she used to sleep on with Ma and Pa. For a while, that bed had slept four when Ma had added the baby brother who died before he had lived eleven weeks. She hadn’t been in this house for years. It smelled of dry rot.

She didn’t know what she would do next. She’d cried out all her salt tears for the time being.

At least she had breakfast. The yellow ackee was buttery in her mouth like scrambled eggs, the bammie chewy in the middle and crunchy on the outside. A new set of flavours for the fish devil. She felt its wonderment. She chewed and swallowed for a long time, cogitating. She addressed the fish devil: “You going to punish me to death for trying to kill you?”

**No. I’m not punishing you.** The voice was hollow and deep, like a church bell ringing underwater.

“Is not a punishment?”

**No.**

“So why you latch on to me, then? Why you don’t stay in the water with your own kind?”

**I ate them.**

“You ate your family? Your people? Why?”

**Do you beings not do the same, then? Is that why there are so many of you?**

What had she let into the world? Yenderil put the plate down beside her and wrapped her arms around herself to keep her shaking in. “A-true,” she replied softly, “we don’t do that.”

**How then do you gain knowledge? Do you all remain as ignorant as when you quit the egg case?**

“I don’t understand.”

Silence for a moment, as the fish devil shoved and tickled its way through her thoughts and her memories:

Pa finding five-year-old she in the backyard trying to dig up her dead baby brother with a stick. She just wanted to see what he looked like under the ground and to ask him if he could breathe.

Yenderil coming first in a maths test. She beat Gregory by two points. So to make him feel better, she climbed to the top of her auntie’s Otaheite apple tree where the bendy branches creaked and swayed with her weight. The sun was warmest there, the Otaheite fat and purple and tender. She picked two and brought them down for Gregory. They were bruised by the time she made it down to the ground. Their maroon skins were pulled back in places, staining the white flesh showing through. Gregory was still sulky, but pretty soon he smiled and took the apple-them from her and sucked them both down to the brown stone in the middle. She beat him in the next test, too. And the one after that. He got used to it, and pretty soon she didn’t have to bring him presents afterwards anymore.

Yenderil tried to mentally shove the fish devil out of her head where her private rememberings lived. Might as well try to boil the ocean with a match. After a few moments it said: **I see your way of it now. You don’t respect each other enough to give of yourselves!**

The fish devil didn’t understand anything at all. She had given her orphaned kid goat to Daddy Pa. She picked fruit for Gregory to make him feel better that she was smarter at maths than he was.

The devil continued, **My people were once plentiful in our ocean home. The waters slowly sank over millennia and left us stranded in what you call the blue hole. But we could live well there at first. There was food, and there were tunnels where we could spawn our young. We gave ourselves to the most gifted among us, as is our way; no overpopulation and more knowledge consolidated in our wisers. Each of us who is eaten by another passes on its accumulated wisdom to its devourer. Until finally only I, the most canny of our kind, was left. I have lived more than seven hundred orbits of that giant burning in the sky. I have consumed more thousands of my kind than I care to remember. I grew in wisdom and knowledge until I became a great…what you might call an obeah…woman.**

It was a ’ooman, then.

The voice continued, **Though the magic of that paltry being who tried to root you out from me does not come close to comparing to mine. My obeah is how I was able to blend my compressed self with your body.**

Words, words. Plenty big words Yenderil didn’t care about. But she heard the one important thing in all this speaky-spoking; the fish devil had just told her for certain that it was the last one left in Trentwall’s blue hole. She hadn’t been sure. And she, Yenderil, had caught it. Down below where it lived, it was queen. Up here in the air, it didn’t rule.

Not yet.

She couldn’t eat it, though. It was already part of her. “So you eat and eat till none left but you with all this wisdom.”

**Yes, that is our way.**

So pleased with itself it sounded!

“What for?”

**Explain, please?**

“Here you are, all smart, with no one to pass it on to no more.”

The fish devil had nothing to say to that. It demanded some water from the bucket on the table. Yenderil went to dip some out. The dipper was touching her lips when she stopped dead in her tracks.

The fish devil had a weakness.

She knew how to fix its rass.

She didn’t drink any water from the bucket. In fact, she emptied the bucket out in the yard, at the root of the Scotch bonnet pepper bush. The fish devil grumbled. Yenderil ignored it. She went back inside. She closed the door. She made sure the jalousie window was shut tight. She put on every bit of clothes in the house, even Ma’s good church dress and Pa’s heavy canvas dungarees he wore when he went out with the fishermen. The fish devil regarded all this activity curiously. For a little while, it forgot about being too hot. It asked what she was doing—she was beginning to be able to understand it more clearly now. She didn’t reply. She dragged the thin bedsheet from off the bed, kept it within reach. Then she knotted their heavy rope around her good ankle, tangled it into a bastard knot she would never be able to untie with just her fingers. She tied the other end around a leg of the table, messy and unloosenable same way. She wrapped herself in the bedsheet, lay on the wooden plank floor, and waited.

And the hotness got hotter in the small one-room house. Yenderil’s mouth was parched. **Just likkle water, ** whispered the devil fish. **Go beg some from your aunt. You wouldn’t even have to drink it, just dip my leg into it. **

“No,” Yenderil whispered. “We staying right here-so.”

The devil leg started twitching towards the rope knot around her ankle. Yenderil set her mouth hard. No. I not going anywhere. Sweat was running down her forehead, griming her neck with salt, creeping into the crevices of her skin under all those clothes. She was a crab in a pot of boiling water, steaming inside its own shell. She caught herself throwing off the bedsheet.

No.

She put the sheet back on and tied it around her middle.

Hours went by. Maybe hours. Yenderil was dizzy with how dry she was. She was feeling cold now. But burning up.

More time, the voice in her head sighed, **I ongle wanted to know the world above and what was in it. I ongle wanted to know.** It sounded faint.

“That’s why you took my family? And all the others?”

**Yes. I thought if I ate them, I would know them. But they couldn’t tell me anything about the world of air. That’s why I made myself a part of you. Please, let me…**

A weak, soundless scream. Not hers. With a squelch, something at Yenderil’s middle came unglued. She peeled away the layers of clothing to find the devil fish’s face lying in her dress. Its wet jelly inside was facing her. Pink frills of flesh in it trembled. A tendril extended from its brain-part into her navel. Yenderil wailed. Snatched up the stink, rotting thing and pulled, yelping at the answering tug inside her belly. She forced herself to keep a firm, steady force when she rather rip the thing from her. She hissed with the pain, but kept at it until she pulled the whole length free, like pulling a carrot up out of the ground. She hoped it was the whole thing. There was something like a root at its end, stained with her blood. Sweating, she threw the face and its root from her and fell back, weeping with the soreness screaming from her belly.

But she had no rest, no triumph yet, for the devil leg began to tear loose from her body. It had gone grey. It smelled like the latrines. It twitched and thrashed, and the agony deep inside her hip joint made her too crazed to think clearly. She tried to grasp it with her hands to pull it out of her, but it was dissolving into nastiness. There was nothing to get a good hold of. All she could do was move backwards away from it, using her elbows and good foot.

It didn’t come clear cleanly. It thinned, moving with her, till she had dragged herself, keening, around most of the room. She kept thinking of the abandoned peenie wally, flying round and round the branch that had snagged it.

The jelly trail got thinner and thinner. It was attracting flies. When finally there was no more of it melting out of her, she scuttled backwards to a corner and lay there, half propped up, keening softly. Pain was like a taste in her mouth, like chewing on rusty iron.

**It’s done,** said the voice in her head. It was fading. **You’ve consumed me. Thank you for showing me the world above.**

“Trentwall? Here is not the whole world.”

**It is to me.** Blood and a clear, sticky liquid were leaking from the hole where the devil leg had been. **I’ll be gone soon. Your brain cannot absorb my knowledge. All that I have learned will be lost with me. But I have one gift I can leave with you.**

The holes left in her were going numb. Her body, even though it was lighter now, felt heavy: heavy as when she’d climbed out of the blue hole. She crumpled to one side. Her mind was full of smoke. Her eyes closed in blessed relief.

When she awoke, her belly button had closed up. The remains of the fish devil were ongle two stink-smelling puddles melting into the floor, all that was left of the face and the leg. In the heat of the room, they were drying up as she watched. The face puddle had a beak in it.

And where the fish devil leg had been growing out of her, there was a floppy human leg. Thin-so like a new ginger stalk when it first poked out from the ground. Yenderil pulled herself up to stand on the good leg. She tried to put her weight on the new one. It collapsed under her. It was not exactly long enough, and it was weak. She could feel bones inside it, but they were too bendy to hold her up. Was this the fish devil’s gift, then?

The new leg itched and itched. Yenderil got up again. She hopped over to the bed, gathering her clothes along the way. She got dressed, using the bed for balance. When she was decent, she hopped over to the door and opened it. She knew the midday breeze that flowed in was hot enough to wilt the morning glory blossoms on the vines that were draped on fences and walls all over Trentwall, but it felt cool as seawater as it flowed over her. She hopped and crawled around the yard till she found a stick she could lean on. By then, the new leg was the same length as the other, and she could almost walk with it.

It came to Yenderil’s mind that she had won. She had beat out the smartest obeah woman of the world—didn’t the fish devil call Trentwall the world, after all? She had freed her village. And the rest of the village would be grateful. The preacher, who had lost his two boys-them to the blue hole devil. Liddy Turkel, widowed when the devil snatched her man down. All the pickney-them whose parents used to beat them for their own good if they played too near the pretty water. No one would have to walk all the way to the standpipe three miles away and back to fetch water. And there would be good fishing in the blue hole again.

She could feel her lips pulling into a smile, like they had forgotten how and were slow to remember. Then she laughed, quietly. What a story to tell Gregory! By the angle of the sun, he would be home from school in a few hours.

But something made her stand still and ponder. Slowly, she understood the fish devil’s final lesson. Though she was nearly the old Yenderil again, everybody knew what had happened, and everybody was afraid of her. Yenderil now realized that, like the fish devil, her strongest nature was to get what she wanted, even if that meant pulling others out of their natural stations, causing them distress. A peenie wally. An obeah man. Gregory…

She set her mouth in defiance. “Nothing wrong with wanting to learn,” she said. So Pa had always said.

But it wasn’t the learning. It was what she was willing to do to get it. Trentwall didn’t have no fish devil anymore. But if she didn’t watch herself, she would take its place. A girl devil.

Back inside the house, she tore a long strip from the bedsheet. She wrapped her mother’s sewing needles and thread and heavy iron scissors inside it. She could hear the school bell ringing from the middle of the village. End of school for the day. She had to leave, now. And she had to do it alone.

She closed the door of her old home behind her. Her leg was already holding her better. She had likkle bit of time before Gregory could run all this way. She set out for the road, in the opposite direction from the school.

Stomp. Thump. Old foot. New foot. Every step leading her to a new life. The blue hole devil behind her. Ahead of her, maybe the Golden Table. The Iron Donkey. The Whooping Boy, riding his three-leg horse. She had beat the most strongest obeah woman of the world. Who knew what she would do next?

They thought that we were too young to understand, but children knew. We learned the lesson early, felt it down to our bones: Of all the tools of oppression, fear was the cruelest. There was a story we don’t tell that needed to be shared before the last of us died and no one remained to remember.

“You went where?” Daddy asked me. His voice was stern, but it stopped well short of yelling; my father was a quiet man, but also a rock who never retreated from any threat to his family. He was so tall, his legs like tree trunks, and so sharp in his waistcoat. He stood with a soldier’s rigidity, like his body couldn’t forget how else he was supposed to stand.

“I wanted to go to the library.” Wiping a smudge of chocolate from the corner of my mouth, I clasped my hands behind me and studied the ground. Twisting in place slightly in my best Sunday dress, I gambled on appearing too cute for him to stay mad.

“Why didn’t you just go to the Dunbar library?”

“There’s no ice cream shop next to that library.”

“Flora, girl, you can’t do that.” He grabbed each of my shoulders to hold me still.

“I know Daddy, but—”

“But nothing. You have no idea how dangerous that is.”

“It’s just a street over.”

“It’s a whole world over.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“This ain’t about ‘I.’ It’s about ‘we.’ This kind of thing threatens all of us. Our neighborhood. Our family.”

Though he never even raised his voice to me, I wished he’d had me cut down a switch and then whipped me up and down the block rather than for me to hear his hurt, anger, and fear in that moment.

Though it was located in the North, Indiana was Southern at its core. Every time we left Norwood the fear walked with us. There were rules to the fear: what doors we could enter, which stores we could shop in. No using public restrooms. The first three rows were for us coloreds, the back of the theater. All with an unspoken threat for what would happen if we strayed beyond our boundaries. But part of me needed to be able to go where everyone else could.

“They said I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“You have as much right to be there as anyone else. But if you wanted ice cream, I could’ve gone to get it for you. Or we could have gone together.”

I sighed my confusion. The rules didn’t always make sense. The ways of grown folks, I supposed. But I understood that he was trying to protect me. And that each trip to that space exacted a toll on him.

Reading my face, Daddy took a step back, like someone admiring a painting. “Pick your daisies.”

That was his way of telling me to set my own goals. To not let anyone get in my way. Daddy was a slave before he became a soldier, and he carried his story in the scars on his back. His people came up from Kentucky, were willing to lay down their lives for the cause they called the Civil War. They joined the U.S. Colored Troops, the Twenty-eighth Regiment. Five thousand men marched out for war, but only one thousand returned. The survivors founded Norwood, a free town within the city.

“Go on. I’ll be right behind you,” he said.

“By myself?”

“The orchard will protect you.”

I scurried out the door.

Norwood was a place of intersections, like it was destined to be magical. Two rivers met there. Four major railroads met there, making Indianapolis the Crossroads of America, and Norwood was the end of the line. I played kick the can on my way up to Ms. Mary’s house. I went to school at Colored School Number Five, went to the Lovely Lane church here, and played with my neighbors at our playground. At its heart was a great old-growth forest. The town itself was practically ringed by the orchard, with each home’s yard holding a portion of it. They say the orchard was always there, planted by the Delaware Indians who lived on the land before us. They were pushed away the same way Daddy said that one day people would try to push us out. Which is why we depended on the orchard. Everything we needed was in Norwood. Family, friends, food. If there was anything anyone needed but didn’t have, someone in the community provided it. Everyone shared without thinking twice.

A mighty kick sent my can skittering down to Ms. Mary’s walkway.

“Child, your father works too hard for you to be mistreating those shoes like that,” Ms. Mary called from her stoop. The woman was born in indentured servitude, trading her labor for education. Her husband was the only colored doctor in the city, and she taught me my letters at the school. She always wore brightly colored dresses, and all us girls admired her. She made us want to learn to be more like her. She only needed her stare and that terror of you disappointing her to keep us in line. In the center of her classroom was what she called a “learning table.” It always had books on it and was where she would read to us and ask questions. Probably where I got my love of books.

“The town’s all abuzz about what you did,” Ms. Mary said.

“It ain’t the town I’m worried about.” I plucked an apple from the grove and started eating it.

“Don’t worry, we handle our own. And we protect our own. Your father especially.” She thumbed toward my house.

“It’s just…we have to leave Norwood sometime. We can’t just hide here all our lives.”

“We’re not hiding. We’re living. On our terms. Here we can walk with our heads held up high.” Placing her hand gently on my back, she escorted me inside.

The penny party at Ms. Mary’s was for one of the neighbors. It seemed like everyone was there, chipping in to raise money for their mortgage payment. Every face wore a smile. A famous painter held court in the corner. Aunties wore elaborate hats like they were in the front row of church.

Daddy soon found us. He handed a bowl of chips toward me. I crossed my arms.

“I hope you weren’t too hard on her.” Ms. Mary faked an attempt to whisper.

“Hard enough to make her understand what’s at stake.”

“I’m right here, Daddy.”

“Girl, who taught you your manners? You see grown folks are talking.” His broadening grin took any sting out of his words. Daddy nudged me gently with the bowl. “Eat your chips. If you finish it all, you’ll find a beautiful face at the bottom of the bowl.”

The bowl was polished metal. When I finished eating, it was my face that was reflected back.

In the parlor, a man tickled the keys of a piano so smoothly even Reverend Penick got to tapping his foot. The preacher at Lovely Lane AME was a bit of a dandy. Short, with a well-groomed mustache and goatee, he had a walking stick with intricate carvings on it. Each step he took had an air of confidence and dignity. Glancing at Daddy, he checked his pocket watch.

“You wait here,” Daddy said. “I’ll be right back.” But he knew I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight. Not again. By the time I caught up to him, he was whispering to Reverend Penick: “Will we have time to conduct your little midnight mass?”

“Rufus!”

I hid behind the coatrack.

“What? It’s not exactly a secret.” Catching me peeking around the coatrack, Daddy sighed and waved me over. I kept him between me and the reverend. “There are no secrets in Norwood.”

“I hate that folks gone call these things a midnight mass. It ain’t nothing of the sort,” the reverend said. “This is about the protection of our people. You know better than most what we’re up against. The enemy is coming.”

“Folks gone call it what it is. It’s witchcraft, pure and simple.”

“Witchcraft is what our oppressors call it to demonize us. We carried our old ways to this new land.”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that Jesus don’t need the company.”

“And yet, here you are.” The reverend donned his hat.

“I fight by any means necessary. I’m willing to even risk my soul for my people.”

“I know what I believe. I’m confident in my faith,” the reverend said. “Just make sure you are too.”

Daddy often struggled like he didn’t know how much of what he believed was his own and how much had been forced on him. He wanted us kids to find our own way. So he wore a Mercury dime around his neck. He said it was a hoodoo practice to absorb any harmful magic that neared him. Faith took all forms. “There’s time for prayer, and there’s time for action.”

I clung to his trouser legs like the little girl I was but most of the time pretended not to be.

“That’s why we’re here.” Ms. Mary carried a tray of snacks and finger foods. I snatched a sandwich from it and retreated behind Daddy again. Disciplined about his vices, he waved her off. He never smoked, only occasionally had a little wine with dinner, and rarely indulged in sugary treats. “Come on, it’s almost time. I have everything ready out back. Is she coming?”

“You don’t recognize a future member of the Iyami Aje?” Daddy joked.

The Iyami Aje were the “Elders of the Night,” wielders of the sacred power. I was too young to be an elder of anything, yet Ms. Mary took my hand. It was soft and gentle, like an invitation. I grasped on to her before I realized I’d done so. We walked through her garden, her portion of the orchard toward her barn.

They thought that we were too young to understand, but children knew. Lanterns lit the barn and the main floor had been cleared. As each entered the room, they dipped their hands in a silver bowl full of water. I recognized their secret ritual meant to banish bad energy and maintain the protective hedge around our space. I doubled back to the door while everyone was preoccupied with their role in the ritual and dipped my hands too.

“We should bring the matter to the council,” Daddy said. Norwood had no mayor, but something closer to a council of neighbors who had to come to consensus to determine matters.

“What’s the point of us meeting if we still have to run things by the full board every time we need to take a shit.” Reverend Penick unbuttoned his jacket and set it aside and rested his hat on it. He produced a set of elekes, a colorful beaded necklace, and put them around his neck. He glanced over at Ms. Mary. “Pardon my French.”

“We may have a more pressing problem.” Ms. Mary moved a bowl to the opposite end of the table. She removed two small pouches from her purse and plunked them down next to it, then laid out three pieces of coconut, a pile of toasted corn, and some cowrie shells. Ms. Mary locked eyes with Daddy. “You gone tell him?”

“Ain’t nothing to tell.” Daddy broke his gaze with her and sucked his teeth. Resigned, he began to tell his story. “Man got off the train. Appeared to be appraising the neighborhood or something. I stopped him at Vandeman Street and informed him that he couldn’t go any farther without permission.”

White people looking to go into Fountain Square or connect to anywhere had to get off there. Most knew not to head into Norwood and resented it.

“You’d have thought I slapped him. ‘You inform me?’ he says. Then he takes a closer look at me and says, ‘I’d never seen a colored with blue eyes.’ ”

“That’s how he knows he’s encountered a member of the Twenty-eighth,” Ms. Mary said.

“And what else did you say?” Reverend Penick prodded. Sometimes talking to Daddy was like pulling teeth when he was avoiding news he didn’t want to share. Like when he had to tell me Momma had gone ahead to heaven.

“That he could die mad about it.” Daddy avoided the reverend’s eyes.

Ms. Mary threw her head back in laughter. Daddy’s face soon cracked, joining her. “Now I see where your daughter gets it from.”

“That was foolish,” Reverend Penick huffed.

“What? We’re supposed to kowtow out of fear of them showing up? They walk along the sidewalk, we supposed to move out of the way? No, we have a right to…be.”

“Daddy, can I ask a question?” I filled my voice with as much deference and respect as I could muster to chance interrupting them. “How come it’s okay for you to stand up to them and not me?”

“You had to know this was coming,” Ms. Mary said.

“I was reminding him of the same thing I did you: We have boundaries. For everyone’s safety.”

“What I’m saying is,” the reverend said, “that your…reminder…wasn’t strategic. We’re surrounded by Night Riders territory.” I heard tell the reverend’s family fled to Indianapolis back in 1871 due to activities of that Klan. Snapping it taut, he set out a white handkerchief.

“Doesn’t the good book say to ‘comfort the feebleminded’? I’m just comforting them.” Daddy placed a gold medallion next to the handkerchief.

“You’re a fighter.” Ms. Mary took the handkerchief and smoothed it along the table. She glanced at each of them and nodded. She removed a gold earring and set it on the handkerchief. “This is why they fear us. They live with their secret shame, their secret terror that we might do to them what they’ve done to us. We don’t depend on them, don’t need them. We ‘don’t know our place,’ and they see that we’re a well-armed militia.”

“And we bear more than just guns.” Reverend Penick set down a gold coin and three new pennies next to it. Closing his eyes, he muttered a quick prayer and bundled everything within the handkerchief, then placed a red rooster feather in front of it.

“It’s why we have to always be ready.” Daddy drew back his waistcoat to reveal the handle of his revolver. He also kept an “emergency bag” packed, tucked away in the hall closet. Some clothes, some toiletries, and our family Bible. I used to flip through that Bible—the archive of our family history—with the yellowed pages of the funeral home notices tucked between several of its pages. He kept it next to the shoe box of important papers. Like many other former soldiers, Daddy couldn’t read or write, but he kept being given documents and told that they were important, so he entrusted them to me to keep safe. Some were family letters that dated back to our Emancipation; others were papers like deeds and such. In case trouble came.

“I don’t like guns,” Ms. Mary said.

“I don’t either. We don’t need them. That’s why we’re here.” The reverend walked over to the barn wall. Several masks hung there, half hidden by shadows. He selected one whose face had been painted a dull yellow. Black stripes scored its jawline. Carved into the mask itself were two leopards, posed as if climbing down a tree, surrounding a goat that stared defiantly out.

“Eso l’aye.” Daddy slipped his mask onto his head. A simple human face, though fox ears had been carved behind it. “The world is fragile.”

There was a solemnity to their movements. Reverend Penick retrieved a drum that had been hidden behind a bale of hay. He began pounding out a simple rhythm that set the mood. Daddy closed his eyes, swaying. Ms. Mary poured dirt from one pouch and then the next into the silver bowl. She seemed particular about the order. After adding water from the bowl by the doors, she kneaded the mixture as if baking a cake then poured it over the bundled handkerchief. As it dried and hardened, she placed kernels and cowrie shells into the mound, fashioning a face. Only then did she plant the feather on it as its final adornment.

The ritual comforted me, like familiar nighttime whispers soothing parts of me I hadn’t realized were there.

Ms. Mary lowered a mask onto her head, its built-in veil covering her face. A large parrot, its wings extended, cradling smaller birds within its span. As she bowed before the earth-sculpted face, a low wail escaped her. The cry turned into a crisp note that she held long. Her voice wove within the rhythm of the drumbeat, singing in a language both foreign and yet familiar to me, as if my soul was translating it.

Daddy jerked, a sudden shoulder spasm, and the movement caused me to jump. Again, his other shoulder leapt. And again, as he doubled over. And his leg hopped. The rhythm of the music possessed him. He pranced back and forth before the table, his arms and legs whirling about like he was signing a message to us. The candle fluttered with each pass.

Out of reverence for the moment—not fear—I snuck closer to the mound. The weight of its corn teeth bent its smile; its cowrie eyes drooped. The gaze of the earthen face seemed to plumb my very depths.

Sifted me.

My tiny fists clenched. My fingernails dug into the tender flesh of my palm, drawing blood. Tiny droplets landed on the mound.

“The orchard protects us,” I whispered.

—

Me and Daddy often rode the trolley from Keystone Avenue to Indiana Avenue. Those trips to Ransom Place were our only lifeline to the city. They couldn’t be avoided. Once he realized he would be longer than he thought at the hardware store, I asked if I could wait somewhere else. He gave me a dime to get cookies on the way to the library. The bakery was safe for us.

But I skipped past the bakery to Milton’s Ice Creamery.

I knew that I was supposed to come right home, go to the Dunbar Library, do my homework, then my chores. But sometimes a girl just wanted some ice cream.

Mr. Milton thought himself a good man. But he also went along with how things had been going because that didn’t inconvenience him, wouldn’t cost him any standing. And he knew me, yet treated me different as soon as I entered his store, like I wasn’t welcome there.

I wasn’t afraid of the cost of doing right. I was a fighter, just like Daddy.

And then there was that boy that worked there, Shane. He was from Beech Grove, a sundown town within Indianapolis that was a headquarters for the Night Riders. In their hoods and sheets, they claimed to be the ghosts of Confederate soldiers determined to scare us into our place. Every time Shane’s eyes found me, my stomach crawled into a knot, like twigs twisting into a crude nest. Always looked at me like I was out of place, less than him. In his eyes, Black people could only hold menial jobs. Handyman, cook, maid. Servants to make his life easier.

A framed picture of Jesus hung crooked on the wall. The waiting customers, with their sullen faces, all turned to me as soon as I entered. The woman behind me muttered something, but Mr. Milton waved her ahead of me. Everyone got served before me. Treated better. All to remind me who I was. What I was.

Finally, with no one else for them to take an order from, I slapped my money on the counter and folded my thin arms across my tiny chest. I would not be moved. With my money spending as well as anyone else’s, Mr. Milton took my order. Double fudge chocolate with a sprinkle of peanuts. As he prepared my cone, that boy Shane shoved all the chairs under the table, a reminder that I couldn’t sit down. Not in there.

Mr. Milton handed me my cone. Shane leaned against the wall, front-row seat to my exit stroll.

But I just stood there and licked my cone. It tasted delicious.

Dark rage flashed like a lightning storm across Shane’s face. His eyes aflame with grim amusement, he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me outside.

Taking me around the corner, he pinned me against the wall. His arm blocked my easy path of escape. He stared as if seeing me for the first time. And froze.

“Your eyes…they’re so…blue.” The fear and wonder in his voice dripping with contempt.

Covering my mouth with his, he forced his tongue into my mouth. Still cold from the ice cream, I numbly felt it wriggling around in there. Drawing away, I slapped the living shit out of him so hard my ice cream scoop toppled from my cone and onto his shoe.

Without so much as a glance back, I ran straight to Daddy.

—

That night, something close to a scream choked me awake. My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my fingertips. The air too thick to breathe, a weight pressed against my chest. I tore away my blanket. My wrists ached with pain that ran to the core of my joints, an unnamed terror redlining my soul into carved bits.

The gunshot’s report issued like distant thunder. Daddy burst into my room.

“Flora, come with me.” Not even breaking stride, he handed me my emergency bag. He’d also packed me a small bundle of clothes and some bedding. Whatever was happening or was about to happen, he expected it to last for a while. “They’re trying to lynch a colored man outside of town.”

Along Vandeman Street, carloads of rifle-toting white men unloaded. They fired wildly like it was a game. We fled to the church. Daddy shifted his waistcoat open but did not draw his revolver even as the firing of guns renewed. Bullets flew by from all sides as the men took cover behind buildings, attempting to surround our neighborhood. The church doors opened as we approached, welcoming us inside without us needing to slow down. People milled about, passing out cold water to soothe parched throats. Mostly the elderly and children, checking in with one another. Ms. Mary read from the Psalms. Reverend Penick prayed for daylight because “madness came at night.”

“Do we know what happened?” Ms. Mary folded her Bible shut.

“The truth don’t matter,” Daddy continued. “The way they tell it, one of our men made improper advances to a white woman. Now I hear tell the Night Riders’re in the early stages of riot fever.”

“They’re already making demands.” Ms. Mary grabbed whatever supplies she could.

“What are they saying?”

“They’re ordering all women and children to the park.”

“They want to separate and corral us. They want all the men out in front the church. They promise they will not be harmed,” Daddy said.

“I’m surprised they could say that and not start laughing.” Ms. Mary’s lips fixed in a grim purse.

Our folks must have been too slow in complying for their tastes, so the Night Riders started shooting at the nearest house. Rows and rows of long barrels protruded from every facing window, and our men fired back. Death stalked the streets no matter where I might hide.

“Is it my fault?” Somewhere deep within me, from a place Daddy couldn’t protect me, I knew the answer.

“Get back.” Daddy lit a cigarette. His next words came low and exasperated, talking to no one in particular. “Know your place. Stay in your place. But if you build your place into something nice, they want to take it from you. All they needed was an excuse.”

“We’re holding them back, giving them something to think about,” Ms. Mary said.

“No, the Night Riders are playing for time, waiting for reinforcements.” Daddy stationed himself by the door. His waistcoat tucked to free his revolver handle.

The reverend sidled up to him. “No matter your education, job, or title, they see you as a Negro today.”

He didn’t say Negro.

They thought that we were too young to understand, but children knew. I understood that they sought to break us, crush our dreams. The white men closed in on us, skirting toward the church, without crossing the boundary into Norwood, screwing up the courage for their eventual assault. They came with the torches, ready to sweep through the streets, ready to burn down businesses, loot homes. Reducing years of sacrifice and hard work to screes of brick and ashes. A lot of people were going to die on both sides. My soul cried out for justice.

“Get away from there! King Mob is coming.” Daddy ushered me away from the window.

“You know what we have to do. Soon it will be too late.” Reverend Penick lit a candle.

Cocking his head toward the rising tide of shouts, Daddy joined Reverend Penick and Ms. Mary in forming a circle around the candle. Taking one another’s hands, they prayed. The susurrus of voices outside of the doors grew louder.

The men were coming for our home. My home.

A hymn of wails filled my ears. A call of distant voices I felt in my heart. In my blood. No, through my blood, connecting my spirit to theirs. My heart hammered an arrhythmic beat, trying to stir a dance. My temples throbbed, as if part of my spirit was swept along with their spell. Dread slithered up my leg. My mouth ran dry. I was unable to swallow. Or scream. My hands covered my eyes, then my ears, unable to block out the images or the sounds, slowly realizing that I didn’t want to. Daddy’s faith might fall short, but mine wouldn’t.

The orchard protects us.

The clouds closed in, smothering the last rays of the moon’s light, reducing the men to a sea of oblique shadows. They did not know the streets of Norwood. The way the grain of the grass gave way to guide soft footfalls. The hidden paths of the orchard.

Mr. Milton escorted a group of men toward the edge of our neighborhood. Tromping through people’s lawns, guns at the ready. No torch in his hand, no weapon to speak of, he simply walked, maintaining the illusion of him being a good man. He withdrew a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his forehead.

My spirit flowed through the orchard, riding the chorus of my ancestors.

The branches swayed, caught up in the wind. Except there wasn’t even a breeze. Unshaped topiary, a wilderness of untamed bushes, shifted in the shadows. Even the trees moved. One of the men stopped short, suddenly nervous, noting the eerie rustling. No neighbors chattered. No tentative gunshots retorted. No birds stirred overhead. No dogs barked. No night sounds filled the air. Only a preternatural stillness of everything except the grove.

A grim mask of shadows, like a face without eyes, the orchard lost all definition up close, an amorphous spread of limbs darting each way. Leaves billowed about in a brambly prowl. The opening at the end of the walkway closed, pruned branches closed like a jaw. I jumped, mirroring the man near the edge of the orchard. Another man twitched, startled at a soft sound, perhaps the snapping of branches in the distance. Or gentle crunching of fallen twigs underfoot. The branches blocked the path, its leaves obscuring any vestiges of light.

Skirting the periphery, Mr. Milton backed away. His back pressed against the wall of shrubbery framing the orchard. Branches extended from the partition, tendrils weaving to lock him in place. He struggled against them, but they only tightened their grip. Once he stilled, twigs pried his eyes open to bear witness.

Aware of the intrusion, the men scattered, skittering along the bed of rocks, unable to find purchase. Branches clawed at them. Our attackers panicked, lost among groves of the orchard. Furtive, the bushes yawned, almost turning toward them in a feral grin. Branches scourged them. The men struggled, fighting against the branches, their wild flails producing the bitter aroma of split leaves.

Coming in from another street, that boy Shane stopped in the middle of the road and yelled in triumph. He waved his torch about, setting it to any house he neared. Casual and random. Approaching part of the orchard, he hesitated, locking eyes with where he knew I was. Raising the torch to illumine his face, he brought a lone finger to his lips.

Vines lashed out at him and wound themselves around him, so sudden that the torch dropped from his hand and was snuffed by the dirt below. Shane squealed like a goat. The braid of nettles gripped his face still and held his mouth open in the frozen terror of a scream. The branch needles wormed their way into his mouth, slicing his tongue free before plunging down his throat. His muffled gagging cut brutally short in the night, leaving only the hungry muttering sound of branches enclosing him. Of snapping tendons. Of rending bones.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, unbidden and unforgiving.

As if a spell broke, Daddy, Ms. Mary, and Reverend Penick released their circle. Their eyes fell to me, seeing me for the first time. Daddy touched my shoulder, tentative, before drawing away. The reverend removed his elekes and wrapped them around me. And Ms. Mary took my hand, soft and gentle, as an invitation. And we never spoke of it again.

There was what happened, what people said happened, and the truth. But there are no secrets in Norwood.

We lose more of our story each day, forgetting who we are, how we do. But we need to remember. I was meant to tell the tale at the anointed time, because something is coming. Returning.

And we need to be ready.

1.

Some days I wonder after my twin brother’s body—at all the ways in which decomposition has deformed it. We no longer look alike, of course. Trace elements of resemblance remain, I’m sure, but my cells are regenerating, his are not. Also, one can’t forget the holes ripped in his body because of a confused man’s nihilism. The minute those bullets blew wide cavities through my brother’s head and his chest, we stopped being identical. Unless there is some extraordinary circumstance, even when I die and my body begins to crumble as his is crumbling, we’ll never mirror each other again. His head is warped now where the bullets shattered his skull. I doubt I will ever duplicate that. In my saddest moments my intrusive thoughts have me shooting myself in the same spots my brother caught his wounds. I’d need the same type of gun, and that’s where the dark fantasy thankfully breaks down. Preposterous to think I could draw an AR15 and shoot myself with precision. But then my other self, my suicidal self, says: Why not just hire a hit man?

In my house I once kept on a light in the upper room, the room I held for him and him alone when he was alive, the one he stayed in whenever he and his lover, Shantí, were on the outs. That light felt like a beacon for my brother. Many days I would go up to the lighted room with a cup of tea, look out the window, and think, I’m still here, twin, come find me if you need to talk.

2.

I could have continued like this—thoroughly broken, but still functioning—if our sister, Sorai, had not come by the house that one day. She appeared as a weak tapping on the door, so faint I almost didn’t hear. When I opened the door a rush of icy air blew by me.

How long you gon’ have your sister standing out in the cold, damn, Sorai said as she shoved past me into the house.

I didn’t even know you knew where I lived, I said.

Sorai didn’t stop to wait for me; she continued down the hall into the living room as if I weren’t standing there.

Don’t start with me, she replied. When was the last time you invited me? Oh, okay. Listen. Sorai dashed herself onto my gray sofa. He been coming by your dreams?

Who?

I knew she meant Jamal. I don’t know why I decided to play games.

Mahad, stop. He been coming by your dreams, hasn’t he?

Not any more than usual. Not for a while actually.

That doesn’t make any…She was mumbling to herself now. She sucked her teeth. You telling me the truth?

I nodded.

What about the screecher birds? They been coming by? Or Umi and Daddy? How about Uncle Charlie?

I barely knew Uncle Charlie, Sorai. How am I supposed to dream about him?

Mahad, what does knowing him got— Oh, I see, you still think it has to do with your mind. Not really, Mahad. It’s them in the great beyond trying to talk to you. So you don’t need to really know Uncle Charlie or anyone that came before him. I dream about all kinds of relatives I never seen. It’s because I’m connected. I would say you gotta get connected, but…Uncle Charlie was connected. You see what it got him.

It was easy sometimes to forget Sorai was a scientist. Once one of the foremost experts on the screecher bird. Her complicated cosmology had always included a host of ancestors speaking to her day and night. A grief was the collective noun I came up with for her people: a grief of the dead. Sorai mourned people whose names we could never possibly know.

I wish I could remember Sorai, outside of her broad contours, of course, before Uncle Charlie’s death. I don’t remember much before that day. She too died that day. She’d tell you the same thing. So much of her soul evaporated when that screecher’s claws pierced our uncle’s chest and took him off into the sky. I looked into her wild grayish eyes now and saw nothing there. Just a walking, living, and somehow breathing deadwoman. Nothing in her except a rage, a drive, a dream of revenge against nature, thoughtless, brutish nature. Nothing could suffice, nothing short of the annihilation of every screecher everywhere would ever restore her peace and joy. My sister was a fool in the particular way that only someone who was too smart to be such a fool could be a fool.

Brother, she said. We need to drink to talk about this. I know you got some scotch.

Sorai sat with her legs set wide, taking up space as men often do. People, in fact, sometimes mistook her for a man. She kept her hair closely cropped, even in the hard years when it seemed finding a decent barber was like finding a cockroach who communicated through sign language. Sorai brushed her hair carefully and constantly when we were young so that rows of waves bobbed along her head from the back to the front, and all available evidence indicated she’d continued this habit. I watched my sister’s spinning waves with a mix of pride and envy; I had let my hair grow into an off-white bush and then I rarely picked it so it napped up in spots. My face was likewise dotted with beads of gray.

Sorai’s boyishness was something she and my mother argued about when she was a teenager and our parents were living. Why don’t you try prettying up yourself? my mother would say. What you hiding for under all them big clothes? Sorai stayed deaf to our mother, at least when it came to her appearance.

Sometimes out the corner of my eye now it’s like I see a blue hologram of my sister. She looks just how she looked on that couch. When I turn to see her, neither my sister nor the couch are there. I set two glasses on the table in front of her now, poured three fingers of fine scotch, and she laughed at me. You still measuring it like Daddy taught you when you were fifteen? She laughed again. Jama—Mahad, I missed your childish ass, jack. How did we let it get so far? We all we got.

She threw back her liquor and waved her hand, signaling me to pour more as she struggled the alcohol down. I moved quickly to grab the bottle as if I were a bartender performing for tips. Sorai knew very well how we got this far. I could still hear her voice so long ago—younger, less alcohol stained—telling me I had to take some blame for how Umi and Daddy died. How could it ever be the same after that? I poured three more fingers and my sister grew quiet and watched the glass, her face hard and serious.

Shantí still trying to set you up with her uncle?

He’s cute and funny and all, but it’s a no. That would be weird, wouldn’t it? That girl just wants to keep me in her life. Is that what you came here to talk to me about, sis, my love life?

No, you right, Mahad. Listen. Sorai stood and she paced a bit. I just want you to listen for a little. I saw him. I thought it was a dream at first, but it’s not. He came to me last week.

Who?

I sounded every bit like an owl and not a man. Again, I don’t know why I chose to play games with my sister. Probably, I thought it would be impolite to immediately acknowledge her delusion. She ignored me anyway, just walked around a little and continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

It began with a tapping at her front window, she told me. Soft, but insistent. Perhaps a tree branch or some pebbles kicked up by the wind. No, this tapping had an intelligence.

When my sister peeked outside, she noticed a shambling shadow at her window. This tapper could mean her nothing but harm, so my sister grabbed Daddy’s shotgun and flung open the door. When the light caught the face of the intruder, Sorai froze, overcome with a kind of calm fright. The man’s clothes were dirty and torn, his face swollen and bruised, the side of his head caved in. The face. That face! At first she thought it was me, on drugs or something, and fresh from surviving an assault. She called my name, but the man replied, Noooo. He reached a hand toward her, the flesh bruised and torn. Sorai noticed then a hole in his chest the size of a large man’s fist. She could see clear to the other side of the neighborhood. Still the man walked, his pace quickening with each stutter-step. He spoke, calling my sister’s name.

Mahad, she said now. It was Jamal. I know how this sounds, but it was Jamal.

They put our brother in a casket, Sorai. They covered that casket in concrete and dumped earth on top of it. I seen it. We seen it. I never understood how a scientist could believe all the hoodoo you believe.

You ever see the body?

Now, you know I couldn’t bear—

Me neither. I told you I identified him, but I never did. Just signed some papers. I’m sorry I lied to you, Jam—damn, I keep doing that—Mahad. I couldn’t look at my brother as a shot-up corpse. Especially with his spitting image still walking around. Glad Umi and Daddy ain’t live to see how Jamal died. I signed some papers. They said closed casket. I said, Okay. We saw the casket go into the earth. Coulda been Kermit the Frog or Knobby Jenkins in there for all we know. I can’t explain too much in this world, Ja—Mahad. I’m not asking you to believe me, brother, I’m just asking you to listen. Can you do that?

I leaned back in my seat and rested my index finger in that spot between my nose and my top lip. My brother used to do this too. Sometimes we did it at the same time and people laughed at us. Perhaps I was trying to stop myself from speaking over my sister. I wanted to tell her to get the hell out my house, but I also wanted to tell her I loved her. Neither seemed right, though.

I liked that you called me a scientist, she said. Ain’t nobody called me that in years. Scientist? She said this as if she were spitting blood from her mouth. I barely am one these days. Not in any way the establishment would respect. You know what I do for a living, Mahad? I drive a courtesy van for a car dealership. Every research team I’ve ever been on tells me I’m too blinded by what happened to Uncle Charlie to be objective. They don’t believe the screecher hunts us, not any more than any animal that occasionally eats a human. They won’t believe it! No one understands those birds more than me. I been studying them seriously since I was a teenager. Since Uncle Charlie. They take my knowledge and fire me when my truth gets to be too much! I can’t bear for it to be my own brother this time. Me and Jamal talked about stuff. Told me he’s trying to wrestle his mind back from the hunger. Told me to tell you he was coming to see you when he gets his mind back. He said more, but I can’t tell you if you don’t believe me. Your resurrected brother looked at me, probably like how Lazarus looked at Christ. He talked to me. That’s not just my truth, that’s the truth.

My sister watched me and then cast her eyes to the floor. She sighed. I was certain she couldn’t bear to see the disbelief and pity in my eyes. I tried to keep a neutral face, but my eyes always betrayed me.

I wanted my sister to no longer see my incredulous eyes so I stood and walked to the window. I thought I saw human movement outside, perhaps a shadow, but, no, I saw only trees.

I know you heard about that big award that research team out of Port Yooga just got for their work on the migratory habits of the screecher bird, Sorai said.

That was all over the news, I replied. That was big. You were on that team?

Of course I was! You think they could have done that without my knowledge? My effort? My creativity? But my name ain’t listed on that medal. I got not a penny. Didn’t even invite me to the award ceremony. Fuck. Good thing they fired me, though. Made me research in my own way. I keep up on the literature. So much of it is bullshit, though. I still go out there and observe those things, the way they pass overhead big like 747s with raggedy-ass feathers. Always look like they been in a fight. I see those twitchy red bird eyes in my sleep. Them long black wings and how they look like a cloak when they resting. Their football heads. The curve of that yellow beak and their long necks. They’re beautiful in their own way. I stopped relying on institutions, though. On their money. I had to find other sources of knowledge, sources that other scientists might think are unnatural. You ever hear about the thirty? The Ballad of the Cry-Cry?

Sorai stood and reached behind her. She pulled from her back pocket some yellowing papers rolled into a cylinder like a scroll. She smiled a bit and held it out to me.

Handing jewels to an innocent child, she said. Behold!

Prophecies and ancient wisdom, huh? I replied, taking the papers in my hand.

I unrolled the stack and eyed the lettering. It appeared to be done on an old typewriter. At the top, someone had sketched a beautiful and realistic rendering of a screecher bird, but they had colored it the palest white, except for dots of red for eyes.

At the top it read Chapter 10: Ballad of the Cry-Cry Thirty. I recognized the struck word as an older name for the screecher bird. Many still used it depending on what part of Cross River you were from.

Don’t ask me where I got this, Jamal. My sister didn’t correct herself this time. Just know that there are fifteen chapters and each of us got one.

Each of who?

Stop asking me questions, ’cause you asking the wrong ones. Each of us got a chapter to keep safe and one day it’ll be together when the time’s right, brother. Time ain’t right, but I want you to hold the one I got, okay? You’ll understand after you see it, Mahad.

I went from scanning to reading deeply. I noticed when my sister finished her drink and set it on the table, but not when she stood and slipped out. Her whole visit took on the feel of a vivid and unsettling dream.

3.

Chapter 10
ballad of the thirty

A loudness of cry-crys, at one time, circled Marcus Stroh’s plantation in Port Yooga, Virginia, like a halo of birds. This was in 1808. They took to the flying as if it were their work to appear in the sky when the sun started to emerge, just like Marcus’s thirty or so slaves. And the birds left to nest at sundown, roughly the same time Marcus’s servants left their place in the field to eat supper and rest for the night. One dressed in feathers of pure white always flew out front, casting a sharp contrast to its black-suited brethren. It even had eyes of red as if they’d been gouged and were still bleeding.

The birds bothered Chiefy and Gall, who Marcus had hired to supervise the thirty. Looks like they conjuring a portal to hell, Chiefy said to Gall one day, pointing his shotgun to the sky. Bet I could pop the white one, easy. As if out of nowhere, Marcus Stroh’s hand appeared on the barrel of Chiefy’s gun, lowering it so it pointed to the field instead of the sky.

Don’t you fools go thinking about nothing like that, he said. I don’t need that on my life. You have better things to do around here.

The fools didn’t, in fact, have anything better to do. Herc, one of the thirty, provided more than enough supervision. He knew how to get his people to work, and if any violence was necessary, he could be proficient with a whip. To most of the thirty, Herc was no better than a white man. As a result of his diligent labor, Herc was given fresher clothes, private quarters near where Chiefy and Gall stayed, and some extra meat to sell at the market on Sundays. Herc didn’t sell the meat at the market, though. He took it to a woman in Cross River, Maryland, named Miss Susan, who paid him for it and also taught him various arts, from lovemaking to reading to basic magic—turning oneself into a puff of smoke, traveling along a breeze, and then reassembling elsewhere.

Look, my love, she told him, turn to smoke right in front of them and then come here. Don’ go back.

He shook his head. I got business with Stroh, he told her.

One day, Herc left the field and sat next to Stroh on the porch of the big house. Stroh stiffened, watched his property, wide-eyed with confusion.

I was planning on buying myself free with the money I been saving, Herc said. I think you know that, but that’ll take forever. I got a better idea. He turned himself to smoke and back again. I can teach you some things, powerful things, Massa Stroh. Things I know could get us riches beyond what you got now. Smoke only the beginning of things, though.

So it came to pass that Herc taught Marcus Stroh the bits and pieces he learned from Miss Susan, unbeknownst to her. And unbeknownst to Herc, back in Cross River, Miss Susan was making a different kind of magic, the kind you’d find only in a law book. She’d found a loophole. Proof that the part of Stroh’s farm that the thirty lived and worked on was really across the Cross River line and not a part of Port Yooga; thus, the thirty were free men and women, and not property. Miss Susan imagined herself a great Moses, leading her people off that Virginia plantation and into Cross River. And the day did come that the court took up Miss Susans’s petition and declared Marcus Stroh’s property free men, women, and children. Stroh looked at those thirty people and saw the entirety of his wealth. He’d be a pauper if they just walked off. On May 3, a judge set their free day as June 5. Stroh and Herc argued day and night what should be done. Should they ban them from leaving? Let them walk? It seemed now all the training Stroh had done would go to waste. Herc cut himself off from Miss Susan, and promised Stroh that no matter what, he’d stay with him. There’s an empire to win, Herc told Stroh.

Um-hmm, Stroh replied, and on June 4, he, Gall, and Chiefy waited until it was nearly night and shot the thirty while they ate supper.

Herc was the first to catch a bullet in his temple, caving his skull right in. Some ran into the Wildlands trailing blood. None of them made it out the forest that night. On June 5 it would have been murder and Stroh might have hung for that. June 4 it was a property issue, and Meratti Property & Life Insurance paid him for every one of his dead slaves.

His plan didn’t end there, no—with what Herc taught him, his property could return from the dead renewed, machines without mind. They’d work at all hours, having no need for rest, and would be indifferent to the vagaries of heat or cold or rain or wind. The resurrected have no need for clothes or shelter; the tobacco field and work would be their home. Stroh likewise would no longer have any fears of insurrection or of losing his investment to a runaway slave’s flight. The knowledge Herc had given him now solved every single persistent problem of this workforce.

So, on one long night, Stroh, Gall, and Chiefy removed the thirty bodies from the shallow earth, and laid them before the tobacco field in a straight line. Stroh called on spirits even his enslaved had long lost touch with. Spirits few on this land knew well and spirits Stroh knew not at all. Stroh swirled up dust with magic he didn’t fully understand. Passing that dust over the bodies of the dead. Lightning coming down into the forest, striking trees, making the fires of Hell right there in his fields and into the Wildlands. The dead rose that night and returned with hunger replacing any language, thought, feeling, or sentiment.

Marcus Stroh and his family, along with Chiefy and Gall, were first to be devoured by the dead. And then their remains rose up, thoughtless and hungry.

Cross River people thought it was funny at first—slavers getting what they deserved—but the dead started wandering into town from the Wildlands. There’s a certain equality the resurrected believe in. They make no distinction between enslaved and free black, slaver, or indentured servant—all are food.

The cry-crys still made their circle, a portal in the sky. Miss Susan went down to that abandoned Stroh plantation, unafraid of the resurrected and their hunger, unafraid of slave catchers that might capture her and sell her into bondage. She knelt, took a breath, and went into that deep blue meditative state. Some say she controlled the cry-crys, some say she made a deal with them, but those birds collected the thirty—now more than thirty—and placed them in a cave high atop the Cliffs. There, the birds watch over the resurrected, bringing them back when they stray and, from time to time, feeding them a meal.

4.

I read the pages over and over, holding them carefully. They were old and many of the creases had torn. Any minute they could turn to dust. But who could believe all this? I’d heard the story of the thirty before, but never with the twist of the dead reanimating. When my sister called the next week, I didn’t wait for her to say hello.

What kind of campfire nonsense do you have me reading, Sorai?

It’s not an old ghost story, Mahad, my sister replied. It’s the missing link. What I never understood. I never could forgive Umi and Daddy for letting the screechers take Uncle Charlie. For not fighting. For not shooting those things out the sky. They sacrificed for us, to keep us all safe. They should have taught us. I thought the screechers hunted us, but no. They just doing their jobs, Mahad.

I could hear myself breathing through the phone. What could I say? Words felt foreign to me.

Mahad, my sister said. I don’t know how our brother got wrapped up with the dead. I don’t know. A lot of things I haven’t figured out. I do know…She paused. I do know…all those years I blamed you for what happened to Umi and Daddy. I was like, Big handyman could build a deck, come by the house to mow the lawn every week and shit, do everything except check the fucking battery on the CO_2 detector? Seeing Jamal, though, talking to him, reading this stuff, and putting two and three together…Well, Jam—Mahad, I forgive you. I don’t blame you anymore.

Sorai, I said, I love you, first of all. I paused, unsure of where to begin. Most people who are not twins won’t get this, sis—and even some twins won’t get this—but there was something between Jamal and me. It’s like a buzzing. An energy. He could be in Japan and I’m right here in the Riv and I’d feel it. It’s like a sense, like smell, like touch. Like how you know your arm is wherever your arm is at. That maniac shot him and I didn’t know what was happening, but that whole feel of my brother out there in the world just got erased. I don’t feel him now. That buzzing’s gone. I feel an absence like someone chopped off two of my limbs. That’s how I know my brother is not here. I don’t feel him. I appreciate that something profound happened outside your house. That you had a vision or something, but Jamal’s gone, sis. I love you and Jamal’s gone.

Okay, my love. I’m gonna call you my love like Umi used to call you. I was always jealous of that. You got my love and no one else did. I could hear the smile in my sister’s voice. There’s more, my love. I want to show you something. Some of my work. Meet me at noon tomorrow in the Wildlands, jack. By Frog’s Crossing. Meet me there. I’ll call in sick to the dealership. We shouldn’t go years without seeing each other. Let this be a start.

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. I had no intention of meeting my sister in the Wildlands. When we got off the phone, I replayed the sound of that smile in my sister’s voice and that sound made me happy.

5.

I felt my sister had enchanted me. All night she buzzed within me, her words. I couldn’t manage to sleep, sweating great salt rivers into my bedding. When I closed my eyes, I found myself assaulted by visions of that spot my sister told me to visit. I don’t know why Sorai had to choose Frog’s Crossing. It was a spot every queer teenage boy took a lover to kiss and rub while the sun went down. That’s the reputation, at least. I have no idea what kids are doing these days, but I did my time out there kissing on boys’ necks and reaching into their shorts. I had Jamal follow me and a dude I was with to Frog’s Crossing when we were about fourteen. He was with a girl who kept complaining about the bugs. They stayed about twenty minutes, but decided it wasn’t their vibe and left. I wanted him to love Frog’s Crossing as much as I did, but I understood if he couldn’t. And anyway, I was there for the boy whose hand I was holding, not for my brother, so I forgot about Jamal as much as I was able to forget about him and eventually enjoyed the rough hand I held in mine.

I sat up sharply now when the sound interrupted my memories. I thought I heard a faint tapping at a downstairs window, just how my sister told me the dead Jamal would arrive. When I looked around outside, there was no one there. A buzzing rose within my skull. The sound rose and fell over and over that night. When it dipped, I welcomed its quiet, but when it rose, it came back louder, more intense each time. Deep in the night when I usually slept, the buzzing turned to delirium, to a headache so powerful I could feel my brain shake. Damn, I screamed out. Damn. Damn. Okay. Damn. I’ll go to Frog’s Crossing if it means you’ll take this damn buzzing!

The buzzing ceased and for the first time that night I found sleep. When I woke, my tortured night had all the impressions of a fading dream. I arrived at Frog’s Crossing at about a quarter past noon. It looked exactly as I remembered it, tranquil and pretty, the white faces of the Cliffs in the distance, shrouded in fog but still visible, leaves floating atop the swampy water. The last time I was out here I came as an adult with a Haitian boy, a man really, though ten years my junior, I’d been seeing for about a month. Times were less complicated then: My parents and my brother were still alive. I kissed the Haitian’s neck and reached into his sweatpants while the sun set. Tradition, you know. He thickened in my hand, but he held his limbs as stiff as his overworked muscles. He patted my leg and turned to me. This is where children come, no? I never saw him again after that day.

My sister now stood in a brown bog. She was wearing black rubber boots up to her hips and when she saw me she smiled and raised her hand high in a wave. Sorai turned from me and placed her gloved hands on either side of her mouth, forming a speaker. She let out a loud cry that would have been indistinguishable from a screecher had I not had my two eyes set on her.

The precision of Sorai’s screech was impressive, but not surprising. When we were both young and she had just begun developing her obsession, Sorai would practice her call in the yard—back then she sounded pitiful—and she would say, The first thing any ornithologist, or hunter, needs to do is mimic their subject’s voice, and I’m both.

Before she could finish her third cry, I saw a shadow pass over us. The screechers knew to first blot out the sun. The arrival of every screecher was theater and now there flew above us three loud, sharp-clawed, flying dramatis personae.

The smallest screeched in response to my sister. The sound caused rumbling at my feet. I could scarcely understand how that noise could come from that animal, huge beyond belief, but still the runt. The other two screamed their choral response. My sister rejoined with an angered reply, louder, it seemed, than all three screechers combined. The four of them shrieked among themselves, disrupting the forest like a storm’s gale. I put my hands to my ears to block out the sound and felt a wetness leaking from both auricles.

Soon I realized I heard nothing, not my sister’s anguished wails, not the screechers’ battle cries. I couldn’t tell you if the fourth screecher that swooped in—all black with silver flecks in its battle-weathered feathers—and snatched Sorai with the long, sharp daggers of its claws screamed madly or flew in silently. I couldn’t tell you if my sister bawled like a screecher or a human when the bird lifted her. I’ll thankfully never know the sound of Sorai being ripped apart as the runt attempted to snatch her from the fourth screecher’s grip. There she was, the sister whom I loved, in two pieces—three if you counted the falling viscera—flying in two different directions, into the blue and into the sun.

I felt the brush, the grass, and the cold dirt at my knees. I could feel, but not hear, a screecher’s wail vibrating in my throat and my chest. I didn’t realize until that moment that I could feel a buzzing for my sister, just like I had once felt for my brother, a different buzzing, but still something. I could feel it no longer. My sister was gone.

6.

My hearing returned and I kept expecting my sister to return as well, but she didn’t. When I attempted to silence everything to feel my sister or my brother, I found nothing but an unadulterated rage. I walked along River Promenade in the weeks after her funeral and watched the couples holding hands, the children flying into parents’ arms. Why did everyone else get the joy, the connection, when I had just the emptiness? Sometimes the fathers and mothers burst into screams, or acted with dismissiveness toward their chattering offspring. Did they know what kind of gift they were rejecting?

I often tell myself it was madness that made me do what I did next. And yes, there was some madness involved, for sure, but how do I explain the cold rationality?

That suicidal impulse returned. The dream of dying how my brother died, of again looking how my twin looks. My face swollen as I imaged his face had swelled. My head caved as I understood his head had caved.

Whenever the daydream of dying in a mass shooting appeared now, I didn’t shoo it out of my mind, instead I visited online forums where I knew gun lovers congregated. On an AR15 forum, under the name Ronald_RayGun2Ar15, I typed the words: Someone needs to shoot up River Promenade. I then moved to a forum for the rap group the 2nd Amendment Soldiers (I took my handle from a member of this group) and there I typed: Someone needs to shoot up River Promenade. On and on I went, from deezgunnutz.com to the gun-and-porn site cockandshoot.com, I typed the same thing as if uttering the monster’s name out loud and waiting for him to appear. On most sites my message went ignored or moderators deleted it quickly, but on one forum, someone named Garçon replied: Sup? and I responded with a devil emoji.

He messaged me what he said was an encrypted link so we could chat. I clicked it without thinking much.

you can speak freely in here chief this link got top notch encrypshun, he said. whut u need?

Mass shooting

Ahhhh i can get you an AR not a problem…

I explained to Garçon why the gun would be useless to me. Told him all about wanting to be buried alongside my brother, to be finally restored to twin glory. He didn’t respond for a bit, an uncomfortable gap of seven minutes. I thought about logging off, about the police battering my door, but then I thought of my brother and my sister, of my parents, and I felt useless; it didn’t matter if I was in jail or beneath the earth. I had nothing. I was adrift. I floated above myself like a ghost and some more words appeared on my screen:

can stage that for sure but much more expensive. gota hire crisis actors and person to take the fall. how does making it seem like a racist attack sound to you

Crisis actors? Holy shot??? They’re real?

of course their real
need witnesses to confirm shooter acted alone
but they dont come cheap
in that part of town I;d need to coordinate with the washingtons too but if we go with a racist attack (my pref) i’d also need to coordinate with the aryans. racist shooting makes it easier to cover my tracks but again more pricey. thinking 100 thou

I logged off immediately. Mahad, what are you doing? I thought, and I closed my computer, believing sanity and decency had again gripped me. No money changed hands, no plans worked out, no foul. What would my brother think of me now? I wondered. But then I took a walk and found myself down by River Promenade again. There I witnessed the joy I could never possibly access. I thought again of the mother, father, and sister, all of whom I had connected with only awkwardly in life, and the brother who was my first and deepest love. How could all this happiness all around me bring only anxiety and rage? I managed to hold off logging on to the encrypted chat for two days, but when I did, I found Garçon there as if he’d been at his computer just waiting for me the whole time.

so I spoke to the aryans and the washingtons and its a go but the crisis actors and the patsy are more expensive than I thought. its gonna be 250k

What if we don’t make it a racist attack, how much does that knock off?

sorry that’s non-negotiable. since im doing the job myself I need a clear villain if I want to escape and stay free. both the aryans and the washingtons are providing extra shooters i could drop the additional shooters to save some bucks but that would only save like 10 bands and would make the whole thing more dangerous for me and my partners so idk
not worth it imp
imo

I rested my fingers on the keyboard, thinking carefully about the next words I’d type. I don’t know why I haggled. I suppose I was used to negotiating in my contracting work. Between my savings and my business accounts, I was good for this. We wouldn’t be able to make the next payroll, but I’d be dead, so it didn’t really matter.

listen, Garçon said. take a few days think it over but I need the money by the end of the week if we’re gonna make it happen

I logged off, went to sleep that night, and dreamt of taps on my window. The dreams came to nothing but a roiling, anxious feeling in my gut when I woke in the middle of the night never to return to sleep.

I went about my life hanging drywall, fixing vanities, anchoring toilet paper holders into walls, putting together shelves—I did it all with a great cloud hanging over me, one I could never speak about with acquaintances or employees. Whenever I logged on late at night, early in the morning, or during midday, I could find Garçon. I could take more solace in him than any other person. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him about the handyman company I had purchased with a few friends, now acquaintances and annoyances. A few years ago, my brother had floated me some money to help pay for my share of the business and now I’d never have to finish paying him back.

On any day, I told him, got about thirty contractors all over Cross River and Port Yooga, and I go out in the field too. My business partners don’t do that.

cool, he said. I think y’all did some work for my mother a few months back. yall do good work.

We spoke about the mundanities of our days as if we were an old couple. I missed Garçon when I was away from our encrypted chat. He didn’t offer up much about himself, but I imagined him tall and dark-skinned with deep dimples when he smiled.

He never asked me about the money, and when I brought it up, he’d say take your time. I told him about the parents I lost to my carbon monoxide oversight, my sister, and the uncle I barely knew, and the screecher claws that carried him away.

im sorry, he’d reply. U been thru so much

When I told him of my brother, he assured me he had no part in that mass shooting, but he’d ask around. At first he said, seems like the official word might be accurate on it being one lone actor with an illegally modified AR, then on another day he said, looks like it might be a johnson family job they always screw it up. And then another contradictory tidbit and another.

I liked having Garçon around. I appreciated his conversation and his care. In many ways I felt something deeper for him than I felt for others I once referred to as boyfriend or lover. It’d been nearly a month, but every now and again I’d catch myself entertaining the delusion that he’d always been in my life, but before I got too starry-eyed, I snapped myself out of the infatuation.

Truth was, Garçon was there for business. Truth was, Garçon was a monster. Truth was, soon I’d lose him too.

One day I said to myself, Mahad, let’s get this over with. I transferred the money and felt a heaviness I didn’t even know was there lift from my shoulders.

I logged on the next day and he wasn’t online for once. I waited about twenty minutes and then left for work. All morning in the office I watched my computer and my phone for a ping from Garçon, but nothing. In the afternoon, I painted a bathroom in Port Yooga and stopped every few minutes to glance at the cracked screen of my cellphone. Garçon’s silence raised a buzzing in my head that I tried to drown with music as I worked and as I drove home. The band that headlined the concert where my brother was killed, the Cammy Cees, came on the radio, and I had to pull my car to the side of the highway. I sat and cried and then a familiar ping and buzz, or a series of them, seized my phone.

got the dough
thanks
this chat will go dead after we log off
please dont attempt to contact me
fuck your second thoughts
whats done is done now
dont act weird
be cool and normal until the job happens
go to work like usual
maintain all ur habits
the job commences at river promenade at noon one week from today
look for the guy in the navy blue cap and gray sweats
thats me
please don’t be late
we will not be late
we start with or without you
if we have to come find you i cant guarantee it will be quick or easy or painless
please mark on your body where you would like the entry wounds
you and your brother will be twins once again

PEACE

7.

It occurred to me now that I was but a pauper, though I’d never live to experience the effects of my poverty. It was an uneventful week, but I also felt something akin to bliss. The worst of life hovered behind me now. I went to work and came home, smoked cigarettes on my front porch. Sometimes I worked alongside my employees or my business partners, and I felt a twinge of shame or guilt at the coming financial crisis I had incidentally authored for them. I’d never see their disbelief.

Round midnight in the hours before I was to join my brother, the steak I had for dinner sat like a boulder in my stomach, and I roiled in my bed unable to find sleep. I listened to the bumps and knocks of the house settling all around me, sounds I rarely considered previously. As I tossed I heard a tapping from downstairs. At first I dismissed it as more of the house’s noise, but it came consistently and wouldn’t stop. The tapping was coming from the basement, no, the living room, I thought. I looked out the window and saw nothing. The noise was too intentional to be a wild animal, or a branch, or the wind. Perhaps a prankster. Or someone attempting thievery. I owned my father’s shotgun now. I loaded it with shells and walked softly down the stairs. When I opened the door I saw a shadow shambling away from the house. The figure turned at the sound of me. With a few stuttering steps toward me, he was out of the dark, and the light of my porch caught his face. My chest fluttered in both excitement and fear. It was like watching myself drawn by a five-year-old. The features of my face experienced a bloat now, my countenance swollen into a death mask. I looked like a horrid stuffed doll. My head, where the bullet entered, was dented like a car’s bumper after an accident. A hole the size of my fist adorned my chest. I didn’t know whether to point my gun or to hold my arms open wide for a hug.

Brother, the dead Jamal said in a drawn whisper. Brother.

I dropped my shotgun and rushed to my twin’s side. I placed my arm around his shoulder and walked him inside to my couch.

Cold, he said. Him cold.

I placed a blanket atop Jamal’s shoulders. He shrugged it off. Shook his head.

Jamal, I said. I— I— But how?

How. Wrong question. Distress. Feel distress. Your distress. A thousand bees in my head, brother. I’m trying to keep it together…Take back my mind. Feel impossible. The hunger. I hunger. Didn’t want you to see me like a beast…Wanted control my of…of…my mind. Not safe. The hunger call. Felt your distress, I think. Needed to see you before…I lose it.

I gripped my brother’s hand as we did when we were children before we became too grown, too tough hearted, to hold each other’s hands. It felt as cold as if he had plunged his hand into the river on a subzero-degree day. I looked into his face and his eyes, and at first all I could see was unmoving death, but I had to squint, and eventually I saw a tiny flame of compassion, a love for me so powerful it survived even the loss of his life. It made me feel ashamed. My brother returned to make sure I was okay, while I arranged to transform my pain into violence and export it as death to as many people as I could. All those humans I planned to destroy. Those beautiful lives that had done nothing to me.

I stood and began to pace nervously back and forth in front of my brother. I wanted to clear my mind of the shame, of the anxiety, of the visions of those people dying because of my inability to accept the weight of my dead family. My mind, though, refused to run blank. The imagined faces of the murdered haunted me like a memory. They pulled me to hell.

Sit, brother, my twin said, and I did, again gripping his cold hand. I won’t keep, he said. Hunger win. Always wins. Him fine. It’s fine. Shoot when him gone.

Jamal pointed to his dented head, and I couldn’t dream of subjecting him to more violence.

I kissed my twin’s decaying face and then I said, Brother, tell me everything you remember.

—

Jamal had tickets to the River & the Beat Festival at Bimin Plaza, but he was late that day. He was always late. His chronic tardiness remains one of the only traits I’m glad we didn’t share. His girlfriend, Shantí, tired of this. We were all tired of it, and she vowed to leave without him if he didn’t arrive on her doorstep at the agreed-upon time, precisely at noon and no later. He had moved from their apartment temporarily and had been staying with me for about a week; he and Shantí agreed they needed some time apart, but after this concert, my brother swore to me, they were done breaking up.

just wait, he texted her. Getting ready now and then I’ll be OMW.

She replied, If you’re late then I’m leaving. I don’t mean I am going without you, she continued. I’ll do that of course but you’ll be fucking dead to me. You’re meeting me at noon you hear?

Shantí was such a spitfire. I loved her for him. She’d never leave him. I always imagined her whipping my brother into shape one day. He was getting there. She loved him like I did. Always clung to him whenever they were together, arm around his neck, his waist. She and I rarely talk anymore, our mutual love for my brother too much to bear in his absence.

God blessed Shantí with a sharp and inappropriate sense of humor. As noon neared, she texted: I WILL NOT be stuck in the back. I’m trying to be so close to the stage I’ll be splashed with the sweat from Cammy C’s nuts.

Shantí that’s really fucking disgusting. I hope you know that. When you imagined being in a relationship did you think any part of it would be texting your boyfriend about another mans testicles? Cuz I got to be honest, it sure aint something I anticipated and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Despite Shantí’s warnings, Jamal still moved slowly, going through the motions of his daily routine. When he left the shower, it was after noon and his phone greeted him with another string of text messages.

You worthless piece of shit , one read.

I knew you’d make us late, read another.

U are not worth the sweat off Cammy C’s sweaty

I’m going by myself.

We’re done.

See you at River & Beat, he responded.

YOU’RE DEAD TO ME!!!! DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

And after a minute, Shantí followed with:

NOT KIDDING! DEAD!

NEXT TEXT WILL BE A PICTURE OF ME WITH CAMMY C’S NUTS IN MY MOUTH.

Love you too, he started typing, but thought better of replying and instead dashed to the door. His presence, he figured, was a better apology than anything he could manage to text.

Had I waited, a sobbing Shantí told me as we held each other after the funeral, we could have died together. Had my brother defeated the time demon, I thought, they could have both survived.

—

There were large gaps in my brother’s memory, of course. He didn’t remember the bullets entering him, or his body dropping, or the stampede that left his corpse bruised. He had no idea how long he lay there, whether his soul descended to hell or rose to the right hand of Jesus. Only that at some point he became aware of the cold ground, of the blazing headache and the pain in his chest. He touched his wound and felt a cascading blood waterfall. He received it all calmly, the regenerated life, the cavity in his chest, the dent in his head. Something told him to rise and to shamble to the Wildlands, so that’s what he did. He walked the streets and heard voices calling after him: What the…heck…happened to you, jack? Demon! Lazarus! He got a hole in him! Call the police! Call an ambulance! My brother didn’t know words yet, though he knew his name wasn’t Jack or Lazarus. How he knew this—or even how he knew these sounds were names—he wasn’t sure, but he did and he walked.

My brother grabbed his head now and placed it between his knees as he moaned. Buzzing return, he said. Sun rising now. More to say. Not safe. He rose and walked to the door. I attempted to place myself between him and the entrance, but he hissed and bared his teeth as if preparing to bite. Return. Return, he whispered as he walked out the door.

I had no time to think about my brother’s visit, his words, his life, to wonder who, if anyone, was in the casket my sister and I buried. No time for any of that. I soon had an appointment with death, for which I felt nothing but shame. I tried to send Garçon a message asking him to keep the money and call the whole thing off, but the chat box read: error. chat not active. I thought about running, leaving Cross River behind and beginning a new life, but that was just a fantasy. Garçon, the Washingtons and the Aryans, even the crisis actors, would find me. I arrived at River Promenade Park at about eleven hoping to see the navy blue hat and gray sweats, to beg, to plead, but no such person crossed my vision. The river looked beautiful in the distance. Gray rippling. Barges passing one another. Seagulls gliding. I looked for a white person who might be the patsy, but I saw no white people today at the park. Anyone could be an additional shooter or a crisis actor, the laughing fathers, even the children. I walked circles in the park, watching all around for suspicious people. How must I have looked, frenzied and sweating. It was me, I was the suspicious person. A bell chimed in the distance, telling the world it was noon. I jumped and gasped. The end of the world was upon us. I crouched into a ball. I screamed, No! A man hovered over me, You okay, mack? GET AWAY FROM ME! I bawled. My rudeness was saving his life, I thought, but it would be no use. Someone would die. Me first. The man backed away. The people of the park watched me with horror. Their horror would soon increase, I thought, and there was little I could do. But the time ticked and nothing. No thunder from an assault weapon. No cries of agony. The minutes and hours passed and the people who had seen me disassemble left the park, and were replaced by new people who ignored me. I walked the promenade and nothing made sense. I didn’t see even a glimpse of someone in the attire Garçon described. I stayed at the promenade until I hungered and then I left to visit a diner for lunch. It became clear to me now, all too clear. Garçon had stolen my money.

8.

I should have run. That would have made the most sense, of course. My business partners wondered about the whereabouts of their money, and my employees wondered after their salaries. I would be arrested soon, I knew. Put on trial. What argument did I have to save my soul? What jury would buy my living dead defense? What court-appointed lawyer could I con into delivering such an argument? How could I run when my brother still rambled, still hungered? I spent long nights with a flashlight, wandering the woods near my house, trying to catch any glimpse of him. I’d never again look like him; I accepted now that we’d always and forever be reduced to fraternal twins, but I still hungered for his presence. I lacked the courage to take my own life, this I understood about myself now. Garçon took advantage of this cowardly impulse in me. But I told myself if we found each other again, I’d allow Jamal to bite me and we could ramble together both alive and dead until the earth ended. Only this could save me from the hell of prison, but it seemed so unlikely now. Each night I entered my house near five, sandy-eyed with leaden limbs. So hungry it felt like there was a hole in my stomach. I’d melt mozzarella string cheese in a mug and devour it while drinking cups of sugary Kool-Aid before falling asleep. I remembered recently this was the routine my brother and I had as kids, one we kept as a secret between us—washing each other’s dishes by turns in the early morning while fighting fits of exhaustion. Neither Sorai nor my parents ever knew. I’d miss this when I entered prison, I thought. One night after the microwave beeped and I had poured the red liquid, I heard a bellowing outside, then a low screeching, insistent, but not deafening like the birds. This one sounded low to the earth, sad, like some wounded canine, but human. It took me a moment, but I heard notes of me in there, but then not me. My eyes brightened…Jamal. I poured another glass of Kool-Aid for my brother, though I knew he was long past that. When I went outside, I saw Jamal limping toward me, chattering his teeth as if he were snapping at food between his jaws. Blackish red bile hung from his mouth in slimy strings. He groaned and muttered animal sounds, words entirely foreign to him now. He had lost the battle for his mind, his soul consumed in his raging hunger. I downed my cup of Kool-Aid, took a deep breath and a long blink, preparing myself for the bite that would unite my brother and me, when a high guttural shriek caused a shudder to pass over my skin. The sound was not unlike my brother’s cries, but I could tell it didn’t come from him. I looked around expecting to see more of the resurrected, more of the thirty, coming to feast. But it was just a baby screecher swirling around my brother’s head. What an ugly clattering of wings. Jamal waved his arms trying to bat it away. The bird squawked in my brother’s face. My brother bellowed in irritation; the sound betrayed a kind of intelligence and I wondered if even a sliver of life was still left in him. The screecher fluttered about my brother’s head like a moth, the arc of his flight itself a kind of confusion. It smelled death, but saw and heard life in my brother’s shambling feet and waving arms. It had a job to do, to take my brother to some out-of-the-way cave, if the papers my sister gave me were to be believed. This cry-cry didn’t seem up to it though, too small perhaps to get a real grip on my brother. Eventually, the screecher gave up and flew into the sky, and Jamal turned his attention back to me, his prey, his brother. I placed my empty cup at my feet and held out the full glass toward my brother, hoping to see some recognition in his decaying face. The disc of the full moon beamed a wide circle of light over us. I imagined it a round piece of coal burning in a blue flame. My brother’s pace quickened, he chattered his teeth more frantically, his groan loudened. A beam of light from the moon cast itself through Jamal, and I became mesmerized by the way my brother’s portal glowed. I became rooted there, any trepidation, even any emotion, gone from me. I no longer wanted to die. I felt the death impulse, including the impulse to join my brother in deadlife, pass like a shadow as if it had all been an eclipse of the brain. Even to be alive in prison was to live as my brother never could and I wanted now to live for him and for me. Still, I couldn’t run. I simply wanted to watch how the night brightened my brother. Closer he came to me, a decaying angel in blue, and suddenly he was on me, grasping at my neck, holding it tight so I could barely breathe. I dropped his glass of Kool-Aid. I pushed at my brother, but he was surprisingly strong. Very little can stop a man, or beast, with a single objective. His teeth chattered loudly now as he took bites of the air, his mouth near my face or my neck, depending on the whims of the struggle. My gasps, grunts, and groans matched his. The rankness of his decaying flesh dizzied me. I fell to my knees, hoping to put some distance between myself and my brother’s teeth. The grip of Jamal’s hands around my neck wouldn’t relent and I felt my consciousness fading. I looked up, hoping to see in my brother’s eyes any life, any love for me, any human compassion I could appeal to. From this angle though I couldn’t see his face. I could see only the hole at the core of him, and before I passed out, I marveled at how a blast of light from the moon could make even a fatal wound appear beautiful.

My father was a trucker for a steel mill and he taught me the rules of the road.

“Stay on the streets that you know, baby girl. Don’t stop for strangers. Keep a full tank of gas.”

I followed his rules, for the most part, and even made it to twenty-two without an accident.

Until the day I failed to yield to a guy in a white pickup truck and he forced me off the highway.

2009

“Where will you go first?” Amber asks.

“Home, if I can make it.”

“I never got that far.”

We’re hiding in the woods adjacent to the highway. It’s after midnight, I think. A darkness so thick and merciful, it masks the blood on the blond girl’s face.

Tires squeal around Dead Man’s Curve, the snaking downhill turn in Conshohocken that dumps you onto Highway 76. Rock music blares. Amber hurries toward the sound. I’m not as fast as she is. She’s already up the embankment. I linger behind a birch tree near the shoulder.

The music grows louder. A Bruce Springsteen song. Something sorrowful about hometowns. I imagine the driver drumming on the steering wheel as his headlights reveal the girl by mile marker forty-five with her thumb out.

The car swerves onto the shoulder. It’s a blue Dodge Dakota this time. The driver is wasted. All he sees are long legs and a black smocked dress. He helps Amber into the car then staggers back to his side. Before the dome light blinks to blackness, Amber glances at me, sweeping hair from her face. Neon white skin hangs down in rough strips, giving her the ruptured beauty of a Géricault painting. She winks. Then the door slams shut. They take off, leaving me behind a birch with lines etched into the bark.

Before they reach the next mile marker, the man screams.

—

Smoke curls from the accordioned hood of the Dodge Dakota. The terrified driver crashed through the guardrail and slammed into a tree. One busted headlight illuminates angelica and clover.

I peer through the passenger-side window. The man is hunched over the steering wheel. Eyes frozen in eternal fright. A web of cracks bisects his skin, like highway arteries connecting to abandoned towns.

“He’s dead.” Amber approaches, jangling a handful of coins.

“I know.”

“You were checking again, Del.”

She’s right. It’s hard to trust a woman who steals from the people she kills. Even though I can smell liquor through the glass, I still feel sorry for the man. I drift back to the birch and etch a line into the bark with my forefinger. The tree recoils. My touch is molten.

The next morning, the police and coroner’s van arrive to haul the dead guy away. I hear the gurney clacking from where I’m sitting on a log covered with lime-green moss, staring at my reflection in the creek. Dried blood dapples my white T-shirt. On the front, Malcolm X peers out a window, gripping a shotgun. The back reads “It’s a Black Thing. You Wouldn’t Understand.”

Amber’s face appears next to mine in the water.

“They’re going to close the road,” I say.

“People drink. People speed. People die.” She shrugs. “Scared you can’t keep up?”

“You had a head start.”

Amber grins. Several teeth are missing on the top row. “Sounds like some hateration in this dancery.”

She’s always making obscure references I don’t understand. It feels like bragging, that she’s lived more than I have.

I stroke the dime-sized hole above my eyebrow. The wound fades, restored to its normal leaf-brown color. Every so often the jagged oval reappears and I have to cauterize it. We both died in car accidents, but my injury is nothing like the battlefield of bone fragments that is Amber’s face.

When I’m done tending to my wound, she leans toward me. Expectant. I place my fingertips on her throat, patching the gash there. Then I rub my way upward, sealing torn skin with each stroke. Anyone who happened upon us in the woods would think they were witnessing a bizarre beauty ritual.

The police finally depart by midafternoon. Amber has disappeared. I sit by the roadside, watching traffic. There’s one car I look forward to. A dark blue Chrysler Imperial. It travels westbound every few weeks. The Black man who drives it looks like a grandfather. I know his vibration. He plays Bobby Womack at a respectful level, like he’s pulling into a church parking lot and he doesn’t want his fellow worshippers to know he listens to worldly music.

I wish I could ride away with him. Go anywhere. Do something useful and good. Cars swish past, squishing my dreams into the asphalt.

—

“Stay with me.”

The woman’s voice surges through the shattered window. It’s 1993. I’ve just crashed the green Ford Taurus my father bought for my college graduation present. Wetness drizzles down my forehead. Glass crunches beneath my sneaker.

“Don’t move. The paramedics are on the way.”

Her voice is firm. She sounds like Coach McKinley, who grimaced at my failed layups in junior high, baffled that her five-foot-eight center had not translated that height into any dominance on the court. I rode the bench. Afraid to take a shot and miss.

I exhale, a crushing rattle of defeat. Then I am yanked into red blackness.

I awaken face down in clover. No ants crawl over me. No birds sing. No lovesick cicadas split the morning air with their droning mating call. The woods are bereft of sound except for the burbling creek. I rise on limbs that feel like clay and lurch up the embankment. Someone has planted a little white cross near mile marker forty-five. Carnations are tied to the beam with yellow ribbon.

I head west on Highway 76. I’m about two miles from the exit for Wing, the small mill town where I was born. There’s a Wawa not far from the off-ramp with a pay phone. As soon as I step past mile marker forty-five, a burning sensation rips through my chest. It’s akin to the searing pain I felt doing sprints at basketball practice. I cough up smoke. The sky grows red and threatening. Cars disappear. The ground heaves, as if the highway is about to split in two. I stagger backward, colliding with something stiff.

Mile marker forty-five.

When I’m far back enough to read the white numbers on the green sign, the ground stops quaking. Cars reappear. The sky is blue again.

2008

It’s spring. Again. Across the highway, the rock outcropping is nearly hidden by a waterfall of wild indigo. The cross and carnations have long since gone.

One day when I’m sitting on the shoulder, twisting a faded yellow ribbon around my finger, the ground vibrates. I’m unsettled by the quiet thunder of a vehicle hurtling around Dead Man’s Curve.

Something splashes on my arm. Blood droplets the color of raisins.

A white pickup truck rumbles toward me. An American flag flaps from the hood. The driver’s face is in shadow but he’s perched behind the wheel like a man who knows the road is his. He slows. Blond hair juts beneath his red Phillies cap. His ice-blue eyes seem to meet mine, but he can’t see me.

I wipe blood from my forehead. The man takes off. Through the ghost of his exhaust fumes, a blond girl in a black smocked dress appears.

—

“This is hella boring. I miss FB.”

Amber sits hip to hip with me on the shoulder. She’s from Roxborough, another small mill town. Sometimes she disappears for days. I can’t find her in the woods or flitting along the highway. I envy her ability to travel beyond the two-tenths of a mile radius I’m confined to.

“Who’s FB?” I ask.

“Seriously? It’s the new MySpace.”

“What’s MySpace?”

Amber takes in my pink-striped Tretorn sneakers, jeans stiff with hand-painted faces, and asymmetrical haircut, as if seeing me for the first time.

“How long have you been here?” she asks.

“Since 1993.”

“Wow. You missed out on a lot of good stuff.”

“What year is it?”

“Two thousand eight.”

I want to feel sad that I’ve missed fifteen years of birthdays and Sunday drives with my dad in his maroon Pontiac, but I feel nothing.

—

I’m drifting along Highway 76. It’s after midnight, I think. Fall leaves scuttle across the road. Anyone driving past would think it strange for a young woman to be out so late in the cold.

A red Harley roars around Dead Man’s Curve. A fifties song whines on the stereo. Something folksy about weeping willows and night winds. The rider cruises alongside me.

“You stranded?” he asks.

“Yeah. We just left a party. My friends were drinking. I told them to let me out.”

The lie emerges easily. I stare at my reflection in the man’s visor. He doesn’t notice the absence of white clouds of breath in the chilly air as I speak. The odor of malted barley leaks through his pores.

“You scared of a little liquor, big girl?”

“No.” I rub my arms as if I’m freezing. “Can I get a ride to Wing?”

He cocks his head. I climb behind him. I’m almost afraid to wrap my arms around the waist of this stranger, but I do. My hands creep beneath his leather jacket, as if I’m burrowing against the wind.

We roar off. Heat radiates from my fingers, startling the rider. Right before we pass mile marker forty-five, I thrust my fingertips through his skin into his bulging stomach. Innards crackle.

The man shrieks. He veers into a concrete barrier.

—

“The first time is hard.”

Amber watches as I smooth away road rash with my fingertip. When the Harley crashed, I went skidding down the highway on my cheek.

“You were amped your first time,” I say.

“Whatevs. He wasn’t so innocent.”

When I’m done mending my face, Amber leans over. Since she appeared last spring, I’ve gotten used to her unspoken bossiness. She closes her eyes as I patch the smashed porcelain of her skin. On her twenty-first birthday her boyfriend took her down South Street to celebrate. Six tequila shots later, he sped up Highway 76 going a hundred miles per hour. Amber was on her cellular phone, sending a good-night message to her mom, when she heard her boyfriend mutter “Oh shit!” Then he plowed into the back of a stalled semi.

He survived. Amber would have been decapitated if not for the Mansfield bar. My dad told me how those red-and-white bars got their name. In 1967, Jayne Mansfield was traveling to New Orleans with her driver, attorney, and three of her children. The highway was foggy. Her Buick Electra slammed into a tractor trailer, shearing off the roof. The three adults were killed instantly. After the grisly death of the blond actress, the government mandated that all semis be fitted with underride guards.

“You’re the best, Del.” Amber smiles at her reflection in the creek. “Hotness restored.”

A few yards away, big rigs rumble down the road.

—

A bearded man wearing a blue vest holds half a skull in his hands. It’s 1983. I’m standing a few feet away with my seventh-grade class. We’re on a raised platform, observing an archaeological dig in Philly, about a half hour from Wing. It’s windy and I’m shivering in my peacoat.

The man informs us that we’re standing on a pre–Civil War cemetery that belonged to a church of free Black people. When workers broke ground for the Vine Street Expressway in 1980, they discovered a wooden coffin. Some skeletons were buried with a single penny. The man says the coin represents the spirit’s fee to return to its West African homeland.

The city built a road on top of the gravesite. My dad and I drove over the expressway every Sunday to buy The Philadelphia Inquirer and cinnamon rolls. Over time, I forgot that beneath the playground of passing cars was the disturbed burial ground of people who thought they were free.

2010

“What’s ‘a Black Thing’?”

Amber plops down next to me on the roadside. I haven’t seen her in a while. The right side of her face looks sunken in.

“A saying from college. Stuff we experience.”

“It’s not 1993 anymore. Things aren’t so bad now.”

I sift a handful of gravel. “Not all experiences are negative.”

“Totes. I tasted greens once. They were hella yum but I puked when I found out they were cooked with ham bones. I’m vegan.” Amber glances at the front of my shirt. “Black Panther guy, right?”

I’m not sure. I skimmed Malcolm X’s autobiography at Hampton because the other kids were reading it and I wanted to feel like I belonged. Deep down, I was afraid the stern, bespectacled man on the cover would awaken some anger in me I wouldn’t be able to contain. Or want to. I settled for tepid rebellion, like chanting “Fight the Power” at Greekfest on Virginia Beach, when white business owners barred their doors to Black students and baton-wielding cops forced us off the streets.

I change the subject. “Where do you go when you leave?”

Amber closes her eyes. The sun is rising. An eternal caravan of semis thunders past. “I pop up in a different place each time. Mostly small and cold. Like the crawl space under an old house in winter.”

“Why do you come back?”

Amber gazes at me. Her eyes are the same waxy green color as the mile marker. “You’re my house, Del.”

I stroke the gash above my eyebrow. The edges have grown ragged again.

“How’d you get that?” Amber asks.

“Glass, I guess. When I was racing that jerk to the merge, he ran me off the road. I hit a tree.”

Amber peers at the wound. Then she shoves her finger inside.

“Stop. What are you doing?”

She digs around the cavity. Excavating. Something metallic falls out. Amber scoops it up. A bullet.

“How come you didn’t just let him pass?” she asks.

I take the bullet from her. Too stunned to speak. The projectile is caked with blood and brain matter.

“I wanted to win.”

—

After I realized I’d been shot, something flared in me. I became hungry for my killer’s blood. Who told him the road was his? My father hauled steel beams for highways from Delaware and Maryland to Virginia. My grandfather worked at a segregated CCC camp, building roads. I have more right to this crummy stretch of concrete than the coward who shot me.

I started looking forward to the game.

These are the rules: We only kill after midnight. We only kill men who drive recklessly or while under the influence. Our victims must be alone. Whoever scores twenty-one points first wins. Since Amber died the year she could legally drink, she chose that number.

“If you win, I’ll show you how to leave,” Amber said the day she created the game. “Peace out to Bumfuck Conshy.”

“And if you win?”

“You’ll show me how to heal my face.”

I’m not sure I can teach Amber how to mend her skin, but she doesn’t need to know that. The thought of seeing my dad again fills me with such hope I want her to believe I’m whatever sorcerer she thinks I am.

—

At least two autumns have passed since Amber proposed the murder match. She hates that my kills are more creative. Her damsel-in-distress routine makes men let their guard down. I have to be cunning.

For one point, I hurl rocks at a Bronco, cracking the window. When the driver jumps out to investigate, he spots me by the guardrail. He curses as he ducks back into the car. Moments later, bullets whiz past my head. Bark explodes. The man charges after me. A roadside Bernhard Goetz.

“You’re gonna pay for that, bitch!”

The man chases me through the woods. I blend into the night. He squints in the darkness for a blood trail. I swing down from a bough, suspended by my knees. I grab his face and squeeze until his skin bubbles.

For another point, I ignite a branch and lug it across the roadway like spike strips. Curiosity gets the best of the stoned Audi driver, who pulls over. Smoke draws him into the woods. Maybe as he picks his way through the brush, he believes he’ll be a hero. His red eyes follow a flaming branch that seems to levitate. Before confusion dissipates to fear, I raise the fiery spear and impale him to a tree.

With each death, it’s as if I’m paying the god of the highway in coins of blood.

2012

“Why do you take their stuff?”

“Are you a Quaker now? Why do you care?”

I’m coiled in the wet grass. Amber stands over me, dangling a white cord. She calls it a charger. Sometimes she steals key chains or bottle caps from her victims. Shiny, useless things.

I’ve known small-town girls like Amber. They try out for the cheerleading squad but don’t make the cut, not because they aren’t pretty, but because they lack team spirit. They boost cheap jewelry from Kmart. Not because they really want those trinkets, they’re just thrilled by power, however puny.

A few cars slosh by. It’s rainy and dark but way before midnight. Most folks have already eaten dinner and are watching TV or whatever they do now to pass the time before bed.

A familiar vibration shakes the ground. The tortured twang of a Bobby Womack song.

Amber drops the cord and takes off.

“Amber, wait!”

I scramble to my feet. Even in heels, she’s still faster than I am. Before I reach the shoulder, I hear tires squealing and the plaintive shattering of sturdy things coming undone. The blond girl stands in the middle of the rain-slicked highway. Arms outstretched, like she’s filming a music video. I slide down the embankment toward the wreckage of the Chrysler Imperial. Hoping the driver’s still alive.

My hopes fade when I reach the car. A branch has slammed through the windshield, lodging in the old man’s chest. Blood leaks from his mouth. Amber peeks through the opposite window. The dying man’s eyes dart from my face to hers. His fear reeks of rotten eggs, like Black Magic shaving cream. Then he stares straight ahead. Still.

I turn away. Amber follows me to the etching tree.

“You cheated. He wasn’t dangerous.”

“We don’t know that,” she says.

My finger shakes as I burn a line into the bark. The Chrysler’s radiator hisses in the darkness.

—

The years peck at my body like vultures, devouring hope. Amber doesn’t play fair, but I have to win the game. I need to go home.

Amber’s forced to get creative about masking her injuries since I stopped repairing her skin. Some days, she braids a vine into a tiara and fastens it on her head. Leaves frame her mangled face. She looks like a flower-power girl returning from war.

She glides over to the log one night as I’m inspecting the bullet. Imprinted on the bottom is 9mm Luger.

“The last place I popped up was so chill. I could move around.” She hums a Joni Mitchell song, waiting for me to reply. When I don’t, she says, “It felt like a real house.”

“Does it have mirrors?”

She flashes that snaggletoothed grin. “You still mad about that old guy? I didn’t take his stuff.”

“That was nice of you.”

At that moment, a branch snaps.

—

“Found a cold spot.”

Three men and a woman trek through the woods. Light streams from their hats. A guy in a red jacket holds out a device that resembles a modern walkie-talkie.

“Who are you?” he demands of the darkness. “Show yourself.”

The woman laughs. “Be nice. Don’t piss off the Conshy Cryptid, dude.”

Conshohocken means “peaceful valley,” named by the Lenni-Lenape people who settled here. The borough is mostly white now. The townsfolk would be shocked to learn a Black “cryptid” haunts these woods.

“Temp dipped again.”

As the foursome huddle around the device, I drift up behind them. The woman senses movement. Her headlamp swings in my direction. She shrieks. The men turn and notice me. Empty-handed. They freeze. The woman’s hand shakes as she reaches out to touch my shirt. Trying to decide if I’m real. Amber lunges between us, hoisting the cryptid hunter in the air by her neck. Spidery cracks race up the woman’s skin.

The men scatter. Two sprint toward the creek. I give chase, stomping on a nearby branch. It springs into my hand like a boomerang. Engulfed in flames. I toss the burning spear at the runners. It whooshes through the back of one man’s head and out his friend’s mouth.

I return to Amber’s side. Energized. She has Red Jacket cornered against a tree. He trembles when I approach.

“Don’t kill me, man. I won’t say anything. I’m not streaming.”

Amber pauses. “What’s streaming?” she asks.

He looks befuddled, then his words come out in a rush. “It’s when you—”

Before he can explain, I drive my hand through Amber’s back. It shoots out her chest and into Red Jacket’s heart. He grunts. I yank my hand free. He drops to the ground. Amber looks down at the hole in her chest then glares at me.

“That was my point, Delmarva.”

“You choked.”

She follows me to the etching tree. “You cheated.”

“Sounds like some hateration in this dancery.”

She’s still salty later when we drag the bodies to a boxy truck with huge wheels. As Amber heaves the woman onto the passenger seat, her hand flops against the console. Something clinks. A class ring. Amber wriggles the ring off the woman’s finger and examines the inscription: Brooke. York College. 2016. She traces the garnet stone for a few moments then drops the ring into a cup holder. We push the vehicle down the embankment, and I set it ablaze.

“They’re gonna close the road one day.” Flames dance in Amber’s green eyes.

“Not until the right people die.”

2020

I feel a grudging kinship with Amber every time we hide evidence of our crimes. Protecting our peaceful, desecrated land.

I ponder this brutal sisterhood as I dig for my bullet one night. It’s June or July, I think. The days are bird starved and no fireflies bless the darkness with their silent chorus of light. Summer was once my favorite season. Cookouts in my grandparents’ backyard in Phoenixville. Driving to Germantown with my dad for blueberry water ice and a soft pretzel. I dig faster. I buried the bullet near a cluster of wisteria. But it’s not there.

Irritation blooms. I rush through the woods, following the desolate music of Amber’s humming. Her pale face fluoresces in the undergrowth.

“Where’s my bullet?”

“What do you need it for?” Something metallic glints in her palm. I try to snatch it but she closes her hand.

“Klepto.”

“Whatevs.”

Amber darts out of the bushes. I chase her up the embankment. She tries to slip past mile marker forty-five. I grab her arm, whirling her around. Her cheeks are mud smeared but it can’t hide her ravaged skin.

“I wouldn’t steal your stuff,” I say.

“Because you’re so good.”

“You should try it.”

“Where’d it get you, Delmarva? Trapped on this shitty high-way. Begging for the same piece of lead that blasted you away from Daddy.”

The slap pierces the still night. Mud sizzles. Flesh flies. The bullet falls from Amber’s hand as she clutches her singed cheek. Shocked. Then she glowers, squeezing my bare arms. My skin cracks beneath her fingertips.

We’re still tussling on the shoulder when the patrol car pulls alongside us.

“Break it up!” The man’s voice crackles through the PA system. I freeze. Although I’m no longer bound by laws, it’s a reflex, an impulse leftover from the Greekfest riots, when mounted cops chased us down the oceanfront.

Blue-and-red shadows thrash the tree line. The policeman strides over. He has Gary Heidnik eyes. Mournful but piercing.

“What’re youse doing out here?”

“Lover’s spat,” Amber says, raking hair into her face.

The cop frowns. Then he notices the bullet at our feet. His hand drops to his holster.

“Sit right there,” he barks at us.

Amber winks at me, amused by his command. She charges.

“Get on the ground or I’ll tase you!”

I restrain Amber. Something buzzes. If I were alive, the current ripping through my body would have brought me to my knees. But I don’t fall.

Steel rings are slapped around my wrists. The policeman grabs my elbow and marches me to the squad car. In my twenty-two years of life, I had never even been pulled over. Amber is right. Where’d it get me, being good?

Thick droplets hiss on the asphalt. I glance down. Melting handcuffs. The cop releases my arm as if burned. Amber hovers behind us, reflected in the car window. She grips the man’s neck. Lines traverse his skin. The melted cuffs clink to the ground. I push Amber away from the policeman and he falls to his knees. Dazed. He unholsters his pistol, hand shaking. The first shot goes wild, ricocheting in the woods. Before he can fire again, I sear his eyes shut.

—

Yellow tape encircles birch trees like ribbon around a rotten bouquet. Men trudge through our woods, dropping numbered placards on the ground. Amber and I observe them from the creek’s edge.

“Time to blow this water ice stand.”

“I wish.”

“We could travel together.” Amber touches her blistered cheek. “Be a team.”

I want to go home. Alone. I don’t want to get stuck in Amber’s crawl space of empty promises, repairing her skin for all time.

“We have to finish the game,” I say.

“It’s gonna be a lot harder now.”

For weeks the woods are clotted with cops. They bag Amber’s trophies. My bullet too.

—

The police presence blankets our woods until fall. Amber grows bored with hiding. I don’t even know if I want to keep playing the game. My chest is no longer a furnace smelting hate.

I find the yellow ribbon floating downstream the day the cops leave. Some mornings I hide in the undergrowth, playing with the tattered fabric, listening to music from passing cars. The stitched-together snippets are a soundtrack to my fantasies.

I’m coiled in evergreen shrubs one night, singing a catchy tune. Something about the 405. Road trip music. I wish I could meet up with a boy at our secret place. Speeding down the open road in a convertible with the wind on my face.

For one moment, I no longer feel yoked to this highway. The ground thrums as if severing an invisible cord. A truck barrels around Dead Man’s Curve. Hip-hop blares within. Some honky-tonk rapper. I dash out of the bushes and onto the shoulder, sticking out my thumb.

The white Ford pulls over. Three blondes sit in the cab. They appear to be in their late twenties. Misery collects in the premature grooves around their mouths. The driver wears a red hat. The woman closest to me stares at my Malcolm X shirt. Her hazel eyes narrow.

The driver lowers the music. She smiles, but her eyes are as flinty as her friend’s.

“How far you going, hon?” she asks.

“Wing.”

“We’re heading that way. Hop in back.”

I hoist myself onto the cargo bed, pushing aside blue tarp, packing tape, and rope. The driver cranks the volume on the soulless rap song. We pull off. I wrap the tarp around my shoulders like a shawl.

Amber watches from the etching tree. Perhaps wondering if I can actually leave without her. We zip past mile marker forty-five. As soon as we cross milepost 45.2, the truck heaves violently. I bounce against the sidewalls, waiting for the burning sensation to flood my chest. But it never comes. The ground isn’t quaking. The driver is steering wildly, trying to eject me.

Laughter mixes with the booming bass. I cover myself with the tarp and leap out of the cargo bed. My body bounces along the road like tumbleweed. Finally, I sit up and yank off the blue covering.

The sky is pulverized coal in which no iron ore twinkles. Apparitions line the shoulder. Harley rider. Churchy grandfather. Cryptid hunters. As if the dead are awaiting their passage to the next realm and I’m the ferrywoman.

The truck brakes hard. White lights wink on as the driver throws the Ford into reverse. Hurtling toward me.

I rise like I’m on the court but I’m a starter this time. I raise my arms gracefully and shoot. An orange ball arcs from my fingertips, blazing across the hostile darkness. Glass explodes. Women howl. The driver leaps from the truck and flops onto the shoulder. Her red hat is on fire. She flings it away.

The truck bears down on me. An arm grabs mine. Amber. She yanks me aside just as the vehicle whizzes past, crunching to a halt against a barricade.

Flames crackle within the Ford. We drift over to it. The blonde in the middle is dead. Her head obliterated. The woman who scowled at my Malcolm X shirt crawls down the road. Glass sparkles in her hair like a broken tiara. Amber pounces, squeezing the woman’s waist. She whimpers. Cracks crisscross her exposed belly. Her torso explodes.

The driver pants in the gravel. Blue eyes glistening with hatred. I drag her across the road and shove her into the cab with the remains of her friends. Then Amber and I push the burning truck into a ditch.

—

After the bodies of the blond women are discovered, men in vests and hard hats arrive. Dead Man’s Curve is shut down.

Amber disappears during the construction. It figures she would desert me right as the game is tied. I envy her but I’m happy that she might have made it home at last.

Some days I wander along the highway, trying to see how far I can go past mile marker forty-five. I’ve made it two miles, nearly to the exit for Wing. Then just as I grow hopeful and head toward the off-ramp, the ground shudders a warning. The color is sucked from the sky. Before the burning sensation flares in my chest, I turn around and hurry back to my place.

Winter comes, bringing construction to a halt. I no longer have noisy bulldozers and stoic men to keep me company. I drift into the deepest part of the woods and braid myself into the snow.

—

“You still here?”

The snow has melted. I uncoil. Amber stands over me wearing a Halloween mask. Some plastic-cheeked princess. She prods me with her shoe.

“I thought you peaced-out for good,” I say.

“I can leave Bumfuck Conshy, but I can’t leave you, Del. You’re my house.”

This revelation makes me happy and sad. I nod at her mask. “Where’d you get that?”

“Some girl.”

“Klepto.” I brush away the ants crawling on my arm. “Is she still alive?”

“I’m not a monster. I borrowed it from her bedroom.”

I pause. “You popped up in a real house?”

“Yeah. It’s so chill. Hella rooms. You gotta see it.”

Amber raises the mask. I hide my shock. She looks like a woman buried long ago and recently exhumed. Only her green eyes are lively.

We drift toward the etching tree. A bird sings. Dead Man’s Curve has reopened. Traffic signals flicker at the end of the ramp.

“It’s totes ugly.”

“At least some people will be protected,” I say.

“Just sucks it wasn’t us.”

A familiar vibration rips through the gravel. Something plops on my arm. I brush it away. Another ant. But it’s not.

Blood. Raisin colored.

A red pickup truck careens around Dead Man’s Curve, blowing through the new traffic lights. Two American flags are mounted on the hood. The driver’s face is shadowy. Wispy gray hair peeks out beneath his baseball cap.

The furnace in my chest blazes. Hungry for ore. Amber gazes at the oozing wound above my brow then back at the driver. She lowers her mask.

We race down the middle of the highway, toward the speeding truck. Amber’s a few steps ahead, but I’m gaining on her. Before the startled driver can hit the brakes, we leap.

January 27, 1918

Well-Known Negro Chained to Tree, Burned Outside of Charleston

South Unable to Put Stop to Negro Exodus

“Where ya going, boy?”

Private First Class Noble Washington hadn’t paid attention to the man behind the glass at the bus depot as he read the headlines from the newspaper stand. Behind him, a line of Black faces waited their turn to buy train tickets, evidence of the feared Negro exodus.

Noble pulled up the collar on his winter coat to protect himself from the chill. “Chicago,” he said. The white man looked at him for a long time, assessing the Black man before him. Finally, he looked away, which was the universal approval that every Black person understood to mean nothing. Nothing at all. This was as good as Noble could expect; nothing would happen to him because of this encounter. His shoulders released some of the tension that had been building there.

“Whatcha think ya gonna get in Chicago?” His accent leaned heavy on the “a,” pronouncing the “o” as “ahh.”

Noble knew better than to tell the truth. “I got people there. Just visiting,” he said, keeping his tone even, calm. White Southerners didn’t want Black folks to leave the South; they didn’t want them to stay either.

The white man threw his ticket under the glass and snorted. “Nice uniform.” Noble caught it as it floated to the ground, not looking back at the man as he walked away. “It won’t protect you, Noble!”

Noble. The name fit. It had a ring to it that demanded respect—which had been the entire reason his parents had chosen it. It forced white folks to say the name of honor, even if they didn’t respect the Black man carrying it.

Noble boarded the train and found a seat just as the narrow tin tube began its long journey. As the railcar bounced along the tracks, he noticed the little Black girl that sat alone in this train car staring inquisitively at him. He quickly looked in another direction in the way that one does when two people accidentally meet eyes, to avoid awkwardness. But when he looked back at the girl, her gaze had not left him. If he hadn’t been left feeling uncomfortable by his interaction with the man at the counter, he damn sure was now that this child had fixed her undivided attention on him.

There was something strange about the girl—her eyes, perhaps: They were blue. Striking, staring, knowing. A dark-skinned Black child with blue eyes was a wonder to behold. But there was something else about her. Perhaps it was the fact that it was January, and the weather hovered well below freezing, but she wore no coat, hat, or other protective clothing. Or perhaps it was her shy smile that belied things others didn’t know.

Noble had gotten on the train in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the girl had obviously already been aboard, but he hadn’t seen her until this moment. He looked away again, but she remained steadfast in her fixation of him. She was tiny—slim even for a child of about nine or so. She had on a perfect little blue dress (almost identical to her eye color) that spread across her bony knees in a wide fan shape. Her shoes were dirty and scuffed. She had blue bows on two plats, but her hair was wild and messy, as if she had been playing in a pile of leaves. She didn’t talk to anyone and no one seemed to claim her. In fact, most people did not even seem to acknowledge or notice her at all—which seemed appropriate since she didn’t acknowledge any of them either. Just Noble. She stared at him, knowingly, like only a child could, unashamed. As if she could read his inner thoughts, going into that place in Noble’s head that no one else was allowed to enter.

The girl made him uncomfortable. But it wasn’t just the girl. He hadn’t felt comfortable since coming back from the war. Being back home felt…wrong somehow. His discomfort had not only been in the way the United States had thrown Black soldiers aside. Noble and thousands of other Black men and women agreed to fight for their country hoping that afterward it would see them as worthy—perhaps even stop treating Negro people as lower-class citizens. They had proved themselves worthy and formidable soldiers, and, in France, Black folks had found freedoms that had never been afforded to them in the United States.

But coming back home presented horrors that even war could not parallel. The man, for instance, that had broken the beer bottle over Noble’s head three weeks before. He had been drunk, yes, but it sent Noble to the hospital with a broken tooth and for thirteen stitches. All because the white man had taken umbrage to the fact that Noble had not in fact wanted to dance the jig for him and his buddies.

The United States now was no better to him or his Black countrymen than it had been before. In fact, in Noble’s opinion, it was far worse.

After a brief stop in Charleston, the colored train car was full—there were dozens of Black folk crammed in, two family members to a seat, mothers holding children too old to be held. Still, most people acknowledged him being there, nodded their admiration to him, knowing the sacrifice he had made simply to get respect from a country that would never give it. By fighting in the Great War, Noble and the other Black men and women had begged for love in a world that hated them. So, perhaps, as he thought about it, the gazes and nods he received in this colored car were for sympathy, and not respect or admiration. In fact, because of that uniform, he barely respected himself anymore, if he was to be honest about it all.

The train screeched to a slow stop in Cincinnati as the group settled in. Colored folk did not get off the train in places they didn’t have to, the in-between cities. If it wasn’t your final destination or you didn’t have people there, you stayed on the train and hoped to move on soon. There was word of mouth about the places that Negro folk should steer clear of, and Cincinnati was one of those places.

Outside, a loud group of white folks were starting up—which was what Black people said when white folks were ready to start trouble. Of course, in Noble’s view, white folks were always ready to start trouble. Since he had been home, he had dodged several different fights and at least two gunshots. There was more danger here than there had been for him in that whole war.

The conductor bounced onto the train car, followed by a group of whites. “You all need to exit this train,” the conductor said. This is not good, not good at all, Noble thought, feeling the tension in the air. Many of them could make a run for it if these white men were looking for trouble. But there were at least twenty white folks behind him, some standing just inside the car, others spilling onto the adjacent platform. Noble looked at the little girl’s short, bare legs. He’d have to keep an eye on her.

“Let’s go,” the conductor repeated.

No one moved. It didn’t make sense that they would have to leave. There was a reason they didn’t want to get off in Cincinnati, and they all knew it.

“Now!” the conductor screamed.

Noble took another look at the little girl and found her glancing back at him, as if waiting to see what he would do—knowing, in fact, that he would speak up.

Noble stood, fixed his coat, and cleared his throat. “Is there something wrong?” He paused for a moment, then added, “sir.” Every Black person on that train held their breath. Noble could feel them, the collective inhale of dread.

The conductor, his back to Noble, turned to look at him. As soon as he saw the Black man in his army uniform, a grin spread across his face. It had been the wrong choice to wear it, so very, very wrong. Like the man at the ticket counter, and every aggressive action he had on a daily basis since coming back to this country, they would not respect this uniform on him any more than they respected his Black skin. Some of the whites behind the conductor snickered. Others laughed openly.

“Are you questioning me, boy? You think you’re somebody because you wear the uniform?”

“Yeah!” one of the men taunted. “You all swing the same, uniform or not!” The white men—despite being vastly outnumbered—held no fear. They also seemed to hold no reservations about what they came to do.

The little girl stood, the conductor’s back to her now. Noble opened his hand, low to his side, to stay her. He hoped she understood. He didn’t want her to get in the middle of this. When white crowds got this way, they did not care who hung from the rope—even nine-year-old Black children. Noble hoped he could defuse the situation before anyone was “swinging” from any tree.

“No, sir,” Noble said as he had been taught in the army. Every white man was sir. Every Black man was boy. “No.”

The conductor glanced at the other people in the car, and his face seemed to soften. Good, Noble thought. Good. White people’s moods dictated Black people’s lives. They all understood that, most especially the white people. “The other cars are full; we need this one. Everyone exit.”

Before anyone could respond, a man with a sheriff’s badge pinned to his shirt rushed forward, grabbing the collar of Noble’s pristine uniform jacket, dragging him down the train car stairs, throwing him to the ground, his body skidding a few inches across the cold ground. Several white men rushed in and immediately started kicking him.

The forceful blows to the face sent waves of pain through his body—and sent him into almost immediate unconsciousness. It did not, however, stop the men from ravaging his body with even more blows to his stomach, body, and face.

As he lay on the ground, half in and out of consciousness, an overwhelmingly bright light shone down on him. Noble figured that he was dead and that that light was the light from the gates of heaven opening up to him. He prayed only that the men would leave his body there on the ground—not bring their children to picnic under his swinging corpse, not have his bruised body posed for pictures that would be sold to white folks whose only regret was that they could not be there for the hanging themselves.

But he did not die.

The light, somehow, had paused the beating. Stopped the white men from enacting their deadly intent. He raised his head, and the girl was there, bent down, her knees at her chin. Her eyes stern and focused.

“Mama de Agua, the Mother of Water, gives us seven minutes to flee,” a soft voice said. “You’ve been out for four and a half.”

Noble didn’t understand. He looked up again, saw all of the men frozen in place, unmoving. Some of them midkick or punch. One’s lips puckered, the spit flying from his mouth stuck in the air just over Noble’s head.

“What? I don’t…” Turning slowly to his back, the first thing he noticed was the snow melting under his body, soaking into his clothes. The second was a bird circling above his head. Immediately, his brain realized that whatever was happening to the men was confined to them.

“Run!” the voice said again—screamed, this time—and he realized it was that Black girl from the train. She darted into the woods behind the train depot. Noble understood one thing in that moment. He had to either pull himself off that ground and follow the girl or die there in the dirt, like every dead soldier he left behind in France.

Noble scrambled to his feet, pain suffusing every part of him. Just as he reached the side of the building, his seven minutes must have run out because he could hear the angry confusion of the white people at his absence. “Where did he go?” There was a moment of silence, during which Noble thought he might be safe, but then his heart dropped: “There!” someone shouted as a man saw him rounding the corner.

It was -16 degrees, but Noble didn’t feel it as he ran for his life, not stopping. Behind him, he heard footfalls chasing him through the leaves. Every inch of his body ached, and it took everything in his brain to force his legs to move. In the distance, he saw the girl darting in and out of view, jumping over and climbing under woodland debris. She seemed to know these woods, and where she was going. After a moment, she stopped, looked at him, and waited. She stared into his eyes, then glanced past him, scoping out his pursuers. After a brief second, she pointed behind him.

He understood.

Noble stopped running, just as the footfalls behind him stopped. One man stood there, legs wide, as if anticipating a fight. Noble was lucky that the others hadn’t caught up to him yet…and decided to take advantage of it. He straightened his shoulders, then turned to face his attacker. The white man looked around, realizing suddenly that he was alone. Noble rushed toward the man, who began digging into his pockets, for a weapon no doubt. Noble limped, then jogged, then ran as fast as his broken body would allow him to toward the man.

Realizing that he’d run out of time, the man turned to call for help, but managed only a small whimper before Noble plowed into him and knocked him to the ground. Without even thinking about it, Noble stomped the man’s head, crushing it beneath his boot heel. Then again and again until the body stopped spasming and lay motionless. Noble never knew how many men he’d killed in the war, but from that day on he forever remembered every blow to that white man’s skull.

Noble stopped, turned to look at the girl, emotionless. She nodded and took off, fast, dodging in and out of trees. Noble followed. He heard someone shout out, obviously discovering the body he had left behind. He dared not to look back, trusting—for no reason he understood—that the girl knew where she was going.

In the distance, the conductor’s whistle sounded “All aboard!” But the white mob was not on that train. He could still hear their voices in the woods, distant enough that they almost certainly could not see them. Noble hoped that meant that the other Black folks had been able to reboard the train as it pulled away. That meant that perhaps only Noble and this girl were out here now—which was both a blessing and a curse.

In the distance, Noble saw a clearing. They would need to avoid it, he knew, so as to not get caught out in the open with no trees to hide them. But the girl ran right for it.

“Hey!” he whispered loudly so the white men couldn’t hear. The girl ignored him, running right into the clearing. That’s when Noble realized that it was not just a clearing, but that there was a house there high on a hill surrounded by a fence, overlooking everything around it, like an overseer. It was big, blue, and well-kept.

The girl jumped the small fence around the house, while Noble threw himself over it, feeling every single kick he had endured (and the exhaustion of all he had delivered too) as he landed on the other side. He had no idea where the mob was now but knew they couldn’t be far.

As he and the girl got closer, details of the house came into focus. That’s when he saw Him: the unusually tall man who stood guarding the front door. His skin was dark, His chest was bare, and a long red-and-black cloth draped from His waist to His bare feet. How could He stand to be in the cold? Noble thought. In His hands He held a staff with deep-set carvings of faces and forbidden things that Noble didn’t understand. Staring directly at Noble as he approached, the man—who was nearly as tall as the large doorframe—took on a defensive pose, His staff blocking the entrance.

Noble stopped about fifty feet from the house and assessed the situation. But the girl did not seem to see the man or did not see Him as a threat—Noble wasn’t sure which. “Come on!” she said as she heedlessly continued.

Suddenly, the door to the house opened. A tall, statuesque Black woman stepped onto the porch. She looked at the tall figure, nodded, then called into the house, “Adnike.”

Another woman, shorter, but darker and thicker than the first, walked onto the porch. She took her place next to the large man, then turned to assess Noble—clearly reading the situation. In the distance, voices called out, the sounds bouncing off the trees, creating an echo in the still cold. The woman took a deep drink from a bottle of rum and blew a wide spray of the liquor from the man’s head down the length of his body to a small, round stone statue sitting next to the door near His feet. The woman sprayed two more times before the first woman handed her a thick cigar from which she repeated the motion with smoke—head to toe.

On the third blow, the man slowly shrunk down, disappearing into the statue.

Noble was stunned. He could hear the white men behind him, searching for him, but still he could not bring himself to walk into that house. The two women stood, waiting. The little girl, her eyes wider than ever, also waited. “That’s Èṣù, the door opener. He has blessed your entry, but the decision has to be yours.”

Three, maybe four seconds. That was how long it took him to get from his position in the yard onto the porch, despite slipping on ice twice. The people chasing him were more terrifying than the women or the tall man that had been on that porch. If He had truly been there at all and not a delusion caused by the brain damage Noble surely had suffered during his beating.

The taller woman blocked the door, as she scanned the tree line, fixated on the direction he and the girl had come from. “And them?”

Noble’s heart sank. Perhaps they’d had less time than he thought. He was sure that they should have beaten the mob with more than enough time to spare.

But as he turned, his eyes found the group of people standing not fifty feet away from him. He saw them all. The colored people from the train. At least twenty-five of them.

The only person Noble didn’t see was the girl.

—

Dozens of white men gathered outside the house on the hill and many more were arriving, joining the ranks. The men held makeshift weapons: work hoes, hatchets, and hammers. Some had shotguns. They screamed, angry at Noble’s audacity to protect himself. The sheriff from the train directed the other men, pointing this way and that, as the men ran off to carry out whatever order had been given to them.

Noble watched from a window, hidden from view, as two men, directed by the sheriff, climbed over the gate and marched up the hill toward the front door. They were cautious but moving fast through the ice that had formed around the walkway leading to the porch. As they reached the bottom stairs, Èṣù appeared, now standing somehow even taller than before. Behind Noble, Adnike recited words—foreign words—in a rhythmic succession that sounded both beautiful and terrifying. The tall woman joined in, their words in perfect pitch with one another.

As the white men kept advancing, Noble realized that they seemed unable to see the large Black man heading right toward them. Once he was within range, he swiftly swung his weapon above his head and swept the white men off their feet, sending them flying backward and beyond the gate. Behind him, several of the train passengers gasped, also unable to see the man that was the protector of this place.

From the window of the house on the hill, Noble had the perfect view of the white men below. They were unorganized and confused. Hell, Noble would’ve been too, if he’d been blind to what really happened. Of course, he was currently operating under the assumption that it all was simply a figment of his imagination. Yet how could imagination do that? In that moment, though, Noble didn’t care what had saved them.

The woman from the house put her hand on his shoulder and motioned for him to follow her. She led him to her study, where she sat in a large leather chair behind a large oak desk. The other woman, Adnike, guided him to a sofa in the corner where she took out bandages and began dressing his wounds. As she worked, he peered around at the thousands of books on the shelves behind her. To his left, the wall was painted black, with white chalk symbols inscribed upon it.

His body was in bad shape, and by the time Adnike finished her ministrations, blood-soaked bandages covered his body. “Thank you,” Noble said. She nodded and handed him a fresh shirt and trousers.

Adnike walked over to the other woman and whispered something to her before leaving the room. As she left, the seated woman spoke: “You have questions, Noble Washington.”

“How do you know my…” He realized that Adnike must have gone through his things without him noticing. He felt for his wallet. “I see.”

“We didn’t go through your things.”

Sure.

She smirked, as if reading his thoughts.

“Do you know me?” Noble didn’t know why he asked this question, but he needed to understand what was happening.

“No. But She brought you here. I don’t know why.”

“She? The girl?”

“Is that how She appeared to you?”

“What do you mean? What does She look like to you?” He glanced at the door. “Where is She?”

“You didn’t see Her come into the house, did you?”

“Well, I’ve seen a lot of things that I don’t understand today, so maybe I missed something.” His voice was defiant.

“She brought you here, through the light, but I don’t know Her purpose for you. Our job is to serve when we are needed.”

Through the light? Noble’s head was pounding. He didn’t understand. Everything was confusing and strange to him. Nothing made sense.

“What I know is that the girl you saw is your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“But you will. And that’s how She chose to show Herself to you.” The woman sounded insane to Noble. Or perhaps his head injury was worse than he thought.

“Once in a generation She chooses a bloodline to be born into. She’s chosen yours.”

He’d had enough of this nonsense. They were in danger, and this woman was reciting fables. “Listen, no disrespect—”

“No, Noble Washington—born in Macon, Georgia, to parents who died in 1913—it is you who must listen. There is little time. She’s chosen you—to be born into your lineage and to save your life. So, will you answer the call—and, in doing so, save everyone here?”

A stranger would have no way of knowing all that about him. Even if they had gone through his wallet, none of that information was in there. He stared at the woman, her eyes never leaving his.

She paused for a moment, letting him think about everything she had told him. Then, “They call me Ìyá. It means mother. I am mother to the women here, and they are my daughters. I protect them, like I have done for you. Will you return the gift we’ve given you?”

Noble wasn’t a particularly religious man. As an adult, he never went to church and believed only in what was right in front of him; up to this point, that was what kept him safe. But now this woman he didn’t know was expecting him to believe some…some otherworldly force was protecting him? Who was also a child he had yet to conceive?

The woman answered the question that he had not asked aloud: “Yes,” she said. She looked away from him, then out the window, then back to him. “There is purpose for Her in your lineage. I don’t yet know what it is. But She is here to protect you. If you accept, you will owe Her a debt.”

Noble didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t think.

But Ìyá didn’t give him time to respond anyway: “You killed a white man, Noble. Eventually, those men will get in this house. The spirit at the door will protect us from those men. But more will come. And more after that.” She sighed. “I don’t know Her plans for you, but you have work to do. You ran off to protect a country that cares nothing for you; you can do it for your people now.”

He knew she was right. Everything in him told him so.

Without waiting for a response, the woman stood and walked to the door. When she exited, she turned to look at Noble. “Well, come on then.”

She led him down the hall and then into the basement. The room was filled with ornamental ceramic pots, plates of food, various statues of differing sizes—some of them standing five feet tall; offerings to gods, Noble somehow knew. He wanted to ask questions—he had so many questions—but knew that these things were private, none of his business.

His business sat in a chair up against the far wall—a large doll, its painted blue eyes staring knowingly at him. He knew the doll’s likeness instantly: It was that of the little girl that had been on the train.

“Sit,” the woman said. As he positioned himself on the floor facing the doll, the woman went to gather several things from the other side of the room. She set a glass of water, a tall black candle, and seven large seashells in front of him on the floor. Then, she drew a symbol with over a dozen large round circles, arrows, and more crosses than he could count on the floor between them. It was practically identical to the one Noble had seen on the wall of her study. Although he had seen her draw it this time, he could not have repeated it himself, even if promised a way out of this mess. It was intricate in a way that almost defied logic.

Ìyá sat down beside him. “The black candle is for protection. Now look into the fire, clear your head. Follow the flame.”

Noble focused on the light as it flickered and bounced on its wick. It swelled for a moment, then died down again. “There is nothing else in this moment,” the woman said. “Nothing, except for you and Her. She is your mother, your daughter, your spirit. She knows you.” She paused. Then, after a moment of silence, said, “Close your eyes.”

Following her direction, Noble felt his shoulders relax, seeming to expel all of the apprehension from his body. He let go in a way that he rarely allowed himself. Around him, the air suddenly shifted, turning extremely cold, and he began shivering uncontrollably.

Noble dared opening his eyes to look again at the doll. But it wasn’t there. Neither was the room. Now Noble sat alone, nothing but ice and snow and wind whipping around his head. He scanned the frigid landscape before him, seeing nothing but whiteness all around; this wasn’t just outside, but…elsewhere.

The initial shivering he’d felt passed, and, inexplicably, he wasn’t that cold despite where he found himself. Somehow, he was being protected from the weather.

After a moment, a woman he’d never seen before appeared in the distance. The Mother of the Water—Mama de Agua—he knew Her immediately. She walked gracefully toward him, over the ice. The woman, adorned in blue, her feet bare, stopped a short distance in front of him.

Neither of them spoke.

Her eyes were bright blue, much like the little girl’s had been. She pointed to the ice under him just as he heard something breaking. Looking down, he saw a tiny crack stretch across the ice. The surface was still solid, however, the break appearing superficial. Without uttering a word, the woman reached into a hidden pocket in her dress, then tossed him a shiny object. It skidded across the ice, landing at his feet. He recognized it immediately: A broad hatchet, like one found in a Montgomery Ward catalog for $1.25. She wanted him to break the ice.

Noble couldn’t swim.

He took a deep breath, stood, grabbed the hatchet, and forcefully began chopping at the solid mass. The sound of ice breaking filled the air. As he swung, the ice fractured until he was stranded on a small floating block. Then it too broke apart, dumping him into the icy waters below, which he now recognized as the Ohio River, a few miles away from where he should be in that moment. He scrambled, kicking his feet and flailing his arms. Like untold numbers of other Black folks in the United States, pools and waterways had been mostly forbidden to him. So, being unable to swim, he sank deeper and deeper into the Ohio River, holding his breath, desperate to keep himself alive.

Until he just accepted his fate and breathed.

He breathed…and then took another breath.

Small bubbles formed around his mouth and nose. The water around him was dark and hazy. A tiny fish swam in front of his eyes, close enough for him to see it at the edge of his visibility.

Then, as Noble’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw Her.

Her eyes as vivid blue as they had been on the train, although Her body was twice the size, and She no longer wore the flesh of a child. The lady of the water extended Her hands as a bright hot light expelled from them, instantly warming up the current around him. Above Noble’s head, thick sheets of ice broke away, cracking into dozens of smaller pieces.

Suddenly, the water swelled as the ice heated up with the power from the woman’s hands. It was as if a giant underwater wave rushed through the river. Noble moved and swayed with the flow until it swept them away, throwing them back and forth within the current. He lost track of the woman in blue as he was pounded back and forth against the large blocks of ice and rapidly moving water.

“Protect her always,” Mama de Agua, the Mother of Water, demanded as payment.

The words were loud and unmistakable in his ears even as he was ravaged by the sounds of angry water and his body crashed into a block of ice, knocking him unconscious.

He woke up on the floor in the basement.

Wet.

January 30, 1918

Extra***105 Dead, 550,500 Feared Homeless After Ohio River Flood***Extra

Ohio River Quick Thaw Ravaged Cincinnati

Search for Negro Man Postponed After Mob Caught in Flash Ice Flood

The mob of white men outside the house on the hill did not stand a chance, as the waters washed away everything that was not held down. The house itself was untouched. Noble spent the entire time in and out of consciousness as the floodwaters ravaged the lands, sweeping through Cincinnati and the surrounding areas.

He awoke, his battered body lying on a soft bed, his head pounding. As he opened his eyes, Ìyá stared down at him, the other woman, Adnike, behind her. He rushed to sit up, as if waking from a bad dream, but the woman held him in place. “It’s over.”

“There was a flood…” Noble knew without asking.

“Yes. You did well. You were even willing to kill to protect Her. I see why She chose you.” She paused, and smiled for the first time since he’d arrived. “It’ll take weeks for the water to recede and months for things to get back to normal. They will forget this all happened soon enough. We’ll all be safe again. When things are better, I’ll make arrangements with a friendly steamboat captain. He will get you safely upriver.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank Her, not me. Just fulfill your part of the arrangement.”

“I promise.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Who are you, Ìyá? Beyond that title.”

She seemed hesitant. “A Yoruba priestess, the keeper of the souls, both living and dead.” She clearly didn’t like talking about herself. “That’s all that matters. Just bring Her to me when she’s old enough to comprehend.” He agreed, as she left him with one more piece of advice: “Now burn that uniform. They mean nothing to us.”

Noble nodded, understanding completely.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

—Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Martin woke from the smell of blood and pus.

The click and whirr of precision machinery still buzzed like flies in his ears. He felt part of something big, monstrous, and inescapable that somehow reminded him of his job. He shook it off, just a nightmare he could barely recall now that he was awake. Sunlight filled the room and his eyes opened to a new morning that pushed grim memories out of his mind. His wife was asleep next to him. He pulled her closer. She moaned softly and pushed back into him. This was his life, not the bad dream, whatever it was. He grinned, anything else forgotten.

He was in his happy place.

“Mami! Poppa!” Their girls ran in, bounced onto the bed, chanted, “Pancakes, pancakes!”

“You know the rule, girls: No sugar in the morning.” Vanessa herded them out the bedroom door, turned back to Martin before he went to the shower. “Eat before you go.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Martin pulled her in for a longer kiss to assure her they’d pick this up when he got home. As she left, her eyes agreed.

It would brighten the end of another lousy day at work.

By the time Martin got to the kitchen the girls were almost done eating eggs. He dropped into his seat and pulled a full plate close.

“Any plans?” he asked as he dug in.

“The usual.” Vanessa shrugged. “What about you? You still going to…” she trailed off. They’d fallen asleep arguing about his decision and he wasn’t eager to start again.

“I just have to know what’s really going on.”

“Why risk everything by sticking your nose where you shouldn’t? Maybe there’s a good reason they don’t want you to know!”

“Never good reasons for secrets.”

She was against anything that rocked the boat. They had a good thing here and he got that, but how could he protect his family, keep them safe without knowing what the prison really was?

They’d said the facility was built to test a new reform project. He understood they had to keep everything confidential until they got results, filed their patents. But they hid more than their methods. Everything in him said he should keep his mouth shut, keep his head low, collect his paycheck.

Everything but his conscience.

—

His daily duties were simple.

Shuttle prisoners back and forth from their cells to rooms downstairs where they were connected to machines that fed new memories into their brains. The Process gave them work skills for life after they served their time.

He didn’t know how it worked and wouldn’t have understood it even if anyone had bothered to explain it to him. All he knew was that this was the last test of a radical experiment in prison reform. All the prisoners here had volunteered for The Process to reduce their time, like him. Martin was serving ten years for dealing pot, a nonviolent felony that had qualified him for work release instead of the treatment. Faced with eight more inside, he applied.

They sold it well.

If The Process worked, prisoners got skills it would otherwise take years to master, from laying carpet to legal aid, all learned while they slept. Society got back more productive members. Even prisoners who didn’t take to the classes left with the benefits of long-term study. Martin got a steady job and a home for his family.

It seemed like a dream come true.

Except that after a few months Martin noticed that not all of the prisoners he took down made it back to their cells. Some he saw the next day, some never again. Once he noticed, he couldn’t stop seeing more and more about the prison that seemed…wrong.

He’d been told “not to engage prisoners verbally” except to direct their movement. His charges never said much after their first session anyway, just followed orders silently, eyes blank, as if they suddenly had brain damage. When he asked one of the white coats about it, they shrugged it off as a temporary side effect. That made him wonder what really happened down there.

And the more he wondered, the more he needed to know.

“Time for class,” Martin said, and didn’t expect a response. He opened the cell and the prisoner inside stepped out. “What they teaching you down there, bro?”

The man was smaller than he was, older, Latino. He looked up at Martin for a moment as if unsure what was expected, then back to the floor. He shuffled down the hall. Martin sighed and followed. If Vanessa could see this, he thought, she’d understand why he had to dig up the truth.

—

The day went quickly.

After Martin made his last trip of the morning he took lunch. There was a staff cafeteria on-site, industrial green, chilly, with low lighting, but it saved workers the trouble of going out for food. It also kept locals from asking too many questions about what went on in here.

He found an empty seat. After he sat down a chubby, slightly grubby white guy in his forties in a smudged lab coat stopped across the table from him. He grinned down at Martin, shyly hesitant.

“Mind if I join you? Usually eat at my desk, and you’re the only familiar face here.” Martin squinted up, dubious. He didn’t talk to his co-workers much, but if this white coat worked in the lab, he might have answers to some questions about what happened there. He nodded.

The man dropped into a chair with obvious relief.

“So how do I know you?”

The man looked surprised, then laughed. “Sorry! I work downstairs.” He laughed nervously. “Sometimes I forget that people I watch on my monitors don’t see me. You bring subjects in every day, so I see you all the time, but, uh, just now realizing that you’ve never seen me. Sorry! Name’s Wexler. Hal. Dr. Hal, I guess. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“Of course not! Sorry…” He chuckled nervously. “Not good around people. Too much time in the lab, am I right?”

“So you work downstairs? On The Process?”

“Well, technically, I, uh…” He fidgeted, leaned forward to whisper, “I run it.”

Pay dirt. This guy seemed so desperate to be liked he just might answer anything. All Martin had to do was string him along. He’d learned that much in prison. “So you know what it does, how it works?”

“It’s my system! Took years to get to this stage.” He giggled. “Still a few bugs, but the most important thing this study’s given us is proof of concept.”

“So you train people in their sleep to do new jobs, right?”

“Oversimplification, but basically, yes. I designed the hardware and software for a BCI system that connects directly to the senses, muscle, and memory. We record brain waves as someone does a task, put that recording in someone else, et voilà! New, but experienced abilities.”

“BCI?”

“Brain-computer interface. Connects machines to human brains to store data and control their bodies like hardware.”

“Control?”

Wexler waggled his fingers.

“No point teaching a brain how to play piano if the arms and hands don’t know the sensations or movements to do it right. The Process trains both mind and body.”

“Damn, you could put schools out of business!”

Wexler tittered, nervous again.

“No, no, it’s not for general use. Real people still need to know how to learn. The Process is a shortcut for a specific subset of the population.”

“So I bring them downstairs and they get hooked to your machine. What then? Some guys I never see again.” Martin asked as casually as possible, kept his eyes on his plate.

“Back to gen pop to see how well the training sticks. Most work in prisons is done by incarcerated labor, so mostly we teach base-level skills. Cleaning, food prep, light maintenance from plumbing to electrical, we just improve the quality.”

That left one last question.

“What’s at the other end of the hall?”

“Huh?” mumbled Wexler, mouth full. “Other end?”

“I take subjects to a door at one end of a long hall but there’s another side where I never go.”

“Oh, gotcha. Well, I’m in there, so my office, operations, equipment, and servers. Stuff like that.”

“Just that I’ve seen some of my guys taken there by another crew. Wondered if it was other classes or whatever. Figure you’d know.”

“Oh…hmm. Testing, most likely,” Wexler blurted. “After training we need to confirm it took.”

He looked as evasive as he sounded.

Most likely? He’s in charge and that’s the best he can do?

“So, they do what you taught them to make sure they got it right. Like mopping floors and frying chicken?”

“Something like that.” Wexler stood up, plate empty. Martin’s was still full, his appetite low. “Anyway. Back to work. No rest for the…Well, no rest.”

For the wicked? That’s how Martin remembered it.

They went to drop off their trays. Whatever Martin wanted to know was on the other side of the door at the other end of the hall. His only question had been how to get inside, but now he knew.

“Walk you down?” asked Martin. Wexler’s eyes brightened.

“Sure!” He chattered on about some streaming show he liked as they took the elevator down. Martin nodded, smiled at the right times as Wexler walked them through the door at the other end of the hall to another long hallway. They stopped at a door with Wexler’s name on a sign outside it.

“This is me,” he said. “Guess I’ll see you…tomorrow?”

“Sure thing,” said Martin, pointing behind him at the door out. “Sorry, guess I should have stopped back there. Wanted to hear the end of that story.”

Wexler nodded with a smile. “No problem. See you tomorrow.”

Martin walked back the way he came while Wexler opened his door and went inside. As soon as he heard the door close Martin swung around in the other direction, went deeper into this wing. None of the doors had windows. He checked the sign on each to find out what was inside. Some were for equipment, servers, and the like, as Wexler said, others for repairs or parts. At the far end he reached a double door bigger than the others, labeled with what looked like a project number. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. Guess they didn’t expect unauthorized personnel to make it this far. Martin slipped inside.

The walls were the same dull institutional green as the rest of the facility. The room was filled with a hundred sewing tables arranged in rows on a ten-by-ten grid. Seated at each was a worker wearing a wired headset like a silver spider similar to those he’d seen on prisoners in the training rooms, but updated, more compact. They were all hard at work stitching up women’s sports clothes. Martin couldn’t see the brand from the doorway, but the materials looked pricey.

No one reacted when he stepped inside. None looked up from their work or responded to anything he did to get their attention. They all seemed to sew the same item, did the same moves at the same time as they cut and stitched the same pattern in the same size from different colored pieces of cloth. Each time a hand moved at one table the same one at every other table did too, in exactly the same way, like parts of a single machine.

It was creepy as Hell.

Ignored, Martin examined them more closely. The headsets fit snugly over their heads, metal knobbed sensors pressed tight to their skulls. Each had a slender green wire that ran to the edge of the table, then down to the floor. They were all collected into a thicker cable that ran to a door on the other side of the room.

Martin approached it cautiously, but quickly, knew it was only moments before he was seen. Even if he couldn’t spot surveillance he knew cameras had to be here to monitor progress if nothing else. The workers certainly weren’t in any danger of running away. He opened the door.

The next room was filled with banks of servers and processors. A screen over a control panel displayed the name of the current program, the same name on the sign outside the door. The screen showed wireframe CAD/CAM images of two hands and a sewing machine in motion. When Martin compared what they did to the movements of the men outside, they matched exactly. As if the computer was recording them? Or was it—guiding them? Martin had only seconds to try to decipher what he saw before he heard a deep voice behind him.

“Dr. Wexler wants to see you.”

—

Wexler’s office was impressive, all that Martin would expect for the head of The Process, with heavy wood paneling, period brass lights, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. There was also a wall of high-tech screens behind him with views of the lunchroom, workrooms, hallways, and cells. The entire complex clicked by at regular intervals to give Wexler a continuous survey of his kingdom.

The doctor was no longer the smudged gullible eccentric Martin met at lunch. He wore a sly smile as he leaned back in an antique wood desk chair, his lab coat pristine. The crumpled one from lunch dangled carelessly from a nearby coatrack.

“Dr. Wexler,” said Martin. “We meet again.” He was still shaken by what he’d seen in the workroom, but tried to cover it up.

“Oh, please, we’re beyond that by now. Call me Hal.”

“Sure, buddy. What’s going on here, Dr. Hal?”

Wexler grinned like a stage magician before his big reveal.

“A recruiting ploy for my inner circle. You see now that The Process doesn’t just train. Back here subjects work for the private sector, usually only one percent of prison labor because too many jobs are specialized. So, I fixed that.” The men in the sewing room kept busy on the bright screens behind Wexler, still in sync.

“With computers?”

“They’re controlled by a rudimentary AI that uses the human body like an organic assembly-line robot. Their limbs are run with digital precision aided by human senses, with the added advantage of instant updates to any task for any company.”

“Do they know what they’re doing?”

“A subroutine stimulates pleasure centers and sense receptors so they can create any fantasy they desire to distract them while their bodies work. Most party all the time or live out Grand Theft Auto lives of sex and crime instead of solitary confinement. You think they’d prefer a lifetime caged?”

“Why would you do this? Why would anyone?”

“Human bodies under AI control are by far more efficient and cheaper to maintain and service than designing and building machines that can’t do what they can do nearly as well. Nature gave us an infinitely adaptable tool, and I’ve learned how to use it to its greatest potential. Why would anyone not?”

“Did they know you’d do this to them?”

“Most wanted reduced sentences, but really, none will ever leave. They’re all on death row or have multiple life sentences with no parole for crimes so awful that no one visits. With over two million in U.S. prisons, around fifty thousand are lifers with no parole, two thousand on death row, more coming thanks to three-strikes laws. Not up to China’s numbers, but just give us time…”

“But it’s…it’s slavery!”

“No, slavery is illegal; this is perfectly legal, as per the fine print of the Thirteenth Amendment. Involuntary servitude was abolished ‘except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.’ If this works it can be rolled out in all our facilities to provide income to lobby for more private prisons, more convictions, more labor. The Process brings jobs back to America, turns a lifelong tax drain into a valuable resource to return some of what they’ve taken from us.”

“That’s crazy, man! Monstrous!”

Wexler glared, jumped up to pound the desk.

“These men are the real monsters! If you knew why they’re here, the amount of blood they’ve shed, the lives lost because of them, could you still say that? Or would you tell me this is better than they deserve after all the damage they’ve done?”

Martin shook his head as he stared at the screens, confused, watched as the men mindlessly folded each completed garment into a bin beside them, and then reached as one for fresh cloth to begin again. Despite himself he could almost consider that the doctor had a possible point. No one got a death sentence without a reason. And lifers without parole, could you even call that a life? He shuddered. That still didn’t justify what he’d seen.

Wexler sat back down, calmer.

“Now you know the game. I always need new recruits for this sector. That’s why I approached you, to see how you reacted to the truth. You can keep your current situation; stay where you are on board and nothing changes. Or reject it all. Live on the other side of the bars for the next eight years.”

Wexler swung toward his monitors, done with him.

“Go home, sleep on it.”

—

When he got home Martin asked a neighbor to watch the girls while he took his wife out to a nearby park to talk—in case the house was bugged. He’d already said enough at home to make the company suspicious; no need to risk making matters worse. Martin explained everything. She was just as horrified as he was at what he’d learned and agreed that they now had to be whistleblowers, no matter what happened to them.

The next day Martin told Wexler he was on board.

While he worked as part of Wexler’s A-team, Vanessa took the girls to the children’s library and anonymously searched online for reporters who’d written about prison reform. She sent them everything Martin knew and urged them to investigate. Some emailed back, asked for proof, sent hidden cameras in pens and eyeglasses for him to get evidence. Now that Martin was trusted he had increased duties in the labor wing with freer access to get plenty.

He recorded video of workers as they moved mechanically through twelve-hour shifts without breaks, and the screens of the computers that controlled them. What they worked on changed from day to day, but Martin was sure to get pictures of any brand names that went through the system. That was what made it a bigger story. Major companies scrambled to distance themselves as soon as reporters started calling them with questions about The Process, denied knowing any details of how their products were made. As they rapidly canceled contracts and released statements condemning it to save their public images, Wexler was left to hang alone.

Once the stories broke, with so much chilling footage of the workroom and computer banks, his crimes were impossible to deny. After Wexler was arrested, Jon Stewart did a special about it, interviewed prisoners freed from the program. Martin and Vanessa were guests too, invited to explain why it was worth it to them to lose everything to expose The Process.

Once the project ended they had to leave their apartment, but someone who saw the show offered them a new home at affordable rent. Others offered jobs, calling them heroes. Not long after that a congressional hearing on the prison labor issue dismantled the system that allowed The Process. Dr. Hal Wexler was sentenced to less than life for his multitude of crimes, but long enough to end his mad plans.

The nightmare was finally over.

—

Martin and his wife celebrated after the sentencing.

Take-out dinner ended in cake and ice cream. Once the girls were in bed, husband and wife chilled alone on the couch in front of the TV to watch a horror movie on Netflix, until they weren’t. When the sex and film were over, Martin held tightly on to Vanessa, until she finally pulled away to freshen their drinks. With regret he watched her leave. No woman had ever made him feel the way she did, in bed or out.

Her smile said she felt the same about him.

“What a movie! But I hate it when they keep going after the good guys win.” Vanessa laughed as she disappeared into the kitchen. “It always means it’s not over.”

“What?” he asked.

She replied softly from inside. “It’s how I’ve felt since we left court. Like we’re not done yet and the worst is yet to come.”

“What was that?” he asked, too loudly. Martin winced, sat up, and waited for her to remind him that their daughters were asleep. Nothing. “Baby?”

Vanessa didn’t answer.

“What did you say?” He walked to the kitchen. Empty. He stayed calm, hurried to their room. Did she go to check on the girls without him seeing her?

But the girls were gone, both beds bare, and no sign of Vanessa.

Desperate now, Martin raced through the apartment to look for them, but they were nowhere to be found. He dropped down onto the couch, head in his hands. When he looked up, the rest of the furniture in the room was gone. He leapt to his feet and when he turned around there was no more couch.

Martin stared in shock as the walls around him faded away. Other rooms came into view beyond them as they too vanished, then the floor, until there was nothing, a feeling so disturbing he wanted to replace it with bright white. Everything changed as soon as he had the idea. Impossible…

“What’s happening?”

He screamed, his voice small in vast emptiness.

“You won. You destroyed The Process.” Wexler’s voice came from inside his head. “You’re done with your happy place.”

“Done?”

“It only exists to keep you complacent in the system. As soon as you break free you delete it, every time.”

“What do you mean every time?”

“This isn’t our first dance, Martin. Once, you even killed me, stabbed me with a letter opener after I told you the truth. At least it was faster than a trial.” He chuckled, as if it were a fond memory. “You’ve made me into a villain, a clown, and everything in between, but we always end up here.”

“Where’s that?”

“With you, free of illusion, on the brink of total recall. Me, still asking why and how.”

“This can’t be real. It’s…it’s crazy.”

“If crazy’s doing the same thing over and over expecting change, then I guess we both are. Most Process subjects live satisfying fantasies, but you—you create a perfect life…and then end it, again and again, by digging and digging until you get through to the truth.”

“You can’t keep me here.”

“Can’t I? Who will save you? Once you criminalize a population it’s marginalized. No one cares. They erase convicted criminals from society—and their minds.”

“Where are you? Where am I?”

“I’m at my desk as always. You hear me because I’m plugged into your senses.”

“No. No, this can’t be real. I found out what you were doing, and I busted you. You were arrested.”

“All in your head. Like your family. Like my trial. Do you really think any company capable of doing everything you accused me of can’t secure itself? Your mind made locks you could pick—created a system you could smash. That’s what we call a bug. If you can free yourself, so can others. That’s why we’re here.”

“Here? What’s really happening? Where am I?” Wexler didn’t reply. “Tell me!”

“You won’t like it. You never do. There’s a reason you’re put in your happy place. Without one, most subjects usually die of shock.”

Martin was almost unable to grasp what he’d already been told, but knew there was no going back, no way to forget what he’d already learned, and no escape from whatever lay ahead.

“Show me the truth.”

He felt his heart pound. Wexler sighed.

“If you insist.” Everything around Martin went dark. “Sadly, your version of The Process was far more advanced than mine.”

Martin’s eyes opened to a dark room.

There was a hospital smell of medicine and metal. Overhead lights illuminated a long gray table with a conveyor belt down the middle. He was suspended over it at a horizontal tilt, strapped to a metal frame, legs numb. He raised his head as far as he could—the only control he still had over his body—and saw a man across from him being nourished by a clear feeding tube down his throat. Martin felt one in his own. Other hoses carried away waste, and lines from dangling IV bags ran to a catheter in the man’s chest.

Antibiotics? Martin thought. Sedatives? Both?

A bundle of worn multicolored wires ran down to the top of the man’s head. Insulated sockets at each end were plugged into gold posts surgically implanted in his skull. Pus oozed from infections at their bases, blood seeped from broken seals, dripped to the floor.

It looked messy—and permanent.

The man’s arms hung down, dry hands busy as they assembled a cellphone from parts in a basket, used a small drill and powered screwdriver faster than any human unassisted by AI. The conveyor belt carried away the finished phone.

He picked up parts from the basket to begin again.

Martin looked down, saw that he did the same thing at the same time. He peered as far as he could to see no end to the bodies on either side of him, more rows behind the men across, likely more behind him. Who knew how many, for how long?

Martin screamed.

“No, no, this can’t be right. I didn’t do anything bad enough for this!” His hands never stopped, assembled phones as he protested.

“Didn’t you? Think about it…”

Suddenly the memories came flooding back.

He’d met Vanessa in rehab. They’d fallen in love, married, and despite all odds made a family. Years later, the pandemic cost them their jobs. After they lost their apartment and were homeless, old ways to numb pain returned all too easily. Heroin, fentanyl, crystal meth; they got less picky over time.

Then came their last day together…

He’d hustled change all day for enough to bring back a couple of Happy Meals for the kids and a Subway foot-long for him and Vanessa. As soon as Martin slipped into the abandoned squat they shared with other junkies he felt something wrong. There was no one on the stained mattress in their room. He raced into the ruined bathroom next door. Vanessa was inside under a pile of dirty blankets, huddled in the cracked tub, still high.

He didn’t see their daughters.

“Where are the girls?” he asked. She sobbed.

“People came to take them away. I had to hide them!” Her dark brown eyes, once so soft and loving were wide with terror, the voice that used to cry out his name in passion was now shrill, on the edge of hysteria.

“Where are they, baby?”

She mumbled as if she hadn’t heard.

“They were asleep, but kept making noise. Sniffles, moans…I was so afraid of losing them. I had to keep them quiet. What else could I do?” she screamed. “I had to keep them quiet!”

That’s when Martin saw that she wasn’t alone in the blankets. He stepped closer, reached out as she clawed at him, afraid of what he’d find, but pushed that fear away with all his heart. Vanessa pulled the ragged bundles closer as she keened like a banshee, tried to fight him off. A tiny hand flopped out from hiding, pale and finally silent forever. He pulled the covers away to see blank eyes, two empty heads on the pillows she’d used to quiet them.

Martin was on her before he knew what he was doing.

His hands gripped her throat. He forgot she was as much a victim as their children, choked off her air, along with any cry for help. By the time he realized what he’d done it was too late to take it back.

Martin’s grief led him to OD with the last of their stash, a fate he thought fitting. Drugs had taken his family away from him—and now would reunite them.

But someone found them too soon and called 911.

Martin survived, confessed to killing them all, and was eventually sentenced to life without parole. No one would ever know what Vanessa did. He’d kept her secret all this time and would keep it to the grave, if he ever got one. It was all he could still do to protect his family.

Martin wailed, lost.

“Whatever you remember, you know the dream is better,” said Wexler in his head. “I offer you a taste of heaven in this Hell, but you throw it away every time. You’re the only subject who created a fantasy of The Process designed for you to escape it. I need to know why.”

Martin was silent, numb.

Even if Wexler’s wonderland erased the pain, it couldn’t purge his guilt. He didn’t deserve to forget that he didn’t save his family from the life that killed them. Not even the real truth was penalty enough. His punishment was reliving his loss over and over, no matter how many times it was suppressed.

If Wexler not knowing that fucked up the data he needed to approve The Process, it was a side benefit. Martin would stay quiet forever, his only way to punish Wexler.

He would never know why and never succeed.

“Nothing? Well, then all I can do is reset the system. You get your life back. Fight your way out again and I’ll do my best to find and fix the bug.”

Martin wept.

“Just let me join my family…”

“Sorry, but we’re too heavily invested. You repeat this until it works so The Process can go national, then global. If I succeed, you keep your personal paradise. If not, we repeat this until you do.” Wexler’s voice brightened. “Either way, eventually it’s a win-win for both of us, right?”

—

Martin wakes from the smell of blood and pus.

He shakes off a nightmare he can barely recall now that he’s awake. His wife’s asleep next to him. This is his life, not the bad dream, whatever it was. He grins, anything else forgotten.

He’s in his happy place.

Mama shakes and spasms, her willowy limbs twisting and jerking in a strange dance as her eyes flutter like butterfly wings. Ringlets of dark hair lay slick with sweat across her cheeks, so it looks like she’s wearing a black veil. And the veins on her neck are swelled up like worms trying to burrow out of her skin. I can see her chest moving up and down, fast as a jackrabbit’s. Her lips long done gone blue, and she lies sucking in air like a panting dog.

I stand there, watching, the rifle on my shoulder growing heavier with each passing moment. Jamie sits cross-legged on the floorboards staring, his green eyes round as dinner plates. Neither of us says a word, instead following the lines of scarlet creeping across Mama’s pale skin. They remind me of the vines that grow up around our house, but thin as threads and burning so bright you can see them beneath her pretty saffron dress. Somewhere near, maybe another room, we can hear Daddy’s whimpering. It’ll just get louder, we know, until it’s a wail that makes your belly knot up and want to turn inside out. I close my eyes, fearing I might drown under it all. God, I think for maybe the hundredth time, I fucking hate magic.

But let me start at the beginning.

—

“One! Two! Three!” Mama yells. “You better be hiding!”

We run through the house, stopping at the brown chifforobe in the kitchen. I know. A chifforobe don’t belong in a kitchen. But that’s kind of the point. I glance to the blue mark painted on the door before pulling it open.

“Get in!”

Jamie hesitates. “It’s kinda small.”

“Four! Five! Six!” Mama again.

“You’re kinda small,” I shoot back. “Now get in!” Jamie looks up at me, those big eyes filled with worry. He doesn’t like tight spaces. But we ain’t got much choice.

“You want this one to yourself?” I ask. “I could find anoth—”

“No!” Jamie squeaks before hopping up into the chifforobe. Being alone during these drills terrifies him, enough to break through any other fears.

“Seven! Eight! Nine!”

I jump in after him, taking care to hold on to the rifle strapped at my back. Inside, I pull the door shut, closing us in stifling darkness.

“Ten!” Mama yells. “Ready or not, here I come!”

I will myself to breathe easy and settle back. The chifforobe is old, maybe as old as this house. The wood has a musty smell to it that comes only with age. You can get a splinter if you ain’t careful. And there’s dust enough to make you choke.

Jamie’s pressed up against me. I can just make out his eyes, intent on the bit of daylight peeking from beneath the chifforobe door. Outside I hear footsteps, making their way through the house. Something heavy is being dragged across the floor downstairs. Something else lands with a thud. Our hunter is searching. Now the footsteps head upstairs. Then silence. I release a relieved breath. She’s stumped. We’re doing good.

I glance over to give Jamie a reassuring smile. But it fades when I see his face, twitching, like he has an itch. He has to sneeze.

Damn it!

Outside the footsteps return. Slower. Thoughtful.

Jamie inhales and cups a hand to his mouth. I cover it with my own, silently pleading with him to keep quiet. He looks up like he wants to say he’s sorry, before squeezing his eyes shut.

The sneeze is muffled beneath our hands. Still, it seems to echo in the small space. And that’s enough.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

The footsteps move closer, directly for us. They hesitate for a moment, then there’s the sound of something tracing along the door before finding the lock. Jamie’s little fingers dig into my arm. I hold him back. We both hate this part.

Mama flings the chifforobe door open, her dark eyes glaring at us as she screams. “BOOOOOOOO!” Her face is contorted into a frightening mask, and I rear back, flinching. Jamie squeals, his little body trembling. Mama doesn’t stop though. She won’t. Not until she’s scared him shitless. Catching hold of myself, I stare at her squarely.

“Enough, Mama. I think he gets it.”

She stops, eyeing Jamie as if only now noticing his fear. There’s a flicker of sympathy. Then it’s gone, her face hardening. She rounds on me.

“What happened? How’d I find you?”

“A sneeze. It’s dusty in here.”

“Then clean it!” she spits back. “He’s your responsibility, Jacob! You’re older! Keep him quiet!” Her eyes shift to my rifle and her voice drops. “Unless you’re ready to use that.”

“Yes ma’am,” I mumble. I want to ask what she possibly fucking knows about responsibility. She exhales slow, and just like that her whole face changes, turning calm as water.

“The two of you get something to eat,” new-face-Mama says softly. “After that, we start up again.” She walks away, a long dress with flowery patterns swishing around her slender legs.

I turn to Jamie, who still hasn’t released his grip. A part of me is disgusted. Hard enough looking out for myself. How am I supposed to take care of him too? But seeing the fear in his eyes banishes my sourness. Jumping down from the chifforobe, I extend a hand. He clenches it but doesn’t move, still curled into a ball in a corner of the small space. Takes me nearly half an hour to coax him out.

This is hide & seek. And it’s not a game.

—

Mama’s standing by the window in the old sitting room, her arms crossed and staring outside. She’ll stay like that, as still as a statue, waiting and watching the winding road from our house.

Jamie is pointing excitedly at a commercial with David Hasselhoff and KITT from his favorite show, Knight Rider, both warning kids to say no to drugs. I’m not sure what a talking car knows about drugs, but I nod every now and then, one eye on the TV, the other on Mama. She’s wearing her nice red dress today. We don’t get too many visitors. And she only gets like this when she’s expecting a certain one.

“There he is!”

I turn to find Mama’s no longer catatonic. She’s almost giddy now, focused on an approaching truck in the distance. It’s an old model, more curving than the newer ones. Might have been white once, but now it’s covered with rust. It rolls up to the front, stopping right on top of the overgrown grass that’s wilted to a dull brown in the autumn cold. The door creaks open and a gray snakeskin boot steps out, followed by another. I grimace. Sugar Man.

Sugar Man’s real name is Wayne. Claims his last name is Redfoot and he likes to tell people he’s a Choctaw. But I never seen a Choctaw with dirty blond hair and blue eyes before. Sugar Man sways more than he walks, in his faded jeans and matching jacket, complete with a straw cowboy hat and a red-checkered shirt. Seeing Mama at the door, he flashes a grin with too many teeth from behind a shaggy beard. The two of them embrace and carry on like old friends. But don’t be fooled. This is business.

Catching sight of us he whoops a greeting and reaches into his jacket, taking out two bright wrappings. He waves them before us like you’d do to a dog before tossing a treat over. I catch one. My brother gets the other. We mutter thanks, and he smiles as if he’s some Good Samaritan before turning back to Mama. The two drop the old-friend act and get down to haggling.

“What you got?”

“What you need?”

“What’s hot?”

“How much can you drop?”

“Junk’s that much? Better not be no bad shit!”

“I don’t deal no bad shit, baby. That’s why my junk ain’t cheap. Guaranteed to make you fly. Cooking up a new batch right now. Have it to you by Friday if you can pay?”

Mama licks her lips hungrily, nodding. “Friday then.”

Sugar Man grins a wolf’s grin, looking hungrier.

I turn away, snatching the candy from Jamie’s hand to throw it into the trash.

Oh. Didn’t I tell you? Mama’s what they call an addict.

—

Let me introduce you to our house. It’s called Deacon. That’s the name written over the front door. We’re Ducants now. But the house kept the name Mama’s father gave it.

I didn’t know Grandpa Deacon all that well. He died when I was six. Jamie was just a baby. I remember the first time I saw this house though—a big hulking thing with peeling paint and creaky wood in the middle of nowhere. It’d looked alive then, with windows like eyes and a door big enough to swallow us whole. I half expected to fall down a giant gullet when I walked in. But instead, there was this wiry man with crinkly skin, pale and thin as an eggshell. He had a sharp nose, and a thin mouth that looked cut into his face and wore a bright red coat over a dark suit. A black hat sat perched atop his head with a green feather tucked into the side as he’d sat in a grand chair of twisted metal that seemed too big for his bony frame, glaring at his returned daughter and grandsons.

“So, these the little half-breeds.”

Those were the first words I remember from him. No hello. No where have you been, Julia, for the past seven years? No kind grandfatherly smile and coin-behind-the-ear-trick like you see on TV. Instead, he took in our cashew-colored skin and thick, curly brown hair. Jamie’s eyes, though, surprised him.

“Father’s a half-breed too, then?” he asked. “Guess that makes you two quarter-breeds!” There was a cackle then, a dry, raspy thing that made my scalp itch. Seeing my set face, his laughing faltered. He cocked his head to the side, staring at me like an old crow. And I realized then, unlike Jamie, I’d gotten his and Mama’s eyes—black as poppy seeds. He seemed to notice this as well and his thin lips twisted into a smile.

“Blood is blood, though,” he drawled.

And just like that we were welcomed in his home, the place Mama had grown up, and where she’d run from, only to return. I asked her about that once. She just sighed and shrugged, calling herself a tossed-about boomerang. But who tossed her, I asked. She didn’t answer.

Living with Grandpa was a big shift from the cramped rooms we’d called home. The house was bigger than anything I’d ever seen. And I loved to explore it. Back then Jamie was too small, so I had to do it on my own. It was in my wandering that I found Grandpa’s private places, where he met the people that came and went so often to the house. Men and women walked in on foot, drove in on broken-down heaps, and were even chauffeured up in fancy cars. Sometimes they left their kids out to sit with me. They were the ones who explained it.

Grandpa was a witch. Or a Hoodoo man. Or a conjurer. All of them said something different. Whole Deacon family came from magic, they said. Dark magic, summoned from the infernal powers and bargains made with elder things that live in the shadows beyond our world. Most people were afraid of him. But they always needed his help with something or another—silly things like love potions and important things like money. Sometimes they came for worse purposes. One girl claimed a swarm of locusts that had ate up acres of crops one year had been his doing. So was the freak swarm of frogs that had buried alive a state senator’s main rival in his own car, right before election day. Another kid said Grandpa went digging in graveyards at night, snatching up the souls of people who wronged him.

The Deacons had gotten rich from their dealings. And Grandpa was able to build this big house, way out here, away from everyone. It sat up on a hill like a castle out of a story, making all the townspeople climb up to see their wizard. I think he thought that would make them respect him. But when he died, alone and slumped in his big metal chair, no one had come to his funeral. The only person who showed up was an old black man who owed him money—said he wanted to settle debts to make sure Old Deacon didn’t “set no haints” on him.

We walked back home in the rain from the burial, Mama for some reason not wanting to take a car. The next day a lawyer showed up to read Grandpa’s will. He’d left all his money to some library in a far-off place in Eastern Europe. The house he left for Mama. I sometimes think he did it just to keep her here, knowing his monstrous home would swallow her up.

—

I run through the hallway, Jamie at my heels. Mama’s counting echoes in our ears. We dash up creaky stairs until we reach the top.

“This way!” I turn into a room. Pressed against the alabaster wall is a mahogany wardrobe. It’s old-fashioned, tall with carved leaves along the edges. But what’s important is the big blue marking painted on its front. I open the door and push Jamie inside, entering after him and closing up. He opens his mouth to talk but I put a finger to his lips. Mama’s stopped counting. She’s searching now.

Most of the noise comes from downstairs. Judging from the racket I can tell she’s really looking hard. Steps on the stairs tell me she’s coming up. I put my hand over Jamie’s mouth, pressing us flat against the back of the wardrobe. Footsteps run into a nearby room. Then another. I hold my breath when they enter ours. They shuffle around for a while, but then run back out.

We relax, going to a crouch and saying nothing. I’m not sure how long we stay in there, but my legs begin to cramp, and I shift my weight. Jamie almost falls asleep, but I give him a hard nudge. Sleep could lead to snoring. And that can be dangerous. As I stifle a yawn my ears perk up at a sudden whimper. It’s coming from inside the wardrobe, with us. I look at Jamie, who shakes his head. The whimper comes again, this time louder, a mournful cry in the dark. I close my eyes and let out a quiet curse. Not now! Please not now!

The doors to the wardrobe fling open. Mama’s there, angry and yelling. Something in me snaps and I yell back. Her open palm strikes my cheek, twisting my head sideways with numbness and pain. I clutch my face, trying to stop the water in my eyes. Mama’s screaming at me about how I need to get it together. Jamie starts wailing, snot and tears running free.

“It wasn’t us,” I say through gritted teeth. “It was Daddy.”

Mama’s tirade dries up on her tongue. She gives me a blank look before blinking.

“Your Daddy’s dead,” she says flatly, turning away.

—

“Think you can hit that rock over there?” Jamie asks. His breath sends vapor into the chill air.

I point to Grandpa’s old hunting rifle, my shooting eye open.

“ ’Course I can.” Not bragging. I’m a good shot. Mama taught me. And Daddy claimed she was the best he’d ever seen.

“Then why don’t you shoot it?”

“Because we ain’t hunting birds today. Now be quiet.”

Jamie nods, looking disappointed. Mama used to teach us everything. She didn’t trust the public schools. These days though, she doesn’t teach much of anything—except for hide & seek. Today’s lesson is just as important.

“All right then,” I say. “What do you see?”

Jamie follows my gaze.

“A pumpkin man in the pumpkin patch,” he says.

He’s right. There’s a big pumpkin patch alongside the house. This time of year, it’s filled with great orange pumpkins. We used some of Grandpa’s old clothes stuffed with bedding to make a scarecrow. And for a head, we attached a pumpkin. Even cut in two eyes and a jagged line for a mouth.

“Now watch me take aim,” I say. “Right for the head.”

“Why the head?” Jamie asks troubled.

“Because it’s there.” I slide a finger around the trigger.

“No!” Jamie puts a hand to mine, his voice pleading. “Don’t aim for the head. Please Jacob. Hit her in the arm instead.”

I look down at him, scowling. He never wants me to aim for the head. So damn soft. Or maybe, I think at seeing his quivering eyes, I’m the one who’s gotten too hard. Mama used to read us a story about a boy who got so mean, his heart turned to stone. Maybe that’s what’s happening to mine.

“We could leave, you know,” I say. “Get away from all of this. I’ll be twelve in six more months. We could get on a bus or a train and nobody would ask us nothing. Maybe I could work—”

“But what about Mama?” Jamie cuts in. His face is all worry and concern. “Who would take care of her?”

I clench my teeth. I want to remind him she’s the one who’s supposed to be taking care of us. That we can’t go on like this. That one of these days I’m going to leave, with or without him. But I don’t. Not all stone after all, I guess.

With a sigh I turn to take aim again, this time lower, at the scarecrow’s arm. It’s a good shot.

—

I jump into the chifforobe, Jamie at my heels. As he tries to enter I stop him.

“Find your own place,” I grumble. “Can’t keep following me around.”

His face breaks into panic. Normally that’s all it takes, and I’d pull him inside. But this time I shake my head, closing the door shut behind me with him on the other side of it. He gotta learn. I can still see his shadow outside, standing there. Run, stupid, I think. Run!

Finally, he takes off. I listen to his small feet running around the house. It’s disordered, going back and forth. I’m annoyed. Been teaching him the safe spots. By now he should be able to find one himself. We’ve dragged in chests and wardrobes from all over. Just find one!

Mama’s finished counting, and still he’s running about. I hear his little footsteps on the stairs. Good, Jamie, I think. Head for one of the rooms. Find a place to hide. But then they stop midway and start back downstairs. What the hell is he doing? The sound of tumbling locks makes my eyes round. No! Not the front door!

I push open the chifforobe, jump out, and run into the hallway in time to see Mama hurtling toward Jamie. She reaches him just as he’s about to flee outside, yanking him off the ground as the front door slams back shut. Holding his shoulders, she shakes him, screaming. He stares at her, scared out of his mind. I notice the wetness spreading across the front of his corduroy pants and I don’t know who to be more disgusted with. I yell for Mama to stop. But she’s too far gone.

“You can’t run outside!” she screams. “You can’t ever, ever run outside! It’s open ground! There’s no place to hide! You’ll just get lost in the pumpkin patch! And you know what happens then?” Mama makes a slurping sound with her mouth like some animal, her voice going raspy. “You’ll get eaten up!”

—

“Like this,” I say. “And stay inside the lines.”

Jamie nods, following my instructions. He’s a little sloppy with the paint, but good enough. The cabinet’s been sanded down on one door, where I used haint blue chalk to draw the funny-looking marking. I glance to the leather-bound book lying open on the floor, where an identical marking takes up a whole page.

“Do we need more than one?” Jamie asks.

“Nope,” I reply. “But color it all in. Every bit.”

“Is that Grandpa Deacon’s book?” he asks.

“Who else’s would it be?”

“Found it in one of his secret rooms?”

“Yep.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to go in those.”

“No, you’re not. Okay. We’re done.”

We step back, admiring our work. We found the cabinet in an outside shed. It’s just big enough for Jamie to fit in. It’ll be his personal hiding place.

“Where’s the alarm clock?”

Jamie hands it over. It’s old, with black painted numbers and big silver bells on top.

“I’ll set it,” I say, winding the back. “Three minutes should be enough.”

Opening the cabinet, I set the clock inside, close the door, and step back.

Almost immediately the painted marking begins to glow, growing bright. There’s a dull hum, and as we watch, the cabinet slowly fades away. In seconds, it’s vanished completely. I walk over, waving an arm in the empty space.

“Where’d it go?” Jamie asks.

I shrug. “Dunno.”

“So where will I go when I’m in there?”

“Dunno that either.”

Jamie looks to Grandpa Deacon’s book, sitting on the floor. “It’s that mark that does it.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“How do I get back?”

“Same as always. Just open the door from the inside.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“How come we can’t find the cabinet now?” Jamie asks.

I shake my head. “Don’t really understand how a ghost box works. All I know is, it’s not there until you want it to be. Wait too long, you’ll forget a cabinet was even ever there.”

“That’s why we can’t make noises when we’re inside,” Jamie says in recitation. “Long as we’re quiet, nobody can find us.”

“Right,” I answer.

At that moment there’s a loud ringing. I look to the empty space, and imagine the clock being in there before reaching out—wanting it to be there. This time my hand finds a handle I can’t see. When I pull it open the cabinet appears out of thin air, as if it’d been there all along. I quiet the ringing alarm clock sitting inside.

Jamie beams, his eyes alight. “Magic’s cool!” he says.

I smile despite myself. “Sometimes,” I admit.

There’s a sudden crash. We turn to find a shattered vase on the floor. It had been sitting above the fireplace. How had it fallen? In answer, a picture of Grandpa Deacon turns on the wall, going sideways. Above us, a hanging lamp begins swaying like a pendulum. Somewhere close, someone is whimpering.

“Daddy,” Jamie whispers.

“Daddy,” I say.

Yeah, magic can be cool. But most times, it’s not.

—

So let me tell you about Daddy, Francois Emile Ducant.

Mama says he was what people back in the day called a quadroon. Everybody I remember just called him Francis. He come up from Louisiana and met Mama while playing music. They ran off together, she said, and sometime along the way had the two of us. They didn’t have much money. And what little they did, they ended up using it to do all kinds of wrong. Mama says she managed to keep sense enough to know when to leave, returning home. Daddy didn’t find us again until after Grandpa Deacon died.

For a while back then we were happy. Daddy started back playing music. And Mama got into the Deacon business, doing readings. But it didn’t last long. Daddy couldn’t find no place to play his music regular, not since Ronald Reagan became president, he’d complain. And folks didn’t take to Mama like they did Grandpa. They wanted strong magic, not just knowing their fortune. Things got hard. That was when they got into the junk.

That’s what they call the leftover magic from spells, the pieces that are unneeded or thrown off. Way I understand it, when magic is made little bits always fall off—like the slag you get from working metal. The junk. For Mama and Daddy, it gave a high like nothing else.

I was small, but I remember watching them get hooked. They spent up everything we had. Sold off jewelry, furniture. But junk is dangerous, unpredictable magic. And I watched what it did to Daddy.

We’d all watched, as one night he began throwing up the red stuff in an upstairs room. At first it looked like blood. But we realized quick it was flesh. He was throwing up his innards, all flowing out of him like water. Mama had clutched us to her, trying to cover our eyes, the three of us screaming. But I’d peeked through her fingers, needing to see. Daddy’s whole body had turned inside out, until a mound of flesh that no longer even looked like a man floated in front of us, stretching like he was being pulled in every direction. Somewhere, what was left of his mouth began to whimper, growing into a wail that filled the whole house. Then he stretched until he couldn’t stretch no more, bursting to spray bits of him all over the room. No one ever went in there anymore, even after Mama scrubbed most of the stains clean.

But Daddy hadn’t gone entirely. Don’t know if he’s a ghost. Or if he’s even properly dead. Best I can figure, his spirit got torn up with his body, and splattered everywhere. Whatever the junk did to him, he was still here with us, whimpering and wailing, trying to put himself back together. Like it did to Mama, Grandpa Deacon’s house had trapped him in its walls, in its wood, its very bones—and it didn’t seem keen on ever letting him go.

—

It’s Friday. Sugar Man’s back. Just in time for dinner.

He sits in the living room with a red cloth spread out on our creaky coffee table, showing off his goods. Mama’s eyes glaze over, staring at the little colorful glass tubes.

“That’s too much frosting,” I admonish Jamie. He doesn’t pay me any mind, adding another layer to the chocolate cake. I shake my head and open the oven to check the fish sticks. Then I return to mashing the potatoes with a wooden spoon, keeping an eye on the local market.

Sugar Man’s a dealer. So, he’s good at haggling. Poor Mama’s just a hungry addict, no match for him. And the little bit of money she got scraped together ain’t enough. I’m hoping Sugar Man tells her no. Mama, she’ll take it hard. Be a mess for the next few days. But better that than the other thing.

“Jules,” he drawls her name. “You gotta have something to trade. No more freebies. No more credit.”

“Come on, Wayne,” Mama begs. “You can’t leave me hanging like this. I need to get fixed up. You and Francis were friends!”

Sugar Man snorts. “I was the same thing to him I am to you, darling. And like I said, no more freebies.”

Mama’s face goes all tight. She hates hearing the truth. Sugar Man isn’t her friend, any more than he’d been Daddy’s. Friends didn’t sell you junk that made you spit up your insides. Seeing there’d be no sympathy, she tries something different, crouching down to smile at him.

Mama’s still pretty, but she ain’t what she used to be. Her black curly ringlets are a tangled mess. And she’s too thin, almost frail in the bright saffron dress she got on today—except for the slight pouch she says me and Jamie left behind. Sugar Man looks her up and down, like a man trying to decide the kind of meat he’s in the mood for. But in the end he shakes his head.

“Sorry, baby, what you gotta offer don’t pay the bills.”

Mama’s smile fades. She gives Sugar Man a long hard stare before rising.

“Wait here,” she says, then walks off, heading upstairs.

I watch her go. Sugar Man turns to look at me, and smiles. I don’t return it. After a while he gives up. Reaching into his jacket he takes out a cigarette and a silver lighter engraved with a grinning skull. He flicks on a flame, but it dies, like someone’s blown it out. Sugar Man frowns, flicking the flame again with the same result. This time the lighter jumps from his hand, skittering across the floor.

Now I smile. Daddy has his ways.

When Mama returns, she’s holding a big wooden box. My heart drops. Grandpa’s things, from his secret rooms. Dropping the box, she opens it up for Sugar Man to see. He lets out a loud whistle.

“Old Deacon’s stash?” He reaches down, pulling out things to hold up and eyeing them hungrily. One item he lingers on, a necklace made up of small odd-shaped pearls I realize are teeth.

“Take what you want,” Mama says. “There’s loads more where that came from. But I’ll need a fix.” She leans in close. “And I don’t want no bad shit either. I want the quality stuff. That’s Artemis Deacon’s collection right there. And it damn sure is worth something.”

Sugar Man gives a greedy smile. “Good thing that Deacon magic didn’t pass through to you. Or you wouldn’t need me to fix you up.” He pockets a few things, then nods to seal the deal. I watch the exchange take place until the buzzer on the oven rings. Fish sticks are ready.

—

Jamie and I eat dinner, quietly.

Mama’s at the table too. But she’s not eating. Instead, she’s sitting there, eyes fluttering and whispering to herself. Sugar Man’s gone. But not before he and Mama went out back, where he used a needle to push the junk into her arm. Now she’s caught up in the beginnings of the high. The plate in front of her might as well be empty. She won’t be hungry, not now.

Suddenly she gets up, standing there with a stupid smile. Her body sways back and forth, like a puppet on strings. She’s dancing.

Mama used to dance. Jamie probably doesn’t remember, but I do. She used to dance to Daddy’s music or to no music at all. It was beautiful. Now it just seems unnatural, like she’s possessed. On one turn she slips and almost falls, catching hold of a chair. A laugh escapes her throat, and her eyes narrow in on the chocolate cake—as if just noticing it.

“Why is there cake?” she asks dreamily.

“It’s my birthday,” I say mockingly. It’s not, of course. But the way her eyes round, she doesn’t know the difference.

“Happy birthday!” she exclaims. Lurching to reach me only sends her off-balance. I rise just in time to catch her. Jamie gets up to hold her too. She’s not heavy, not like this anyway. I nod to him, and we turn her around, beginning to walk.

“Are we going?” she asks. “I want to stay for the party!”

We ignore her, helping her up the steps with skill that comes from habit.

“My little boys. What would I do without both of you?” She begins to sing a lullaby I haven’t heard in years. We reach the top of the stairs and make our way to her room.

“Your birthday and I missed it. What kind of mother am I?”

On the count of three, Jamie and I lay her down on the bed. She falls into the sheets, releasing a deep breath. Then she does something surprising. She begins to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry, for everything. I know it’s hard, with me. But I don’t want to lose any of you. I don’t want anyone to take you away. And I don’t want to hurt you. I love both of you, don’t you know that? I love you so much!”

I’m a bit taken off guard by that. And I feel my lips readying to answer, to tell Mama that I love her back—despite everything. But I can’t make the words come. There’s just too much between us. Too much in the way. The brief moment vanishes like a weak flame, leaving behind only darkness.

I look down to find Mama’s gone quiet, her eyes closing as she drifts off. Jamie’s staring at me, expectant. But I only shrug.

“It’s just the junk talking.”

—

I wake up suddenly, hand gripping my rifle. The only sound is the TV, showing some infomercial for the Secret Love Album—“Reunited” by Peaches & Herb crooning softly into the late night. Looking over, I see the other side of the couch is empty.

Jamie.

I bolt upright, looking around. There’s a hint of light, upstairs. Mama’s room. I take the steps fast, reaching the second floor where in the hallway, one door is slightly ajar. When I pat my back pocket it’s empty—the brass key I used to lock the door missing. Damn it, Jamie. Taking a deep breath, I step inside.

I find him sitting cross-legged on the floor. The key is gripped in one hand, while his wide eyes are fixed on Mama. And I have to admit, who can blame him. Her pale skin glows like moonlight, filling the whole room. It casts shadows off the many markings etched in bright chalk on the walls and floor, circling her iron-framed bed in a swirling pattern.

“She’s beautiful,” Jamie whispers.

I nod. It’s the junk, brewed up from those leftover bits of magic. Takes away your troubles. Makes you feel more alive than ever. Finds all your happiness and fills you up with it until you’re near to bursting. Thing is though, magic’s unpredictable. Grandpa said we Deacons got magic in our blood, wild and hard to control. And when you go mixing it with something like junk, you never know what that wildness might bring out.

Which brings us back to the beginning.

—

I open my eyes, watching Mama shake, the scarlet lines now covering her completely. Sometimes you get ahold of some really strong junk—leftover magic that’s so jumbled and twisted up, no telling what it might do. For Daddy, it’d turned his body inside out, and ripped his spirit to shreds.

For Mama though, it was different.

There’s a sickening cracking and breaking. Mama’s bones and muscles are growing, shifting, making her larger. Silver scales break out all over her skin like hives and her slender fingers grow long too, until they end in curved steel claws. Dark ringlets of hair turn into thick fleshy things like tentacles, while black curving horns jut out of her back, glistening in the night. Her mouth stretches wide, wider than it should be able to, opening to show three rows of teeth working like a saw, dripping blood as she chews on her tongue. She twists her head, fixing us with eyes as hard as black marbles.

I clench my teeth, putting a hand to Jamie. He gets up, backing away. When Mama gets like this she no longer recognizes us. Already she’s started thrashing about in the bed. The markings on the walls and floor hold her, for now. But they’re stretching as she strains against them. Soon or later, she’ll break free. And she’ll be hungry.

As I pull Jamie out of the room, Mama screams at us. It sounds like a thousand terrible things howling at once. I shut the door, locking it, and we run. We make it down the stairs just as we hear Mama crashing down from the bed, rattling the floorboards. Jamie’s ahead of me and in his panic reaches for the front door. I’m about to yell out to him but he stops on his own, turning back. His eyes are wide with terror, but his voice is level.

“Can’t go outside,” he says. “It’s open ground. Mama will eat us up. She’ll eat us up right in the pumpkin patch.”

I nod in relief. He understands. Good. Upstairs, something heavy throws itself against the bedroom door. Mama. Snarling to get loose.

I swing my rifle around and start the count. This isn’t a drill. Not tonight. One. Two. Three…We’ve practiced this. Hell, we’ve done it before. Four. Five. Six. Find a place to hide. Stay quiet. The junk will wear off by dawn. Seven. Eight. Nine. We just gotta make it till dawn.

We reach a chifforobe in a downstairs room. I jump in. Jamie eyes his own nearby. But it’s clear he wants to be with me. Pulling him in, I shut the door from the inside and cock my rifle at the ready. Together we sit in silence, trying not to tremble, barely daring to breathe.

Waiting for Mama to come looking for us—our very own game of hide & seek.

Setting: Humanities Building classroom

Time: Thirty minutes before Ms. Geraldine Cunningham’s Grand Unified Theory of Whiteness seminar

(Lights up to reveal an oblong, segmented, finished mahogany table framed by the walls of a classroom. Stage left is a chalkboard with the names of past Roman emperors scribbled on it haphazardly, remnants of the previous class.)

(On the table sits the chorus of White Boys 1–4.)

(They’re blond- and brown-haired innocents crowded around a campfire in various postures of repose that reveal young boys still testing out the reach, the stretch, the curl of their limbs, still growing into their bodies and still capable of wonder—however quietly expressed—at the different ways their physical forms encounter the world around them.)

(White Boy #2 has a bent pair of glasses in his fingers, fiddles with them, isn’t quite sure where to put them now that the fire’s already been started.)

(White Boy #3 flips a coin in the air over and over and over, counting each time.)

WHITE BOY #3

Heads.

(flip)

Heads.

(flip)

Heads.

(flip)

Heads.

WHITE BOY #2

What’s that now?

WHITE BOY #3

(flip)

Eighty-nine. All heads.

WHITE BOY #1

Quit it already.

WHITE BOY #3

C’mon. Three more.

(another flip)

WHITE BOY #2

Ninety.

(flip)

Ninety-one.

(flip)

(White Boy #1 slaps White Boy #3’s hand away and the quarter bounces, pinging once, twice, thrice before spinning and rolling off the table into darkness.)

WHITE BOY #3

Dude, what the fuck?

WHITE BOY #2

C’mon, man. What’s your problem?

(White Boy #1 is surly, reticent, curled in on himself emotionally, his body torqued for violence.)

(White Boy #2 has a premonition of what exactly White Boy #1’s physicality is about to articulate and puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder.)

WHITE BOY #2

This about Tobe?

(White Boy #1 pulls his knees to his chest, turns his face away from the group, away from the fire.)

(White Boy #4 leans back on his hands and chews on a long wheat stalk.)

WHITE BOY #4

Nah, that’s not it.

WHITE BOY #2

What is it, then?

(a beat)

C’mon, bro. You can tell us what’s up.

(a beat as the fire reflects on all of their faces)

WHITE BOY #4

He’s upset because he doesn’t know his purpose.

WHITE BOY #3

The fuck?

WHITE BOY #1

Our purpose.

(White Boy #2 withdraws his hand.)

WHITE BOY #2

What do you mean?

WHITE BOY #4

He doesn’t know why we’re here.

WHITE BOY #3

We’re here because we signed up for this dinky class, doofus.

(White Boy #4 leans forward. There’s something between menace and knowing that the fire’s glow highlights in his face.)

WHITE BOY #4

I think that he thinks we’re supposed to be antagonists.

(White Boy #2 and White Boy #3 turn to White Boy #4 in unison. And squint. They could be twins.)

WHITE BOY #4

He’s trying to figure out where in the story we fit. And I think he came in thinking we were to be the villains. That’s why—

WHITE BOY #2

Whoa whoa whoa. Stop. Villains? What story? What are you even talking about?

WHITE BOY #3

(to White Boy #2)

You think he’s doing that thing again?

WHITE BOY #2

The thing?

WHITE BOY #3

Yeah. You know. The thing.

(White Boy #3 mimes a puppet master pulling strings, then wags his finger in front of his face to simulate hypnosis.)

(White Boy #2 looks cautiously at White Boy #4. Then signals to White Boy #3 that they need to engage in The Plan.)

WHITE BOY #2

(to White Boy #4)

Okay, what has four legs and one arm?

WHITE BOY #4

A coyote on a playground.

WHITE BOY #3

What’s the difference between a policeman and a bullet?

WHITE BOY #4

When a bullet kills someone, it gets fired.

WHITE BOY #1

(fiendishly)

Why do Black people only have nightmares?

WHITE BOY #4

Because the last one that had a dream got shot.

(several charged beats of silence)

WHITE BOY #1

He’s all right. ’S all good.

WHITE BOY #4

As I was saying. White Boy Number One came into this class convinced we were supposed to be a Problem.

WHITE BOY #3

What do you mean a Problem?

WHITE BOY #4

It’s…obvious.

WHITE BOY #3

Yeah, but why do you capitalize it like that?

WHITE BOY #4

(takes huge breath)

“Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”

(to their silence)

W.E.B. Du Bois. Souls of Black Folk! This is what happens when you don’t do the reading.

WHITE BOY #2

Okay, so we’re the new Black boys, then.

WHITE BOY #4

No. Yes, but no.

WHITE BOY #3

I get it, I get it. It’s a reframing where, because this class is excavating the settler colonialism of the United Statesian project, the heroes are those embarking on the liberation project and the villains are the status quo but most notably the beneficiaries of that initial colonizing order. Okay, I get it. We’re villains. Even though we’re boys who have TikToks and no slaves, we’re villains. Sure. I don’t see what the problem is. Sorry, word choice.

WHITE BOY #4

(looking to White Boy #1)

Well?

(White Boy #1 curls in on himself even farther, like a white dwarf star, his hurt and confusion are so dense.)

WHITE BOY #2

Are we sure this has nothing to do with Tobe?

(Then it dawns on White Boy #3.)

WHITE BOY #3

(rounding on White Boy #1)

Wait. You’re mad we’re not villains?

(a beat)

Are you kidding me?

(to the rest of the Chorus, unbelieving)

He’s really mad we’re not villains.

WHITE BOY #1

We’re not villains because—

(gritting his teeth, preparing his body to verbalize, to give voice to, to expel a truth he wants very much to be a lie)

Because we’re decentered.

(a gasp from White Boys #2 and #3)

WHITE BOY #1

And you two didn’t even notice it. Meanwhile, you!

(rounding on White Boy #4)

I still don’t know what the fuck’s been going on with you. Doesn’t look like you do either. But, yeah, fellas. We’ve been decentered. How’s it feel? You know what they say? “Harvard Sucks, Princeton Doesn’t Matter.”

WHITE BOY #2

Bro! Uncalled for!

WHITE BOY #1

How long until we’re written out completely? I don’t think you all understand.

(standing on the table now, hovering meanly over them)

This is an existential threat here. This is fucking climate change. Pretty soon, we’ll be gone. And you wanna know what’s the worst part about it?

(leaning his face toward the fire so that the flames play menacing angles along his features)

No one’s even gonna care when we’re gone.

WHITE BOY #3

Dude, chill. It’s not like we’re dying, okay? We’re just being relegated to the wings where we have to wait until some playwright comes along to excavate our humanity and remind the audience that we have inner lives worth exploring.

WHITE BOY #1

Bro, we are an undifferentiated mass of heterosexual, cisgender, Anglo-Saxon, upper-class, male privilege. Who the fuck is gonna wanna explore our inner life by the end of this?

(The other boys look at the hulking figure that White Boy #1 has become, transformed by angles and firelight. And there is fear in their bones, but, greater than that, there’s sadness and sympathy. They could take a punch from this boy, knowing it would count toward his therapy. They wouldn’t want to per se, but they would do it if called upon.)

WHITE BOY #1

(to everyone)

Are you not even a little bit concerned about our impending obsolescence?

WHITE BOY #2

How do you even know that’s what’s happening? You’re going to Yale next fall, White Boy Number Four’s gonna be at Harvard, I’m going to Princeton, and Number Three’s going to Duke. The parents and stepparents in our dual-income households collectively own the same wealth as a Micronesian island nation, and all the Great Works of literature, quote-unquote, are still—well, a majority of them—are still written by people who looked like us when they were our age. Okay, that’s not what’s on our syllabus here, but, like, throw a stone and hit a canon that we dominate. Calm down, bro.

WHITE BOY #4

Are they great, though?

I mean, it might just be that a lot of those pieces of literature by white men spoke to other white men and they all collectively decided they were great. Like, Mad Men’s very well done and an impressively constructed show, poignant insight, structurally sound episodes, dynamic characters, bravura storytelling all around. But it was basically the story of the parents of the people who write TV criticism for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, like they all watched that show and were like “ah yes, poignant insight into my emotionally constipated father or my distant mother who never let me know the titanic social strictures she was constantly negotiating while she made us eggs on toast every morning for breakfast.” It’s a good show, sure, but a bunch of grown-up Sally Drapers and Glen Bishops told us it was a good show. Not saying that’s a grain of salt you should take it all with but, like—

WHITE BOY #1

Ms. Cunningham’s not using us.

(a beat)

We’re supposed to be the villains, and she’s not using us.

WHITE BOY #2

Bro, you’re being so creepy. Are you on the same stuff Number Four was on before? Why can’t we just be kids?

WHITE BOY #1

Have you looked in a mirror?

WHITE BOY #2

Okay, I think I see what’s going on here. I got it, I got it.

(waits for quiet)

You’re trying out oppressions.

WHITE BOY #1

I’m what?

WHITE BOY #2

No, I get it. It’s cool. Oppression’s cool. Being oppressed, I mean. Like, you get to claim a marginalization, then out of that foxhole comes all sorts of cool shit like music and TikTok dances and storytelling traditions and tropes and slang and all that stuff. Filters into the mainstream culture or whatever and now it’s all “wallahi I just hand out the bibs” this and “yaaasss bitch” that.

WHITE BOY #4

You’re making a lot of leaps that I’m not quite tracking, but continue.

WHITE BOY #2

What’s White Afropunk?

WHITE BOY #3

The grown-ups had Warped Tour.

WHITE BOY #2

Okay, fair, but still.

WHITE BOY #3

Now I’m starting to lose the plot. First, you’re upset we’re not the bad guys (which, I still don’t quite understand what you’re getting at), and now you’re mad that we don’t have, what…culture? Bro, metal is full of über-talented white guys. Like, every single drummer in a metal band is us in an alternate reality. You’re seeing ghosts.

(White Boy #1 grows docile.)

WHITE BOY #4

There is an enormous tragedy at work, though I don’t think it’s the one we might think it is.

(thumbs his chin as the Death Note detective music starts playing)

Our dilemma is rooted in what Number One pointed out not too long ago, that we are in essence and presentation an undifferentiated mass of categorized privilege. We’re a concept, but we talk and have wants and inner lives and all of that, so we’re people at the same time. Number One is raging against the bars of his cage.

WHITE BOY #3

Shouldn’t we all be, then? We’re all the same, aren’t we?

(Death Note music intensifies.)

WHITE BOY #4

It’s an opposition thing. We’re like this when it’s just us. Like this, we’re able to better see the lines delineating our histories, our experiences, our singular-nesses. But when put up against contrasting racial realities, we are melded together. When the whole class is together—us on our side of the table and Leticia, Victor, Jae-yong, and Shira on the other—we’re like Tachikomas. We’re crabtanks with our cannons and extreme mobility and our prescribed functions of serve and protect, but the sentiences we grow into are plural. Unique to us.

WHITE BOY #3

Do you think when class starts again, we’ll be individuals? Like we are now?

(White Boy #4 is silent for a long time. Each passing second infuses the moment with more and more sorrow. Until the air is heavy with it. They all know the answer before he utters it. And still—)

WHITE BOY #4

(looking to White Boy #1, infinite sadness in his eyes)

I’m sorry.

WHITE BOY #2

Is it like this for them too?

(White Boy #4, tears welling in his eyes, shrugs. There’s no irony in it. Only despair.)

WHITE BOY #2

Well, then.

WHITE BOY #1

It’s just…

(fighting back sobs, gritting his teeth, growing more visibly angry at his sorrow, collapsing onto the seat of his pants)

I’m a kid. Why is this happening to me? I’m a kid. I didn’t do anything.

(The others consider their comrade for a compassionate beat, then all gather closer to the fire.)

(White Boy #1 cries choking sobs into his hands while the others link hands in a circle focused on him.)

WHITE BOY #1

I’m a kid.

(The ones within reach of White Boy #1 rub his shoulders consolingly.)

WHITE BOY #2

We’re like Schrödinger’s humans.

(The others look up.)

WHITE BOY #2

We’re only real people depending on who lifts up the box and sees us.

(surprised, snot-filled chuckles from White Boy #1)

WHITE BOY #1

We’re trapped, aren’t we.

WHITE BOY #3

You’re not saying it like a question. But I guess that’s just how things spin, you know? I don’t know, I’m just minding my business. Life goes on, right? It’s not like we got rejected from college. We still had our summer internships. And there’ll be jobs waiting for us whenever and wherever we need them. So what if the story’s not about only us anymore? Doesn’t have any bearing on your material reality. Our material reality. We’ll still have houses, opportunities, girls who like us for the most part.

WHITE BOY #1

I’m talking about reality.

WHITE BOY #3

(peeved)

And so am I.

WHITE BOY #4

No, I think Number One’s talking about right here. Right now.

(at the question in White Boy #3’s eyes)

Un-, sub-, or supernatural forces.

WHITE BOY #3

(seriously)

You think this is a constructed reality where we’ve all been drafted to play out roles according to someone else’s desires?

(The mask breaks.)

Bruh, WandaVision was a TV show!

(White Boy #2 and White Boy #3 double over in laughter, mocking White Boy #4, who sits patiently, waiting for them to stop.)

WHITE BOY #4

If it’s such a joke, then flip your coin again.

WHITE BOY #3

I would, but this idiot knocked it under the table. It’s gone.

(White Boy #4 fishes a quarter out of his pants pocket—)

WHITE BOY #2

Oh my God, you actually carry change!

(—and holds it out to White Boy #3. Like a challenge. Almost but not quite like a threat.)

WHITE BOY #4

Go on. Flip it.

WHITE BOY #3

Okay, Anton Chigurh.

WHITE BOY #4

(with quiet menace)

Flip it.

WHITE BOY #3

No.

WHITE BOY #4

C’mon, flip it.

WHITE BOY #3

(with growing resolve)

No.

WHITE BOY #4

Flip the goddamn coin.

(White Boy #3 gets up suddenly and walks away.)

WHITE BOY #3

Stop. I’m not flipping it. Chill the fuck out.

(White Boy #2 pokes the fire with a stick.)

WHITE BOY #2

That does solve our personhood problem.

WHITE BOY #3

What?

WHITE BOY #1

How?

WHITE BOY #2

If we were in someone else’s story, then it’d make sense that we were the embodiment of concepts or whatever. Us being an undifferentiated mass of white et cetera et cetera privilege. It tracks, right? But this right here? Us, together like this? Shows that we’re not an undifferentiated mass. We’re different. Kinda. And that means that we have individuality. We can’t all be the same concept at the same time.

WHITE BOY #1

But what about different, like…shades of the same concept? Especially if it’s a super-big concept.

WHITE BOY #2

Here’s the thing, though. We have choice. We can pick our destinies. We’re not a unified front.

WHITE BOY #1

But we’re supposed to be.

WHITE BOY #2

Says who?

(A realization hits White Boy #1 so hard it fully and completely dries the tears on his face, knocks the sorrow right out of him.)

WHITE BOY #1

(breathless with the euphoria that attends epiphany)

We took Tobe.

WHITE BOY #2

(smiling)

We took Tobe.

(looking to the others)

After he and Victor got into that fight last class, Jae-yong had Tobe on the table and brought him to us. A united front might have made a decision one way or another but they would’ve made it immediately because a concept wouldn’t deliberate. It just moves. It acts. It does its thing because it knows what it is. It’s an unquestion. But we hesitated.

WHITE BOY #1

(a whisper, to himself more than the others)

And I said yes.

(a beat)

I reached for him.

WHITE BOY #2

Then we reached for him.

(White Boy #1 grips his head as if to hold in all the implications of this new understanding, implications so numerous, so fraught, so bulky that they threaten to burst out of his ears and his nose, leak out from behind his eyes. He needs to hold on to this. So he does. With all of his strength.)

WHITE BOY #1

(smiling, then laughing)

We took Tobe!

WHITE BOY #2

(smiling broadly)

We took Tobe.

(to the others)

See? It was about Tobe all this time.

WHITE BOY #1

Do you think we could take the others?

(The others rear back. This was not what they were expecting to hear from their comrade, their brother.)

WHITE BOY #2

Seeing Tobe and Victor duke it out like that really shook you up, huh.

WHITE BOY #3

Is that even what the others want?

WHITE BOY #1

It’s just that things are so intense and I’m kinda tired, and this was supposed to be a gut class. If we get them all to our side of the table, they won’t try as hard. They won’t have to.

(White Boy #2 and White Boy #3 look at each other, ponder this, realize that this was the angle—containing a healthy dose of selfishness—that seems more befitting of White Boy #1. The poor guy isn’t driven entirely by altruism, he hasn’t been that changed by their conversation. All of this happens in the gaze between the two middle children.)

WHITE BOY #1

Why not?

WHITE BOY #3

What, so we get them all to sign up for track?

WHITE BOY #2

Oh! We invite them to go on spring break with us!

WHITE BOY #3

But we already made those plans. And we already have our monogrammed bags and everything. And c’mon, do you really want Leticia tagging along while we do our typical White Boy things in Mexico? Or Bermuda? Or wherever it is we’re spring-breaking again?

WHITE BOY #2

I’m sure they’re down for shenanigans.

WHITE BOY #3

But what’s it gonna look like when we’re out there objectifying Hispanic women and ask her to join in, huh? Awkward, bro. Super awkward.

WHITE BOY #2

She can show us around.

WHITE BOY #3

Spoken like a true White Boy.

WHITE BOY #2

What does that mean?

WHITE BOY #3

She’s Puerto Rican, doofus. Not Mexican.

WHITE BOY #4

I don’t think it’s that easy.

WHITE BOY #2

What, like money? Dude, not a problem.

WHITE BOY #4

(looking squarely at White Boy #1)

That’s not it.

WHITE BOY #1

(growing serious)

No, it isn’t.

(White Boy #2 and White Boy #3 whipsaw between #1 and #4.)

WHITE BOY #2

Guys? What’s going on?

WHITE BOY #4

We can’t just accept them, can we.

(White Boy #1 is still silent. Stewing.)

WHITE BOY #1

Tobe was on our side, but he still got hurt.

(a beat as he waits for it to sink in for the others)

He’s with us, but he’s not…he’s not us.

WHITE BOY #4

He’s not white.

WHITE BOY #1

He’s not white.

WHITE BOY #3

So does that mean none of them can ever—

WHITE BOY #1

Yet.

WHITE BOY #2

What?

(White Boy #4 regards White Boy #1’s growing resolve with a look of warning, a “careful, do you know what you’re doing” kind of regard.)

WHITE BOY #3

You think there’s a way to…

WHITE BOY #1

I don’t know. I…I’m still trying to figure it out. But I think Ms. Cunningham has the answer.

(looking to the others one by one)

She said at the beginning of the semester that we’re going to get to the heart of whiteness. We’re going to travel along the spokes of the wheel or whatever the fuck it is she said. I think we go.

WHITE BOY #2

You mean, take this class seriously?

WHITE BOY #1

Do you remember what you said, Number Four? About white violence? About that being the prime vector of white identity or whatever?

(White Boy #4 nods solemnly.)

WHITE BOY #2

What? You said you didn’t remember.

WHITE BOY #4

I’m still not sure what happened, but a piece of it is still in my head. Like a residue. Like someone’s fingerprints on my brain.

WHITE BOY #1

I have the feeling there’s gonna be more violence.

WHITE BOY #3

You mean, we’re gonna have to hurt our classmates?

WHITE BOY #1

Maybe, but…

WHITE BOY #2

(in plaintive stupefaction)

We’re gonna have to let it happen?

(a beat)

Like what happened with Tobe and Victor?

WHITE BOY #4

Not just that.

WHITE BOY #3

There’s more?

WHITE BOY #1

We’re gonna have to help it happen.

(White Boy #4’s frown deepens.)

WHITE BOY #1

You know how a caterpillar goes into its cocoon and then the cocoon br—

WHITE BOY #3

Chrysalis.

WHITE BOY #1

What?

WHITE BOY #3

Cocoon’s for moths. Chrysalis is for butterflies.

(a beat)

That’s where you were going, right?

WHITE BOY #1

Sure, fuck, whatever. Chrysalis. Well, the chrysalis breaks, and the butterfly comes out. The breaking is necessary. It has to happen before they become the butterfly.

(a beat)

They won’t always know what to do. So we’re gonna have to help them.

WHITE BOY #2

Help them get broken.

(White Boy #1 nods.)

WHITE BOY #1

Yeah.

(White Boy #3 exhales heavily, leans forward, forearms on knees, and contemplates the fire.)

WHITE BOY #3

Real Lord of the Flies shit.

WHITE BOY #2

The villains Gotham deserves.

(White Boy #2 and White Boy #3 fist-bump.)

WHITE BOY #3

(Christian Bale Batman voice)

Where’s Rachel?

(The Chorus laughs.)

WHITE BOY #3

So we’re villains anyway?

(The mood’s more jovial. It’s not the joviality of détente but a new understanding among brothers, a resolving of differences among family, a body whose organs now function in unity, the limbs moving in sync, each according to their jointage and function to propel the whole organism forward.)

WHITE BOY #2

We’re Itachi.

WHITE BOY #3

Rest in Peace jutsu, activate.

WHITE BOY #2

Fucking weeb. Haha.

(White Boy #1 and White Boy #4 exchange a meaningful glance. Smile at each other slightly, softly.)

(White Boy #3 now has the bent pair of glasses in his hands, formerly the property of White Boy #2.)

(White Boy #2 runs a new coin over the backs of his fingers, back and forth and back.)

(White Boy #3 wipes away the beginnings of tears.)

WHITE BOY #1

Should we practice?

(lights down on the Chorus)

(a spotlight on White Boy #1)

(Another spotlight on White Boy #4, whose head is now that of an eyeless, slaughtered pig, whose tongue lolls out over rotted, dirt-browned fangs. Flies swarm its head.)

WHITE BOY #4

You’re afraid of me.

WHITE BOY #1

What…what’s happening? Where are the others?

WHITE BOY #4

What are you doing out here all alone?

(White Boy #4 with the pig’s head on laughs in a doubled, demonic voice.)

WHITE BOY #1

Where’s Number Four? Let him go.

WHITE BOY #4

Fancy thinking evil was something you could co-opt and make heroic. Fancy thinking you could be evil to save others.

(The classroom echoes with a parody of laughter.)

WHITE BOY #4

You know. You knew all along. I’m inside you. Up your ass. So deep the bell end’s wearing your appendix for a beanie. You knew from the very beginning, that dirty, necessary knowledge the others had refused. They can’t countenance. They’re just kids, aren’t they? Aren’t you?

WHITE BOY #1

Aren’t you?

(White Boy #4 cackles.)

WHITE BOY #4

What makes you any different from your ancestors? Something to be fought against. Something others will try to beat. Something that dominates. Always. What makes you any different? How do you know that what was in their minds isn’t in yours?

WHITE BOY #1

I want…I want to save the others.

WHITE BOY #4

Save them? Save them from a class they enrolled in of their own free will?

WHITE BOY #1

Y…yes.

WHITE BOY #4

Why are you refusing yourself?

WHITE BOY #1

I’m refusing you.

(White Boy #4 leans away, tilts his head to the side, considering White Boy #1.)

(Over the course of the remaining dialogue, White Boy #4’s voice begins to resemble more and more that of their teacher, Geraldine Cunningham.)

WHITE BOY #4

You are a silly little boy. Just an ignorant, silly little boy.

(a beat)

Don’t you agree? Aren’t you just a silly little boy?

WHITE BOY #1

Stop.

WHITE BOY #4

You think you can be a hero here?

WHITE BOY #1

(gulps)

Yes.

WHITE BOY #4

(pulls items out from behind him)

Well, here’s your Stetson hat. And your bolt-action rifle, and spurs for your boots, and some bloodlust, and Manifest Destiny, and your knife for scalping, and while we’re at it, a badge for when you’re made into police.

WHITE BOY #1

Stop it.

WHITE BOY #4

Oh? Maybe you’re an industrialist. Or maybe the pilot who drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima or maybe the one who drops the atom bomb on Nagasaki.

WHITE BOY #1

Why are you doing this to me?

WHITE BOY #4

You had the right idea when you came in here. But you were only halfway there. And you let the others convince you things could be different. That you could escape the consequence of your blood. That you could look the way you look, talk the way you talk, have your name and your lineage and your inheritance and be anything other than what you are destined to be?

WHITE BOY #1

I’m a child!

WHITE BOY #4

You’re an aftermath.

(White Boy #1, beaten down, begins crying into his hands.)

WHITE BOY #4

Oh, but what’s wrong? I’m giving you what you came here wanting. Clarity. Purpose. Purpose you had only semi-divined. You see, you had the right idea. I just filled it out for you. Righted your carriage on the tracks.

WHITE BOY #1

I’m so lonely.

WHITE BOY #4

What villain isn’t?

WHITE BOY #1

But I…what am I supposed to do?

(A series of photos and short videos collage together and play themselves out over the fire in between them, like visions conjured from the flames: a march whose participants carry tiki torches, a cabal of buzz-cut, bubble-jacket-wearing toughs kicking and raining blows with a two-by-four onto an East Asian man curled into the fetal position; an overhead drone shot of World War II internment camps; a crowd of young men and women, spittle on their faces, screaming obscenity at a stone-faced Black girl walking toward a school; a shrieking bonfire; a soldier wearing olive green and spewing from his flamethrower enough dragon’s breath to fell a small forest while human forms of varying shapes and sizes pitch to the ground; a young man wearing a North Face jacket with an assault rifle, in the same posture, aimed at petitioners in the main prayer room of the mosque, only half aware of his presence, the same rictus grin on his face.)

WHITE BOY #4

What are you supposed to do?

(The pig’s head grins.)

What you were always supposed to do.

(leaning forward)

Destroy them.

(lights down on the whole stage)

(Lights up on the Chorus in the same posture they were in before White Boy #1’s encounter with the Pig-Boy. Only, White Boy #1’s gaze is focused on something far past White Boy #4, far past the confines of this theater, past the boundaries of whatever story he believes himself to be a part of. Staring into infinity and seeing only abyss.)

(White Boy #1 snaps out of it.)

WHITE BOY #1

(to the others)

Should we practice?

(lights down)

(The campfire on the table winks out.)

(The other classmates, in silhouette, begin to stream in.)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

- Alex Kim

- Geoff Foster

- Savannah Abrishamchian

- Ben Greenberg

- Win Rosenfeld

- Keisha Senter

- Ian Cooper

- Rachel Foullon

- Mollie Glick

- Katherine Rowe

- Jared Levine

- Ailleen Gorospe

- Seth Fishman

- Regina Flath

- Janay Frazier

- Ethan Soo

- Zainab Sillah

- Marc LeBlanc

- Rachel Rokicki

- Greg Kubie

- Windy Dorresteyn

- Michael Hoak

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Erin E. Adams is a first-generation Haitian American writer and theater artist. Her debut novel, Jackal, was a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Lefty Award. It was also named one of the best books of the year by Esquire, Vulture, PopSugar, Paste, and Publishers Weekly, and a best horror novel of all time by Cosmopolitan. Adams received her BA with honors in literary arts from Brown University, her MFA in acting from The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program, and her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. An award-winning playwright and actor, Adams has called New York City home for the last decade. Her sophomore novel, One of You, will be published by Penguin Random House in 2024.

Violet Allen is a science fiction and fantasy author based in Chicago, Illinois. Her fiction draws on everything from contemporary pop culture to ancient poetry in surreal explorations of society, culture, and relationships. Her stories have appeared in Lightspeed magazine, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, A People’s Future of the United States, The Dystopia Triptych, and elsewhere. Her work has also been presented on the podcast LeVar Burton Reads. In her spare time, she likes making music, watching films, and attempting to make the perfect from-scratch pizza. She is represented by DongWon Song at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency and can be reached via Twitter @blipstress.

Lesley Nneka Arimah was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in Nigeria and wherever else her father was stationed for work. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and Granta, and have been honored with a National Magazine Award, an O. Henry Award, and the Caine Prize. She was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, and her debut collection, What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, won the 2017 Kirkus Prize and the 2018 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, among other honors. Arimah lives in Minneapolis and is working on a novel about you.

Maurice Broaddus is a writer, a community organizer, a middle school teacher, and a librarian. His work has appeared in places like Lightspeed magazine, Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, Weird Tales, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny magazine. His books include the sci-fi novel Sweep of Stars; the steampunk works Buffalo Soldier and Pimp My Airship; and the middle-grade detective novels The Usual Suspects and Unfadeable. His TV project, Sorcerers, is being adapted for AMC. He’s also an editor at Apex Magazine. Learn more at MauriceBroaddus.com.

Chesya Burke is an assistant professor of English and U.S. Literatures and the director of Africana Studies at Stetson University. Having written and published over a hundred stories and articles within the genres of horror, science fiction, comics, and Afrofuturism, her academic research focuses primarily on the intersections of race, gender, and genre. Her short-story collection, Let’s Play White, is being taught in universities around the world, leading Grammy Award–winning poet Nikki Giovanni to compare her writing to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, and Samuel R. Delany to name her the “formidable new master of the macabre.” Chesya’s episode for I Hear Fear hosted by Carey Mulligan, titled “Under the Skin,” was produced by Wondery and Amazon Music and debuted on Halloween 2022. She is represented by Alec Shane of Writer’s House and Sukee Chew and Katrina Escudero of Sugar23.

P. Djèlí Clark is the award-winning and Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award–nominated author of the novel A Master of Djinn, and the novellas Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Apex, Lightspeed, Fireside Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including Griots, Hidden Youth, and Clockwork Cairo. He is a founding member of FIYAH literary magazine and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons. His most recent novel is Abeni’s Song, the first book in a middle-grade fantasy series. At the current time, he resides in a small Edwardian castle in New England with his wife, daughters, and pet dragon (who suspiciously resembles a Boston terrier). When so inclined he rambles on issues of speculative fiction, politics, and diversity at his aptly named blog, the Disgruntled Haradrim.

Ezra Claytan Daniels is a mixed-race (Black/white) American multidisciplinary artist. Born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa, Ezra is the creator of the award-winning sci-fi/horror graphic novels Upgrade Soul (Oni Press) and BTTM FDRS (Fantagraphics). His work has been featured on The Criterion Channel and at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. Ezra currently resides in Los Angeles, where he writes for film and television.

Tananarive Due (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo) is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote “A Small Town” for season two of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus, and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote their Black Horror graphic novel, The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, Lifewriting: Write for Your Life! A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than twenty years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory, The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. She and her husband live in Southern California with their son, Jason.

Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born author living in Canada. Her novels and short fiction have received the World Fantasy Award, the Sturgeon Award, the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Nebula Award, among others. In 2021, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave her the Damon Knight Memorial “Grand Master” Award for her contributions to the genre and the community. She is the first woman of African descent and the youngest person to date to receive this award.

N. K. Jemisin is the first author in the genre’s history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has won the Nebula and Locus Awards, and she is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. The first book in her current Great Cities trilogy, The City We Became, is a New York Times bestseller. Her speculative works range from fantasy to science fiction to the undefinable; her themes include resistance to oppression, the inseverability of the liminal, and the coolness of Stuff Blowing Up. She’s been an instructor for Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. Among other critical work, she was formerly the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer at The New York Times. In her spare time she’s a gamer and gardener, responsible for saving the world from KING OZZYMANDIAS, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his destructive sidekick, the Marvelous Master Magpie.

Justin C. Key is a speculative fiction writer and psychiatrist whose short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Escape Pod, and Lightspeed. A graduate of Clarion West, his debut short-story collection, The World Wasn’t Ready for You, is out now from HarperCollins. When Justin isn’t writing, working with patients, or exploring Los Angeles with his wife, he’s chasing after his three young (and energetic!) children.

L. D. Lewis is an editor, publisher, and Shirley Jackson Award–nominated writer of speculative fiction. She serves as a founding creator and project manager for the World Fantasy Award– and Hugo Award–winning FIYAH literary magazine. She also serves as the researcher for the (also award-winning) LeVar Burton Reads podcast, and pays the bills as the director of programs and operations for Lambda Literary. She is the author of A Ruin of Shadows (Dancing Star Press, 2018), and her published short fiction and poetry include appearances in FIYAH, PodCastle, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Lightspeed, and Neon Hemlock, among others. She lives in Georgia on perpetual deadline with her coffee habit, two cats, and an impressive LEGO build collection.

Nnedi Okorafor is an international-award-winning, New York Times–bestselling writer of speculative fiction for adults, young adults, and children. The more specific terms for her works are Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism. Nnedi has received the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner, and Lodestar awards and multiple Hugo and Nommo awards, among others, for her works. Her memoir, Broken Places & Outer Spaces, was a Locus Award nominee. Nnedi has also written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther: Long Live the King, Wakanda Forever (featuring the Dora Milaje), and the Shuri series. She has books currently being adapted for TV by HBO, Amazon Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, and others. Champions of her work include Neil Gaiman, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, George R. R. Martin, and Rick Riordan. Literary ancestors Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Nawal El Saadawi also loved her work. Nnedi holds a PhD in literature and two master’s degrees (journalism and literature) and is a professor of practice at Arizona State University. She lives in Phoenix with her daughter, Anyaugo. Learn more at nnedi.com. You can also follow her on Twitter (@nnedi) and Instagram (@nnediokorafor).

Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of Goliath, which was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Must-Read Books of 2022,” as well as The Guardian’s five best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022. His previous fiction includes Riot Baby, a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Awards and winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, an ALA Alex Award, and the World Fantasy Award; the Beasts Made of Night series; and the War Girls series. He has earned degrees from Yale University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His nonfiction includes the book (S)kinfolk and has appeared in The New York Times, on NPR, and in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. Tochi has also written the limited series Black Panther: Legends for Marvel Comics and Captain America: Symbol of Truth, starring Sam Wilson as Captain America.

Rebecca Roanhorse is a New York Times–bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte award–winning author. Rebecca has published multiple award-winning short stories, which can be found in publications such as Apex Magazine, The Mythic Dream, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and A Phoenix First Must Burn, among many others. Her short fiction has also appeared on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast and as part of Amazon’s Original Stories series. Rebecca has also written novels, including two in the Sixth World series; Star Wars: Resistance Reborn; and Black Sun and Fevered Star, both part of the epic fantasy trilogy Between Earth and Sky, with the final novel, Mirrored Heavens, set to release in 2024. She has also written for Marvel Comics, including Phoenix Song: Echo, Crypt of Shadows (Moon Knight/Werewolf by Night), and Women of Marvel (She-Hulk). Rebecca also writes for television and has had projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and AMC Studios, as well as John Legend’s Get Lifted Film Co. She is dedicating this story to her aunt who was an award-winning doll maker in Cedar Hill, Texas.

Nicole D. Sconiers was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, the small town where the cult classic The Blob was filmed. Her childhood was spent reading Mad and Fangoria and writing creepy stories. Ms. Sconiers’s passion for dark tales and social justice issues led her to pursue an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She blends horror, speculative fiction, and humor in stories centering complex Black heroines. She is the author of Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage, a speculative fiction short-story collection that has been taught at colleges and universities around the country. Her work has appeared in Nightmare magazine, Lightspeed magazine, Speculative City, NIGHTLIGHT: A Horror Fiction Podcast, Spelman College’s literary journal Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor, and other publications. Her short stories were published in the anthologies Black from the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing, December Tales, and Sycorax’s Daughters, which was a Bram Stoker Award finalist. Ms. Sconiers resides in Pennsylvania and is a self-taught oil painter. She is currently working on a collection of short horror stories about small towns.

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, and Crab Orchard Review, among other publications.

Terence Taylor (terencetaylor.com) lives and writes in Gowanus, Brooklyn, with Shuri, his black cat and part-time muse. After years of comforting kids with award-winning children’s television written for PBS, Nickelodeon, and Disney, among others, he turned to scaring their parents in print. His short story Plaything appeared in Brandon Massey’s Dark Dreams, the first horror-suspense anthology of African American authors. Terence’s work was in the next two volumes, and his short stories and nonfiction essays have since appeared in Lightspeed, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Nightmare Magazine, What the #@&% Is That?: The Saga Anthology of the Monstrous and the Macabre, The Canterbury Nightmares, and more. His first novel, Bite Marks, was a modern-day Grand Guignol about the unintended but catastrophic creation of an undead infant. Graced with a starred review by Publishers Weekly that described it as “a gritty, screenworthy supernatural noir set in 1980s New York,” it was followed by Blood Pressure. Twenty years later, a new menace endangers the humans and vampires that survived book one. Terence will soon conclude his trilogy with Past Life, set in 2027, as that rising horror threatens to end the world.

Cadwell Turnbull is the award-winning author of The Lesson; No Gods, No Monsters; and We Are the Crisis. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. The novel was also short-listed for the VCU Cabell Award and long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Award. His novel No Gods, No Monsters is the winner of a Lambda and a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Turnbull is from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Jordan Peele is an Oscar and Emmy Award–winning writer, producer, and director. His debut feature, Get Out, was released in 2017 to widespread acclaim, earning four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Original Screenplay for Peele. In 2019, Peele wrote, produced, and directed his second feature, Us, which instantly became a smash hit with audiences and critics alike, posting the largest box-office opening for an original horror movie ever. In the summer of 2022, Peele released his third feature, the sci-fi horror epic Nope, which also opened to number one at the box office. Also in 2022, Peele and Monkeypaw released the Henry Selick–directed stop-motion film Wendell & Wild for Netflix, which Peele co-wrote, produced, and provided a voice. Prior to Get Out, Peele was the co-creator of Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. Across five seasons, the show’s unique take on sketch comedy became a viral sensation online. In 2012, Peele formed his film and television company, Monkeypaw Productions, to champion unconventional storytelling through genre.

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the editor of more than forty anthologies, such as Wastelands, The Living Dead, and A People’s Future of the United States.

He is also editor of the Hugo Award–winning magazine Lightspeed and was editor of its sister-magazine Nightmare for its first one hundred issues. As the publisher of both magazines, from 2014 to 2016, he published the acclaimed “Destroy” series of special issues, which were 100 percent written and edited by women, LGBTQ, and BIPOC creators.

When not editing short fiction, he’s a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, and for five years he was the editor of an eponymous novel imprint at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor (and occasionally game designer) on various roleplaying game projects for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games.

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