Strange Folk, page 24
She shook him harder, and his neck slumped to the side. His cheek smeared with rotten jam. She put her fingers to his neck and felt for a pulse, but she couldn’t find it.
She studied his face, trying to will it back to movement with her memories of its animation. The way he smirked when he was genuinely amused by something. His look of determination when working with his body. The way he had looked at her in the field. She projected all of this onto him, but these spectral faces quickly evaporated, leaving the same absolute stillness.
As if the life had been sucked out of him.
THIRTY
The room felt like it was at the bottom of everything, buried deep beneath where people lived and where the soil grew life. Way down, deep down, underneath it all.
The curtains were drawn against the morning light, and Lee sat on the floor against the wall. She had been reduced to her most primitive self, crouching in the dark to protect her children from unknown predators. This was all she knew; everything else was sitting far above her on the plane of the living, where nothing made sense.
Meredith stirred from her cot and rolled over to face Lee. “Did you sleep at all?”
Lee shook her head. Cliff moved at the sound of his sister’s voice and sat up with his hair cowlicked in the back. He always looked so young in the mornings.
“Guys, I need to talk to you about something. I’ve thought very deeply about it, and I’ve considered every facet, and… we are going back to California to live with your dad.”
“What?” Meredith snapped.
“It won’t be permanent. We’re still getting a divorce. But we can’t stay here, and it’s our best option.”
“But you said we could stay. That we could have a say over our own lives.”
“Yes, I did, but things have changed. You know that.”
Lee expected to hear more of Meredith’s protests, but it was Cliff’s voice that came next. “Mom, please don’t make us go back there. Please, let us stay here.”
Her heart broke a little for how desperate he sounded, but she wouldn’t allow that to get in the way. “I can’t keep you safe here.” Meredith tried to interrupt, but Lee cut her off. “This isn’t a discussion. I’ve made my decision. We’ll leave as soon as possible, maybe tomorrow if I can get all of our ducks in a row. Until then, you are not to leave this room except for the bathroom and meals.”
Meredith stood up and crouched in front of Lee. “I know you’re scared. But we finally have a family, and a place that is right for us, even in spite of everything. What about their safety? We can’t leave them.”
“You’ll see them again. But right now, I have to focus on you. You are more important to me than anyone else.”
Meredith stood up and crossed her arms. “I refuse. You will have to physically remove me from this house.”
“That can be arranged.”
Meredith scowled and stormed to the door, but Lee yelled for her to stop. “What did I tell you? You are not to leave this room.”
Meredith turned around with tears running down her cheeks. “Fine. Then you leave. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”
Lee softened her gaze to show her she was doing this out of love. But Meredith kept her eyes on the floor as she went back to her cot. Lee went over to Cliff and tried to smooth his hair down, but he ducked her touch and turned away from her to face the wall.
Lee left the room and collapsed outside the door. A figure entered the hallway, and her body tensed. Then hazel eyes pierced through the low light, and she sat back against the wall as her mother joined her on the floor.
“The sheriff called. They want you to come in again. They got more questions.”
“I don’t have anything else to say.”
“I understand, honey. But you don’t want them hunting you down.”
Lee had recounted the story so many times to the sheriff, that it clearly wasn’t a formality. They were trying to catch her in a lie that would expose her involvement in his attack.
And in a way, she did feel responsible. It was undeniable that Otis’s attack and the death of those men were connected to her in some way. But she had no idea how. They’d been wrong at every turn, and now Otis was paying the price.
Redbud didn’t push it. “You should probably get ready for the hospital. We gotta leave in a bit.”
Lee felt a force building in her chest. “I don’t think I can go. I can’t see him like that again.”
Redbud looked mournfully at her. “I’m so sorry, baby.” Redbud reached for her, but Lee pulled away. This wasn’t her way back into a real relationship. Lee wouldn’t let her sneak in while she was vulnerable. She had to keep her guard up.
“Don’t apologize. Your shadow didn’t hurt Otis. Or kill those men. There’s something else out there.”
“I know.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “I think you should go and see him. Remember, he ain’t dead yet.”
Redbud put her hand on Lee’s, and she wanted to pull away again, but she was tired. The force pushed up to her throat and the tears ran down her cheeks and her shoulders shook from the power of it. She felt like she was vomiting air, the breath leaving her and not being replenished.
Redbud rubbed her back and told her that they always persisted, even in the hardest times. Lee flinched from the tenderness of her touch, and her mouth filled with salt when she tried to respond. This wasn’t a comforting sentiment. They always persisted, yes, but what were they left with? What was the point of hanging on when life could be so relentless?
Redbud put her thumb to Lee’s wrist. She clung to her own consciousness, terrified of leaving her children alone. Redbud whispered to let go. She would protect them. Lee continued to resist, but the pull of the memory was strong. She was so tired.
Lee fell for a while before landing in a bright place. It was her mother’s room at the white house. Redbud was in flannel pajamas holding a baby cocooned in a blanket. When the baby opened its eyes, Lee could see herself staring back. Redbud and the baby held eye contact for a long time before her eyes slowly closed again. There was a sweet, soothing mood in the room. It reminded her of late afternoons in early spring when the light was a mix of winter’s silver and spring’s pale gold and a slight breeze blew through the window screens.
Lee could feel it dissolving around her, but she wasn’t willing to go back yet. She sensed that she had gained some control, that this wasn’t merely her mother showing her a memory. Perhaps Lee could experience her mother’s other memories. She imagined she could explore her memory bank like Belva’s storage room with its stacks of unorganized boxes.
The image grew more vivid, until she suddenly realized she was standing in an actual room surrounded by boxes. She was inside of her mother’s mind. She went to the closest box and attempted to pry it open, but the tape was strong. Another box looked older and decaying, and she went to open that one.
A teenage Redbud came through a door in one of the walls and fixed her gaze on Lee. She politely asked her to leave with a smooth, undented voice and flashing eyes. Lee couldn’t help but be terrified of her. Young Redbud took her hand, led her to another door, and gently pushed her through.
Lee opened her eyes. She was back in the dark hallway. Redbud had released her wrist and was studying her with an appraising look. “Opaline, you are more powerful than you think. In a lotta ways. Remember that.” She patted her knee and got up with some trouble.
Lee pulled herself up as well and moved toward the light of the living room. It was time to go aboveground.
* * *
The hospital waiting room was filled with people Lee vaguely recognized from church. They huddled in clusters, clutching Styrofoam cups and speaking in low voices. A woman with the energy of an unmarried aunt asked Lee to write her name down on a list; they could only go in a few at a time.
While Lee waited for her turn, Dreama approached with a few friends trailing behind.
“I’m so sorry about Otis. I’m praying he’ll pull through.” She hugged Lee tightly, and Lee relaxed against her for a moment. There was something comforting and solid about Dreama; she’d been there when she’d needed her these last few days.
Dreama’s friends fluttered behind her in agreement as all of them remembered their old crushes on Otis. As Lee pulled away, Dreama kept hold of her hands and squeezed them. Lee noticed the softness of her skin and imagined her rubbing expensive creams into it. As she focused on this, she could feel that there was a pathway open to her. She could enter the internal world of this woman as she had earlier with her mother.
She carefully stepped in, and she was instantly met with a barrage of images like someone feverishly scrolling through a feed. Dreama’s husband’s disappointed face. Columns of numbers she couldn’t decipher. A fight with one of her sons. And then, a flash of a fire. Lee strained to see more, but she was forcefully thrown out of wherever she had been.
Dreama’s face came into focus again. She had pulled her hand back and was leaning away from Lee. She looked unnerved for a moment before regaining her composure.
“Let’s have a girls’ night tonight. Come over after the kids are asleep. We’ll drink all the wine.” Lee nodded but didn’t think she would go. She needed to stay close and alert to protect her children. She’d only felt comfortable coming to the hospital knowing Billy, Redbud, Kimmie, and their collective firearms were guarding them.
Dreama turned to go, and the women fluttered after her.
Eventually, it was Lee’s turn to visit Otis. She asked Belva and Luann to wait outside for her.
It was hard to see him through the tangle of tubes and wires. One would think the presence of so much electricity and machine whirring would make him seem more animated, but he still had that absolute stillness underneath it all.
The doctors weren’t sure if he would ever wake up.
She wanted to touch him, but she was afraid if she did, she’d feel only empty flesh, the space inside him hollowed and the wind whistling through like a cold cavern. The guilt was like a thick web in her throat.
It was her fault he had ended up here. The people that surrounded her had done nothing but suffer since she’d returned. Something more dangerous than her mother’s shadow followed her, and Otis was its latest victim.
She wasn’t sure how he’d survived when the others had died. Perhaps because she had found him so soon after he was attacked. It seemed a small consolation when his life still hung in the balance.
She finally reached out to touch his hand. It was warmer than it had been in the field. But when she searched for him in his touch, she was met with the bottomless void she’d feared. Like the person she knew was too distant to sense—or he was gone entirely.
As she stroked his hand, she could feel again that there was a pathway open.
She tentatively stepped in, and the room dissolved around her.
* * *
It was dark, and a wind whistled through her, brisk and uninhibited. It was the absolute blackness of a cave without light, and she was afraid to take a step in any direction for fear of what she might encounter.
But there was something. A familiar vibration in the ground buzzing through the soles of her shoes. It was coming from behind her.
She took small, slow steps toward it, and after a while, her eyes began to adjust to the dark.
It felt like she’d been walking for hours when she finally saw a light up ahead. At first it was only a small white square, but as it grew, it gained more detail, and then she was running, because there was Otis in the middle of it, surrounded by sunshine and elegant dew-tipped weeds, like a painting hanging in a void.
It was the field behind the high school, but not.
He sat at a large wooden table set with crystal goblets and dinner plates and a roast glistening on a platter in the center. Enormous bees flew lazily around him from the weight of their thick, plush bodies. She tested the grass with her toe and found the ground solid. She stepped in, and when she looked back at the tunnel, it was gone.
She squinted in the brightness and was at a loss for words at the sudden life of Otis in front of her.
“Would you like to sit down?” He smiled as if he’d been waiting for her.
“Uh—are you okay? How are you feeling?”
He looked confused. “I’m fine. How are you?”
He doesn’t know.
Should I tell him? She wondered if there was some trick to this, like not waking up a sleepwalker. What if she told him and she only made it worse? His mind had put him in this beautiful, peaceful place for a reason.
“I’m… great. It’s just been a weird day.” She sat down and put her napkin in her lap. He poured her a glass of white wine, and she hesitated. Was it drinking if it happened inside Otis’s mind? Would it extinguish her connection to the land’s power, ejecting her from this place? Or was this some sort of loophole? She’d love nothing more than to feel that first tangy sip sliding down her throat. She eyed it suspiciously and put off the decision for a bit.
He put his hand on hers, and there it was, the pulse of self she’d been looking for in the hospital room. This wasn’t some figment of a mind shutting down; this was the flicker of life inside him. He was still here.
“What’s the last thing you remember from… before I came?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then his brow furrowed. “I… I don’t know. I know who I am, and I know who you are. But everything else is sort of fuzzy. Like a mist with these different colored patches. I can’t make out anything solid in it.” He looked worried, and the scene around them started to fuzz at the edges. She had done something wrong. This was taxing his brain while it was trying to heal; it was why they were here, in the sweetness and light. Keep it light, Lee. Don’t hurt him any more than you already have.
She stood up, pulled him toward her, and brought him down into the weeds. She nuzzled against his chest, letting the desire flow unchecked. Their clothes evaporated like dew, and then they were moving against one another like tall grass. The sensation was lighter than the body; it floated on the surface and ignited at the edges with a delicate pleasure.
When it was over, they lay on their backs in the grass, and he trailed his fingers up and down her arm.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
Lee stood up and surveyed the untouched dinner he had prepared. The roast was dotted with pearl onions, carrots, potatoes. They sat down with their naked butts against the wood of the chairs, and he served her a large hunk of the meat. She hungrily speared an onion but stopped short of putting it into her mouth. There was a bit of color on it. Rings of olive and gold surrounding a black circle. She touched it with her fingertip and found it slick and spongy.
It was an eyeball.
She looked closer at the pot roast dish, and she saw tufts of hair, fingers with the nails polished, the curve of an ear. She looked at Otis and pointed, and he spit out the meat onto his plate. He bent over and started dry-heaving into the grass.
When she glanced around, wondering who had switched their roast for this nightmare, she saw that the trees had gotten closer. With each passing moment, they seemed to be closing in. And then, without transition, the trees were just there, surrounding them. They were in the woods now, the light dimmed by the dense canopy. The table had vanished.
There was a rustling behind them, and Lee could feel another presence. She turned around and saw the shadows of the trees sticking out at odd angles in a crosshatch of darkness. There was a contour of intelligence in the darkness, like the curve of an opposable thumb.
Otis grabbed her hand, and they took off, running naked through the trees. He was radiant with fear, the adrenaline glowing moon-like in the veins of his face. She had never seen him so disarmed, like a little boy running for his life, the vulnerability right at the surface. As they ran, she searched for somewhere to hide. She could feel its presence growing closer.
Then a man’s distant, craggy voice came from behind her.
“She’s at it again! Get that devil woman outta here!”
Lee looked back and saw Otis’s father pointing a skeletal finger at her from his wheelchair. The woods were replaced by beige walls, tile floor, slick green chairs. She looked in front of her again, searching for Otis running through the trees, but he was back in the hospital bed. His heart monitor manically beeped, and the lines on its interface formed spikes above his lifeless gray body.
A few nurses dashed into the room and pushed Lee and Otis’s father out the door into the hallway.
“What’d you do to him this time?” he demanded.
Her head was light from traveling between worlds, and she leaned against the flesh-colored wall.
He cast about for anyone who might be nearby and raised his voice again. “I want this devil woman thrown out! She ain’t welcome!”
Shame pooled inside Lee as the crowd stared at her from the waiting area.
Belva moved past Lee and knelt down in front of Otis’s father in his chair. When she put a hand on his arm, he pulled it away and refused to look at her. She kept speaking in a low voice that no one else could hear, and after a while, he seemed to soften a bit. He suddenly grasped her hand, and she put hers on top of his. His eyes were wet. She offered him a Styrofoam cup, and he allowed her to pour a little of the liquid into his mouth. His shoulders relaxed, and his eyelids drooped, and Belva wheeled his chair back to the waiting area.
Conversations resumed at a lower rumble, but they all watched as the sheriff walked up to Lee in the hallway.
“I got to ask you a few more questions, Opaline.”
She took a deep breath. “Fine. Let’s get it over with.”
He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and held it up to her. Inside was Pallie’s gold locket.
